THE text arrived as expected. It ricocheted off the Eiffel Tower before landing. I was in the city by the Seine visiting my most loyal and discerning reader. Taking French leave. The message was short and to the point. “Gone to extra-time” it read. My thoughts wandered back to home. Football harbours no possible escape.
The follow-up made for more pleasant reading. ‘The Neale won by 5’ was the good news. Typical. SOTB cannot turn its back for five minutes and the greatest of happenings in the region unfolds in my absence. From the bridges of Paris I was imagining the victory cavalcade snaking by ‘The Shoe Corner’ towards Milehill, past the Pyramid to bonfires blazing at the Long Stone. The firelighters providing a lovely neon escort on the approach route to Cong and then over by ‘Daffodil Ranch’ on the road to Cross.
People standing at side roads and boreens waving their heroes home. On occasions like this around Cong you realise the great pity it is how times have changed and Big Tom doesn’t play here anymore. Nancy Murphy, God rest her, would have had a field night when the revellers emptied out of the pubs to dance a victory jive on her maple floor.
And I bet if you listened closely outside ‘The Riverside Inn’ in Cross you’d have heard the echoes of the Mulloy Brothers from Mulranny belting out ‘The Coastline of Mayo’ to serenade them down the corridors of glory. How the late Martin Mulloy would have piped them over the bridge with a tune on the bagpipes.
A reminder of other nights when the world was young and he woke every sleeping sinner from Drumelly to The Derries when he pumped the bellows.
But it was only on Tuesday morning the real story behind their famous victory emerged. Seán Cosgrove’s picture on the masthead of Mayo’s finest was the first indication that something special had happened. It was his injury-time dispatch through the eye of a needle to the Ardnaree net that sealed The Neale’s comeback. That score was the turn for home.
The leaves on the bush telegraph were also carrying whisperings of great deeds of the evening. Keith Hennelly’s two great saves to keep Ardnaree at bay. Surely his sister, Amy, looking down from the terrace on the Heaven End, gave him the biggest cheer of all.
Other accounts elbow for a hearing. Donal Hughes lording it in defence, young Aidan O’Sullivan’s point and Mossy Costello’s rousing war cry. Already there’s a wonderful yarn doing the rounds of Seán Cosgrove saying “watch this” to referee Mel Kenny before he hit the net. Whether he did or not matters not an iota because truth never obstructed a good yarn from travelling well up around Quiet Man country.
This goal will be talked about around Cong, Cross, and The Neale long after they’ve forgotten about Mikey Sheehy’s in ’78, Seamus Darby’s in ‘82 or Ray Houghton’s header in ’88. The Neale footballers of 2012 are household names forever and a day now in every house, outhouse, henhouse and doghouse from Loughnaganky to Lisloughrey, from Los Angeles to Lackafinna. And rightly so. What a harvest they have reaped.
But the most poignant tale of all was told at a funeral Mass in Limerick on Friday last. The Gods of The Neale have aged a bit since Hubert Maye left his native Lackaun before eventually making a home near Sarfield’s Treaty Stone.
As the great drama unfolded in McHale Park Hubert was playing out his stoppage time in Milford Hospice. His family tweaked a dial on the radio and the last ten minutes of Mike Finnerty’s Mid West Radio commentary was relayed to his bedside. He got immense satisfaction on hearing the good news about his native patch in his beloved Mayo.
A few days afterwards a gentle breeze and still waters ferried him to the far side banks of Jordan. What a lovely update from home he had for those waiting there to greet him.
They have new Gods in The Neale now.
