The Anti-Logic of Supporting Mayo Football
It may not make sense that being a Mayo supporter is good for your mental health or well-being. But it's a perfect example of where passion and excitement are far better for you than cold logic
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I’ve been meaning to write something about football for a while now, something more substantial than the cheeky references embedded – almost reflexively and unconsciously at this stage – in articles and stories about anything from well-being to travelling around Asia. But Mayo are playing Galway tomorrow, and in spite of all biased optimism its necessary to admit that there’s always the possibility there’ll be no more chance to talk about the football this year. Like sunny days in Ireland (especially in Mayo), if you don’t get excited about the football match that you have in front of you, it could be the last one you get all year.
But we’ve every reason to be hopeful. Recent performances have seen Mayo playing with great energy, and maybe more important, a sharpness of the skills. Young players playing with innocence as Cillian O’Connor described it last weekend after the victory over Roscommon. Innocent of what, exactly? Of the crime of playing for Mayo perhaps, of being tainted with the curse in four All-Ireland finals and three semi-finals over the last decade, not to mention the other losses over the previous decade and a half. Galway were flying high but we gave them a solid going-over in the league, and they haven’t had the tests of championship football yet. Things are looking in Mayo’s favour, on some counts. It should be an open game of football between two attacking sides, etc, etc.
But sure who really gives a damn about any of that? On days like this I don’t really care about form, or logic, or coldly predicting who’s going to win. I’ll leave that to the managers, to the players, to the ones involved. We’re here because we care about our own team, and to hell with all reasonable consideration of how the game’s actually going to go.
The only correct response to the question of ‘Predictions?’ before a Mayo v Galway clash is:
‘Mayo4Sam’.
The Galway lads think Galway will win, the Mayo lads think Mayo will win. And that’s how it should be, shouldn’t it?
As much as I do like to analyse what’s going on and form an opinion on the actual sport of it, and the technicalities of it all, if I’m honest, my favourite part of supporting Mayo is just the shit-stirring and the craic. Nothing untoward, of course – we’re GAA fans here, not some other code which favours unsavoury hooliganism. Not stirring of resentment with rival fans or those who aren’t interested, but the stirring up of fun and excitement and emotion through irrational engagement with it all. Just the odd random messages to friends saying nothing but ‘Mayo 4 Sam’. Signing off emails with a casual ‘Up Mayo’. Letting outsiders fall into the small-talk trap of bringing up The Curse and Mayo Football (it gets a capital letter) and making them regret they ever did by my boundless enthusiasm for discussing Boyler’s tackling or Kevin McLoughlin’s work-rate.
Being a Mayo supporter is not often considered in the same breath or thought as well-being or positive psychology, or even logic. Logic, they might have a point. But as they (probably a different ‘they’) also say: logic will break your heart. Mayo will too, come to think of it, but we’re talking about two different means of delivering heartbreak here.
How rational is it to passionately follow the team of your home town or county at the expense of all others? What does it represent, to us, the supporters living vicariously through the heroes on the pitch? It is it not all a bit ridiculous, wearing the name of other grown men on your back, cheering on their hard work, their skill, their dedication? Would all that time and energy not be better spent working on something of your own? To the heartless outsider, it might appear so. But not to the fan. Being a fan is beyond rationality.
Being a football fan, maybe even a Mayo fan in particular, is all about the craic. It’s about the camaraderie. It’s about the pride in your home. I daresay it’s even about the hopelessness of it all. “What would we ever do if we won it?” The question has been asked so often over the years, at this stage I dare think at this stage we might all just wither away and die.
The detached rationalist, concerned only with inputs and outputs and cold-analysis of quantitative metrics, would say it’s time wasted. But how much time is wasted, spent with your friends, your family, your neighbours, coming together to celebrate something for no reason other than you grew up together, you live together, you go to the same shops and pubs, or you went to school together. Well, what better reasons are there for doing anything?
Football ignites passion and energy in those who might otherwise be asleep. It makes friends and neighbours out of heartless individualists. Love thy neighbour is actually quite illogical, isn’t it? But as we all know, it’s more important to love your neighbour than to do up a list of pros and cons and tactically weigh up the relative merits of giving a damn about him. Same with wondering who’s going to win the match.
And being in a packed stadium for a match, it’s impossible not to breathe in some of the atmosphere and to charge up your soul like a nuclear reactor. It’s a conductor for positive energy, regardless of the outcome. I could cite studies that show the psychological benefits of being in a stadium heaving with the positive energy of die-hard enthusiasm, but it’d be missing the point. And I’ve no idea how nuclear reactors work but who cares about the details when there’s a Connacht final on against Galway? We mightn’t be able to make the frigid November pitchside but the energy is there in spirit, it’s around the town, coursing through the wi-fi soaked airwaves, charging us all up in the safety of our own homes. You could light up the Christmas tree with it.
The beauty of the GAA is it’s impossible to set your biases aside. You can’t change where you were born, or where you grew up. Nor should you want to. We’re a bit obsessed about where we’re from in Ireland. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, having a sense of place is a vital – and largely overlooked – aspect of positive mental health. Aristotle is said to have said:
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”
Perhaps a bit dramatic for the present point. One does not have to support a football or hurling team to be part of society, though in the absence of any better way of achieving social cohesion, I find it’s as good as anything. And your following needn’t be rooted in any sort of ‘sense’. A sensible supporter might find something better to do with his time, to not get too worked up about the result, or to ditch a losing team.
Don’t be a sensible supporter. There is nothing worse. It is far from the point. Just lose the run of yourself with the craic and the mischief and the sheer madness of being a Mayo fan. It’s impossible to feel the highest of highs from a place of rational detachment. Thankfully we don’t suffer from the strange affliction that turns followers of sport in other countries into violent hooligans. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting carried away with the excitement of it all. Who cares who you think is going to win today? Your health and well-being is entirely independent of your ability to predict the outcome of football matches or tactical battles. In fact, being overly-analytical about it all might be detrimental to it. But to allow yourself to get swept up in the emotion of it all – now that, can be very good indeed.
Now, it’s not to say that we should be cheering the losses. Roy Keane was disgusted, and rightly so, at the Irish fans who refused to give up cheering on the abject thrashings that our team got at the Euros in 2012. It bordered on neediness.
No, when you lose, as is inevitable at some stage, and as we’ve experienced many times before, allow yourself to feel the pain. Allow yourself to shed some tears, if you must. It shows that you care, and however inconsequential caring about a football match might seem to the passive outsider, if you know, you know, and it’s impossible – or nearly should be – to not get swept away with it all. And know that if you were never to know what it’s like to lose, then there wouldn’t be much joy in winning. And so it goes with life. And all the fervent energy – even when it’s charged with the heartbreak of a loss, it’s still positive energy. We’re all in this together.
To finish, a story:
The lockdown turned into a lock-up during the summer and I took the chance to travel to Dingle with some friends. And of course we ended up in Páidí Ó Sé’s pub out in Ceann Trá, or Ventry as it’s known, at some stage of the weekend. Sat outside surrounded by Kerry men and women the conversation inevitably turned to football. They share our enthusiasm for chewing the ear of strangers in Kerry, and about matters relating to football too, though our respective outlooks might come from different backgrounds.
My new friend, pleasantly thick accent – though I think he was from Cork – asked with a weariness in his eyes, an almost mournful puppy-dog sadness, his head curled down to one side in a kind of vicarious learned helplessness, that he assumed I carried and was doing his best to bear the weight of: “How do ye handle all the losing?”
Not a hint of sadness in my eyes, I replied: “Ye don’t get it down here in Kerry. Ye wouldn’t know a thing about it: sure the losing is the best part!” It may have been said with a tongue planted firmly in my cheek, a snappy line I’ve just been trying to meme into existence as a coping mechanism for Curse Chat, but there’s some truth in it. It’s not that we’re dying to lose, nor is it a coping mechanism for fear that we might never win.
It goes far deeper than the rational mind can know, a knowledge that can only be forged through years and years of waving flags and making naïve and biased match predictions and jumping right into the small-talk about the Big Match in the Hyde coming up on Sunday, and years and years of group-bonding with friends and enemies in packed out stadiums wearing the green and red, getting charged up with that incredible energy whether we win lose or draw…
There’s not many words that can describe it. You either know or you don’t. But it’s not something you’ll ever know the joys of just by looking at it. You have to get stuck in.
Well, there are two words that describe it, the only two words you need: Up Mayo.
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Brilliant Gavin. I think your article gives Mayo supporters the boast we need right now. Looking forward as always. K
Every word so true, I wouldn’t swap supporting Mayo for any other team on the planet