COMMENT - Family, football and fun - the ties that bind Mayo and Donegal

DONEGAL never featured in the childhood games we played in our front lawn. That glorious patch of green played host to our fertile sporting imaginations and was arguably the most adaptable sports venue on the planet.

There were times when it transformed into Centre-Court at Wimbledon as a plastic football, heated in the sun, bounced back and forth across a bit of a branch stretched between two chairs. John McEnroe, a man with great Cavan heritage, almost always emerged victorious after Titanic struggles against Bjorn Borg or the likes. On other occasions it hosted the finest of All-Blacks, Welsh or English rugby teams in thrilling encounters when Ciaran Fitzgerald, Tony Ward or Michael Kiernan always featured for Ireland.

Of course, that patch of grass at the front of our house also regularly doubled as the glorious golf-courses of St Andrew's, Portmarnock or Augusta because there was a convenient hole in the adjoining cement path which was an ideal receptacle for our very adaptable plastic football.

However, every day without fail, our front lawn was a football pitch. Regularly it was Wembley, Lansdowne Road or Parkhead where the greatest of comebacks never failed to be played out. But, it was also Croke Park where Mayo, my beloved club Ballycroy or my school, Our Lady's Belmullet won the greatest prizes of all every single time.

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We were always the underdog, always in arrears as time ticked away, but we never failed to come back and win the game with the latest of late goals.

In the school games the opposition was almost always the powerhouses from St Jarlath's Tuam, Coláiste Chríost Rí from Cork or St Colman's from Newry. In the club matches we always came up against the greatest teams from all across the land and in the inter-county games we regularly broke the hearts of Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Roscommon, Armagh, Cork or any other team that popped into our head.

FAMILY TIES

Donegal never featured though, and there were a few good reasons for that. The Ulster men were a bit like ourselves – gallant and game, but rarely victorious. We didn't win one provincial title in the 1970s. Donegal had captured the 1972 and '74 Ulster crowns, but were as far away as ourselves from winning Sam.

We had lots of family ties with the Ulster county too. Our aunt, Peggy, was married to Phil Hagan, a mighty man from Buncrana and both sides of my family could trace their roots back to various parts of Donegal.

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There was also the fact that the two counties generally raised youth for export with the finest of young people playing football, singing songs, digging trenches and doing whatever job came their way in London, Glasgow, New York or Boston.

Donegal and Mayo were mirror-images of one another. We were forgotten by almost all who filled the comfortable chairs in Dáil Éireann; we were the last to be thought of when services, new industry or supports were being handed out and the people of both counties knew that nobody really cared if our land masses became detached from the rest of the island and drifted off towards America.

In fairness, that's where a lot of Donegal and Mayo people were making a better life for themselves anyway, so nobody would miss us.

Therefore, when big games were being playing in front of thousands of imaginary fans in our small front lawn, Donegal were never the opposition because we liked them too much. It would be like playing ourselves and that's not the way sport works.

WINNING MATCHES

However, as the years passed, the fortunes of both counties began to improve and we loved it. If Mayo were not going to win Sam, we wanted the men in green and gold to do so. We loved the arrival of Martin McHugh from Kilcar into the Donegal team. He was from a small club and the fact that some of our lads at home knew him from working in the ESB was a great bonus. We grabbed onto any connection and watched with delight as Ulster titles were won in 1983 and '90.

In 1992, we were even happier that they won the Ulster title because we were Connacht champions and would meet them in the All-Ireland semi-final. We were certain we'd beat them (we always feel we'll beat Donegal and they always feel they'll beat us).

However we didn't beat them. Donegal got the better of us that day, but we had recovered and were fully behind them when they got their hands on the big prize a few weeks later. The joy we got from watching them defeat Dublin was huge and many Mayo people headed north the following day to celebrate one of the great All-Ireland wins.

In 2012, we met in a battle to the death in a packed Croke Park. We were devastated to see Michael Murphy and his colleagues get their hands on Sam Maguire that day, but didn't begrudged them their joy for a second.

FRIENDS AND FOES

In the intervening years, we've clashed again three times. We've won those encounters and now we're getting ready for another big battle on Sunday. It promises to be a hugely exciting encounter and while the ball is in play, we'll be sporting foes, but as soon as the final whistle sounds we'll be friends again.

Back in the day when our imagination helped us defeat every other team on the planet, we never played Donegal because we always wanted them to win too. It's still the same in our house, except on this Sunday, when green and red are the only colours we'll be shouting for.

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