Lost and found ticket makes Mayo fan’s day

Good Samaritan gets Aughagower man to Final


Lost and found ticket makes Mayo fan’s day

Anton McNulty
antonmcnulty@mayonews.ie

When Shane Scott jumped on the train for the All-Ireland final on Sunday morning, he made one last check list to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Mobile? Check. Keys? Check. All-Ireland Final ticket?
To his horror Shane could not find the ticket. The match was about to start in just over six hours.
“I was sickened to be honest,” he told The Mayo News. “Two of my clubmates [Lee Keegan and Kevin Keane] were about to play in the final, and I lost the ticket. I was close to tears.”

Frantic search
Shane (21) searched the train high and low to no avail. In pure desperation he jumped off in Castlebar station to try to get back to Westport. He phoned his father, John Patrick Scott, from Aughagower, who collected him.
They drove back to Westport to retrace Shane’s steps but found nothing. They then headed to Dublin hoping to get a new one thinking Shane’s ticket for Hill 16 was gone.

Good Samaritan
In a bizarre twist, Jason McDaid from Westport was heading to work on Sunday morning when he noticed a piece of paper on the street along the north Mall. It was the Hill 16 ticket. Although it could have fetched up to a €1,000 on the streets around Drumcondra, Jason decided not to cash in on the find. He did what presumably very few people would have done, and handed it into Westport Garda Station.
On hearing that Shane had lost the ticket, his mother had contacted Mid-West radio, which broadcast the hard-luck story. By chance, gardaí in Westport station were tuned into Mid-West, and they put two and two together.

Garda escort
“We were on the road to Dublin when the gardaí called,” explained Shane. “They had been on to Croke Park, who told them they could not issue a new ticket. The gardaí knew it was a genuine case and phoned a sergeant around Croke Park, who I was to contact when I got there. I met with the sergeant and was given a garda escort into Hill 16. I think I was the only person in Croke Park who got in without any ticket,” he joked.
Shane, who said the ticket must have fallen out of his pocket when he was on his way to the station, and thanked Jason for handing in the ticket “It was an awful nice thing to do by the person to hand in the ticket … I owe him.” He was also very grateful to the gardaí for getting him to the match. “I think I will be handing a bottle of whiskey into the garda station as a big thank you.”

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