When the West awoke
50 years ago, the amalgamated West Mayo team won the Mayo Senior Championship
Down memory lane
Daniel Carey
“IT was the biggest thing ever for us at that time,” Paddy Muldoon recalls. “To win a county senior medal was beyond all dreams for most of us. It was an unbelievable thing to happen.”
But the unbelievable came to pass 50 years ago. West Mayo – a team made up of members of the various junior clubs in the division – beat a star-studded Castlebar Mitchels team to win the 1960 Mayo Senior Football Championship. The players who’ll take on Charlestown next Saturday are the latest representatives of a divisional team with an intermittent history that stretches back over half a century.
Muldoon, just out of minor and the winner of a West Mayo Junior Championship medal with Islandeady in 1959, came on as a sub in that 1960 final. His club was just one of many who had players involved in the West Mayo side. The team was backboned by players from Ballintubber and Louisburgh (including a couple of Clare Islanders), and there was also representation from Achill, Burrishoole, Westport and Belcarra,
Mitchels had just returned from a trail-blazing trip to America, and were perhaps suffering from the after-effects. Muldoon suggests: “I suppose they were kinda caught a bit. We would have been underdogs.” The Mayo News described West Mayo as ‘emerging from oblivion to steamroll [a] vaunted county town 15 into submission’.
On what the insurance broker recalls as ‘a wet day’ in Westport, goals from Murt Prendergast and Liam Horan helped West Mayo to a 2-5 to 0-2 half-time lead. Tom Gibbons ‘crowned the Divisional triumph with a capital goal’, according to The Mayo News report. It was, this newspaper noted, a particularly special day for Murt Prendergast, who captained the side just a week after leading Ballintubber to a West Mayo Junior Championship title.
The sides met again two months later for a match held to commemorate Mitchels’ 75th anniversary, when a last-minute goal from Brendan Needham gave West Mayo a one-point win.
“It was a great achievement to beat Castlebar in the county final,” West Mayo corner back Tommy Lally recalls. “But then they made out that if they hadn’t gone to the States, we wouldn’t have beaten them in the county final. They invited us in [for their anniversary game]. They had the same team out and they had trained for it, so they thought they’d beat us. That was just as sweet a win as the county final!”
There was no shortage of talent on what Muldoon remembers as ‘an exceptionally strong team’. Murt Prendergast was at full-forward. His brother Ray, later to star for the Mitchels, starred at full-back. Westport’s Pádraic Bruen was at midfield with Liam Horan. Michael Heneghan, a former Mayo minor and ‘a very good footballer’, was centre half-back. Tom Gibbons from Louisburgh (‘a marvellous player’) was centre half-forward, and Brendan Needham from Islandeady, who later played for Louth, was corner forward.
Muldoon recalls that the late Larry McGovern from Newport, then Chairman of the West Mayo GAA Board, ‘had a big say in bringing the team together – and succeeded’. “There was plenty of rivalry between the clubs, but it was parked at the door,” the recently-retired Central Council delegate added. In an era when Castlebar were the only senior team in the division, the West Junior Championship was ultra-competitive. “If you wanted to get killed, that was the place!” Muldoon says with a laugh. “It was a great competition at that time.”
The Mayo News of June 25, 1960 carries an account of the West Board meeting where it was agreed to field a team. Billy Murphy from Castlebar made the proposal, which was seconded by the late Seán Moylette from Islandeady. Billy Murphy said the West team had been ‘unlucky not to win the championship’ in 1959, though the late Seamie Daly noted that some selected players had not turned out – one player ‘walked away laughing’ when asked to play. It was agreed that players who did not turn out in 1960 would be suspended.
The campaign began with a 1-4 to 0-5 away win over Ballyhaunis. The goal came from Brendan Needham, while Ray Prendergast gave a ‘flawless performance’, according to The Mayo News. This was followed by a four-point (2-6 to 1-5) victory over St Patrick’s (Garrymore/Crossboyne) thanks to first-half goals from Needham and Micky O’Boyle. A semi-final hammering of St Vincent’s (Kilmaine/Shrule) followed, and the 5-11 to 0-2 scoreline ‘mirrored adequately the finality’ of the triumph, The Mayo News reporter suggested.
Within six months, Tommy Lally and Liam Horan were gone to England, and the latter (‘a great footballer’, Lally recalls) went from there to New Zealand. More than half of the Ballintubber side who had won the West in 1960 were gone by the time 1961 came around, and many of the West Mayo side were soon scattered to the four winds too.
In 2000, those West Mayo heroes were honoured at half time in the county final at McHale Park to mark the 40th anniversary of their achievement. Ballintubber GAA Club will honour their sizeable West Mayo contingent on Saturday, July 10. Half a century on, it’s still a great story.
