Feature
Daniel Carey
1 Ballina presented with an egg cup
1947
AFTER Ballina Stephenites controversially beat Castlebar Mitchels in the 1947 Mayo Senior Football Championship final. the cup could not be found for presentation to the Stephenites.
“Allegations were made, with a lot of justification, that the cup was smuggled out of Foxford in a Castlebar car,” the late Johnny Mulvey (pictured) wrote in his ‘GAA Diary of a Century’. “The following Tuesday, a telephone call informed the Stephenites that the trophy would be delivered by a Bacon Company lorry to a Mr Padden’s premises in Ballina. Sure enough, a box was collected, but when opened it contained an egg cup.”
2 The sending-off that never was
1990
WHEN Salthill Devon scored late in a 1990 Connacht Senior League game, Westport United players protested, arguing that a Salthill player had handled the ball. United’s Ronnie Ring was involved in the protests, and when the referee flashed the red card, Ring left the field, ‘feeling rightly aggrieved at being sent off’, according to The Mayo News.
When Ring approached referee Noel McDonagh after the game and asked why he had been sent off, the official told him that he had not dismissed him. The red card had been for John McKenna, and he had not realised Ring had left the field.
3 Streaker makes a minor show
2006
THERE were 20 minutes left in the 2006 Mayo Minor League Division 3 final when a streaker made his entrance. Aghamore were on their way to victory over Crossmolina in Parke.
Wearing nothing but a pair of runners and a black balaclava, the teenager ran diagonally across the pitch, out the gate, into the car park and into a waiting car.
“It was freezing,” he subsequently told The Mayo News. Referee Jimmy Feeney suggested that the incident ‘lived up a dull enough affair’, while Crossmolina’s Enda Lavelle said the streaker was ‘the fastest person on the field all day’.
4 Two goals during TV blackout
1967
IN the 1967 All-Ireland semi-final, Mayo conceded 2-2 in five minutes, and lost to Meath by 3-14 to 1-14. Defeat had ‘a spooky dimension’ for supporters at home, Keith Duggan wrote in The Irish Times last August.
“A power cut occurred in the second half when the teams were tied, knocking silent the televisions and all radios except the surviving battery-operated models. The electricity was out for no more than ten minutes, but when Mayo folks tuned in again, Meath had gone two goals clear, as if by some kind of black magic.”
5 Nine clubs boycott soccer matches
1989
UNDER the headline ‘Chaotic start to season’, The Mayo News detailed one of the strangest days in Mayo soccer history. Thirteen fixtures were down for decision on Sunday, August 20, 1989, but only three were played.
The reason for this was a boycott by nine clubs – Killala, Glenhest Rovers, Conn Rangers, Newport Town, Ballina United, Ballina Rovers, Hollister, Enniscrone and Cornboy United – over the adoption of a compulsory levy on clubs for the development at Milebush Park.
The subsequent EGM – dubbed ‘The Night of the Nine Knives’ – saw the levy reduced to a one-off contribution of €200.
6 Calving cow delays hurler’s arrival
2007
KEVIN Healy came on as a sub for Mayo hurlers during the Connacht League Plate final in February 2007. The James Stephens clubman might well have started the game, but only arrived 15 minutes into the second half of their meeting with Roscommon ‘after his cow had chosen a most inopportune time to calve’, as Michael Commins memorably put it in these pages.
Healy might have missed the entire game, but the start of the second half in Knockroghery was ‘held up for an extra ten to 15 minutes’ as a funeral was taking place in the adjoining graveyard.
7 Full-time blown as point is scored
1970
MAYO were six points up with five minutes left in the 1970 National Football League semi-final. But Derry reduced the gap to a point. Then Seán O’Connell dropped in a free.
Seán Rice wrote in the 1970 Mayo GAA Yearbook: “The ball dipped onto the fingers of backs and forwards, bobbed there for one awful moment and then went sailing over the bar.” But Wicklow referee Jimmy Hatton had blown for full-time and the point did not count. Christy Loftus had little sympathy for Derry, arguing in The Mayo News that a draw would have been ‘blatant robbery’.
8 24 players in a lorry
1948
THE Mayo News of August 14, 1948 ran a front-page story under the headline ‘Carried Footballers in Lorry’. It centred on a court case heard in Killala.
A Ballina man was charged with a breach of the Transport Act after he was found carrying 24 passengers in a lorry to a football match. The players were members of the Bonniconlon side en route to play a game in Ballycastle the previous April. The defendant was fined £25, and District Justice O’Grady noted that had an accident occurred, not one of the passengers would have been covered by insurance.
9 Stopped watch ‘robs’ Mayo
1958
MAYO were ‘robbed’ of victory in Navan in the 1958 National Football League, The Mayo News reported – “not by a much favoured Meath team, but by a referee’s watch, which stopped in the second half.”
After referee C Coleman’s watch stopped, the Galway official borrowed a watch from an umpire and, according to this newspaper, ‘was told what time the game should finish’.
But ‘the correct time was not given’, and ‘five minutes extra time was played’. The mistake ‘cost Mayo the game’, as Meath equalised in the dying seconds of overtime. Mayo beat Meath in the subsequent play-off.
10 Scoreless rugby match
2008
THEY’RE not entirely unheard of, but scoreless rugby matches are still rare enough that they prompt the raising of an eyebrow.
In November 2008, Westport and Sligo drew 0-0 in Division 1A of the Connacht Junior League. Under the memorable headline ‘Bulls draw a blank’ (Mr Finnerty’s handiwork, I believe – this reporter can’t take any of the credit), The Mayo News recounted brave defending by Westport in dreadful weather conditions. Sligo dominated the match but ultimately, neither side could register a score, as the Westport back row of Conor Hastings, John Paul Walsh (pictured) and Owen Mullowney put in heroic performances.
