COLUMN: Millions of memories made as Mayo bring Sam Maguire home
Darragh Berry gave his take on the surreal scenes in MacHale Park as the All-Ireland champions came West
I couldn’t even give you a rough estimate of how many times I’ve made the journey from Galway to Mayo.
Living and working in our neighbouring county can be tough especially after a GAA match involving Mayo - but not this time.
This time, I had the playlist created for the journey with the songs that had defined the weekend and that day in Croke Park.
Many All Ireland final weekends before, I’ve passed the Mayo For Sam sign scorched into a hilly patch of grass in Glencorrib.
But last Monday as I drove near it, I made sure the Dog Days Are Over was playing.
My friend Regina was in the car with me, both of us in the same clothing as the night before - I’m as well off sewing this jersey into my skin because there is nothing else I want to wear ever again.
I collect my mother in Ballintubber and already there is a cacophony of beeps and shouts as cars whizz past ‘The Store’ there.
Everyone is heading in the same direction and as we pass Ballyheane the traffic is already beginning to build up.
Mam wants us to park in one place, Regina suggests another - I say no.
I’m going to park in the same spot near the stadium where I always get parking. My mother says not a hope, but as we turn left at Cathal Duffy’s garage, I manage to find that spot. The same spot where I’ve walked back to crying or smiling, enraged or ecstatic.
The walk to the pitch is like no other. Most of us could do that walk blindfolded at this stage, but you didn’t even want to blink in case you missed something or someone on that walk this time.
Only a few months earlier I’d completed that same pilgrimage thinking how Andy and Co had a good young team but expecting an early summer off.
If I could only go back and tell myself what I would witness over this summer - I’d have probably committed myself to the men in white jackets though!
To be standing on that hallowed pitch and looking around at the sea of our colours filling the stands and grass was so special.
Michael D McAndrew and Angelina Nugent’s voices reflected my own, hoarse, but they managed to hype up the already giddy fans even more.
They didn’t need to say the players had landed, because you could see hundreds of fans sprint to the top of the stand near the media tower when the bus arrived.
My friend Kenneth, like so many, lives away now. Only in London but despite the location you can imagine how rare it is to meet up anymore.
He’s one of the first people I spot inside the stadium and I make a sprinting beeline for him like Darragh Beirne running into position before the whistle.
We embrace and teary eyed smiles appear on both of our faces.
Much like the song Clare Island with the lines ‘I don’t care if the boat doesn’t sail, we’ll make it home some other way’, I ask him when’s he going back to London.
‘Tomorrow morning from Shannon but sure, there’s always other flights…’
The news filters through on WhatsApp that The Saw Doctors were number one in the charts with green and red.
I went to the Saw Doctors with my wife on the Friday before the game in Galway. The first of the hundreds of times I heard that song being played or sang that weekend was at that gig.
I explained earlier how it can be hard working and living in that neighbouring county.
After they finished that song on Friday, Leo Moran said: “Hopefully we hear this being played at full time on Sunday” - which was met with a chorus of boos from our neighbours.
Funny, nobody was booing when it played at full time in Croker or when Garron Noone sang it on Monday.
I stood with my arm around my mam’s shoulder when the players came onto the stage.
The same woman who brought me to the 2004 homecoming - back then she would have been holding my hand so it was only right to hold hers this time around.
That same little boy was still as fixated on the stage this time as he was 22 years ago. To see his heroes, who have given him some great times finally delivered the greatest GAA moment of all.
I could have waited there all night watching them lift that cup.
It took us 90 minutes to make the normally 15 minute journey to Killawalla to have a few in MacEvilly’s.
The place was packed but I never saw it as quiet as when the 9 o clock news came on and they showed what we had all just witnessed from Castlebar.
The scenes in Westport were just as mad. Thousands poured out onto a closed off Bridge Street where people singing and dancing became the traffic.
Jack Carney, Darragh Beirne and Enda Hession were lifted high onto people’s shoulders chanting about this wonderland they had created.
Someone handed them a keg from outside Matt Molloy’s and they treated it as if it was Sam Maguire taking turns putting it aloft to a roar of waheys. I could have waited there all night watching them lift that keg.