I’m from Derry. I know nothing about what Mayo fans are going through.
If I was to say that I know how they feel, it would be a complete and total lie. And a bigger insult.
But I do know what apathy feels like. I have a fair idea of what nothingness is and I look on through the boredom in envy of those who are burning with fire.
In the aftermath of yet another near miss, another heartbreak story and more patronising fair plays, Mayo fans trudged away from Croke Park on Sunday and they weren’t even feeling sorry for themselves this time. They were just angry. They were fed up. And they were pissed off at that hope that just continues to build them up every year only to break them down cruelly in bits.
If they didn’t come so far, they wouldn’t have so far to fall. But every season, the men from the west relentlessly climb to heights where you couldn’t help but dream at and, every year, they fail to reach the top.
And it hurts. Of course it does.
Maybe it would be better if they just spared themselves the heartbreak.
Maybe they should just give up the ghost, protect their own feelings and, heck, maybe from a footballing standpoint, a poor, underperforming year cut short would do them the world of good and freshen up the whole thing rather than traipsing along to September every season for what is starting to feel like the inevitable.
The inevitable wrenching.
Maybe if the players and the fans didn’t open their hearts and minds, they would never be subjected to the pain that has been seemingly fooling the good people of Mayo for over a decade now. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 13 times, shame on me.
But what’s the alternative? Tell me. To feel nothing?
The broken-hearted would tell you that that actually doesn’t sound so bad but of what use is a wasted heart?
What use is life if you’re not going to live it?
The alternative is bleak. To come in to every season without so much as a flicker of hope.
The alternative is a divided county because there’s nothing really to come together over. It’s to have nothing but near disdain for the All-Ireland championship because it’s only getting in the way of club fixtures.
You see, when you don’t stand a chance of success – when you don’t even have the audacity to dream – sometimes excursions with the county can feel a little like a waste of time.
When you have no life in your county team, you have no pulse shooting through the county itself. Its veins aren’t pumping, its heart isn’t pounding and you have nothing but everyone minding their own business and looking after their own jobs.
At least Mayo have life and, by God, at least after all the knocks and kicks in the teeth that they’ve taken over the years, they refuse to go under. They continue to come back. Together.
At least they’re living.
A train journey to Westport had @ConanDoherty wondering if Mayo are actually better off never winning Sam again https://t.co/56UTd6z6do
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) September 10, 2017
Mayo probably feel hurt like no-one has in a long, long time but at least they have that. At least they feel.
And at least, after the dust has settled like it always does and the fresh, crisp mornings of spring come along – like they always do – at least they come back every year daring to dream. They come back every year with wide eyes. With hunger. With hope.
If that leads them to despair like it has again this season, then so be it. Give me that.
Consider this. There are 33 teams that start out every year, there are thousands of clubs, even more footballers and the depressingly vast majority of those will never taste the success they want. They’ll never realise their ambitions.
But for 12,13, 14 years – whatever it is – every one of them will come back in January and try again. Then they’ll try again after that.
They might bleed, some of them might even fall on their swords but at least they’ll know that, when all is said and done, that they took their shot.
Because the alternative is not to even try. And too many of us know what that feels like.
You’re telling me hope is killing you? Hope is what is keeping the county alive. That fire that Mayo men and women are breathing is what this whole thing is about.
It isn’t about a medal or two at the end of it. It’s about what you did on the way. And, Jesus, Mayo have done everything they could along that journey. They have no regrets, like most of us do.
And, come January, they’ll have every right to hope again, to stand tall, stick out their chests and proclaim that this is their year. When the rest of us won’t even want to know.
Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.
