Donegal supporters looked like so many sunflowers during the match yesterday - an effect enhanced when the sun actually showed up and shone on them, writes FRANK McNALLY
IT WASN’T just on the pitch that Donegal won.
Such was the gold-shirted supporters’ apparent dominance in the stands and terraces that Croke Park looked like a field of sunflowers throughout the All-Ireland, an effect heightened when the actual sun made a late appearance to shine on them. By contrast, the green-clad Mayo fans were condemned to playing the role of background vegetation.
Maybe it was the northerners’ superior networking skills. Maybe a pan-Ulster conspiracy had funnelled the ticket allocations of eight other counties their way. Or maybe it was just that, in the perennial triumph of optimism over experience, more Mayo fans had travelled to Dublin at the last minute in vain hopes of getting in.
Before the game nearly all the desperate ticket-seekers on the streets near Croker seemed to be wearing green and red, while their rivals passed smugly by, seats secured, looking like cats in the Donegal Creameries advertised on their jerseys. Most of the needy relied on verbal appeals or hand-written signs. Others, like Liam Ó Raghallaigh from Ballina, went to more elaborate lengths. Thus, for at least two hours before the game, he paraded along North Circular Road with a printed placard that read: “I won’t last another 61 years.”
The reference related to Mayo’s most recent All-Ireland victory, in 1948, and he admitted borrowing the idea from another supporter who made similar placards for the county’s previous final appearances, most recently in 2006.
“I asked him if it worked,” said Liam, “and he told me it never fails.” It hadn’t worked for Liam – yet, anyway – but he remained hopeful. Then, soberingly, he realised that the man who gave him the idea was nowhere to be seen this year. It might have been premature to hold a minute’s silence, but the thought occurred that you can indeed pass an entire lifetime in between Mayo All-Ireland wins.
Outside the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street, Dan Broderick was holding up a sign too. He turned out to be from Limerick, but was wearing a green and red hat in honour of Mayo relatives.
That was until a Donegal woman beside him – one of the few from the county not already sorted – secured a ticket from a fellow gold-shirt, and after a shorter appeal. Whereupon Dan realised he might be unnecessarily halving the number of his potential benefactors – and temporarily hid his hat.
On the street nearby stood a horse and cart loaded down with antique furniture. It could have been an apparition from the last year Mayo won the Sam Maguire. In fact, rather than an omen, it was just an elaborate advertisement for a Dublin pub.
And its jarvey, Hugh O’Connor, was giving Mayo no chance.
Himself a hardcore Dub, he had been at every one of his county’s games since 1955, and as a point of principle, attended Dublin games only (“I don’t go to watch foreign teams”). But he believed Mayo won the semi-final by default because Dublin lost it “on the side-line”. As for the final, Donegal would “skate home”.
He was right about the result, if not the skating. Having looked like they’d fallen through ice early in the game, Mayo somehow avoided going under and thereafter clung grimly to the Donegal skaters’ ankles. While never looking like they might win, the westerners at least kept their long-suffering supporters’ hopes alive until the end.
Then the sun came off the bench and bathed the yellow-shirted fans in victory. As the PA played We’ll Build our own Las Vegas in the Hills of Donegal, golden streamers joined the party. Outside the stadium, T-shirt sellers were also celebrating a gamble, unfolding commemorative “Donegal All-Ireland Champions 2012” souvenirs even as the team captain Michael Murphy prepared to lift the cup.