Brendan Behan, Mayo Football and Jones’ Road

Some weeks ago, before the most recent heartbreak for the Mayo football team, I reminisced on Jones’ Road, Drumcondra.

As I crossed Binn’s Bridge, Brendan Behan was leaning towards me on the metal bench, seemingly watching my every movement. But it was the blackbird perched beside him on the Royal Canal seat that engaged his attention – the pair seemingly enthralled with each other’s company. The bronze sculpture a signal that I was entering Drumcondra which was an oasis of quiet that Sunday morning. Walkers with ruck sacks headed westward along the canal bank footpath; landscape contractors sprayed the hanging flower baskets on Clonliffe Road; rays of morning sun highlighted the red of rose and rhododendron in neat gardens. Soon I was on Jones’ Road bordering the west boundary of Croke Park, walking up the incline between the stadium’s railway and canal ends. Memories of other Sundays in that place, on that road, inundated me.

I have a love/hate relationship with Jones’ Road and with Drumcondra. Walking towards Croke Park on the third Sunday in September, when Mayo once again contest the All-Ireland Football Final, I have an impression of a place always sunlit, of excited voices, sharp banter, wrangles about ticket,; the scene a mish-mash of green and red mingled with the opposition colours – more often than not the green and gold of Kerry.

Then, the gloomy return journey several hours later. An autumn chill, it seemed, in the evening air. Green and red flags drooping. But what I remember most was the quietness among the Mayo supporters walking, heads bent, braced for the long journey west. Few words.  What was there to say at the hurt of another defeat?

Too young to remember, I was just a toddler in a Mayo village close to the pilgrim road from Ballyhaunis into Knock, when Sean Flanagan – the Mayo Captain from nearby Ballaghaderreen – lifted the Sam Maguire cup sixty-four years ago when Mayo last won the All-Ireland football trophy.  Too young to remember, but soon old enough to hear the talk year after year of the homecoming bonfires that lit the autumn skies across east Mayo  –  in Ballyhaunis, Bohola, Crossmolina and Kiltimagh – to greet the victorious team that September.

It was 38 years before Mayo returned to an All-Ireland Final against Cork in Croke Park. That year, 1989, we had reason to hope, so often enthralled by the sublime feats of Willie Joe Padden as he soared to fetch the ball and it seemed as if he must pierce the clouds with his astonishing leaps.  I was then married to a north Dublin man whose memories of lower Drumcondra are saturated with the boyhood smells of stale milk from the family van on its milk rounds through Drumcondra streets like Whitworth Road and Fitzroy Avenue. By then I was mother to two small sons who were absorbing the city passion for Munster rugby in our Limerick home. The three of them would learn to live with my peculiar addiction to the wearying cause of Mayo football.

In 1996, even if we were missing the blond, tattooed Ciaran McDonald – absent for the summer in America – we converged on Jones’ Road in hope. If only that game with Meath was won on the first outing when the sun still radiated the heat of summer. For the replay, two weeks later, the summer was well and truly over, the days had shortened and we were chilled to the core. The banter with Meath supporters who spoke of their ancestors trading small farms in Mayo for the rich pastures of the Royal County did little to lessen the disappointment. And pain continued to be heaped upon pain for Mayo football supporters into the new millennium.

Surely, if the Mayo team were to win the All Ireland, the spirits of the living and the ghosts of the dead of the County would exult with ecstasy from Swinford to Sydney, from Belmullet to Boston, from Louisburg to London.

Crossing the Royal Canal after such a victory, Brendan Behan would totally  ignore the victorious Mayo supporters and continue to chat to his blackbird. It would make no difference to him at all.