THE AFTERNOON AND night of Sunday, 23 September 2001, will stay with me as long as I live. I had only relocated to Galway a few weeks previously.
The world was still in shock at the horrific, unprecedented acts of terrorism on 9/11. On the 23rd, Galway vanquished the favourite, Meath, in the All-Ireland Football Final. The city and county erupted in unbridled joy.
I watched the match in a packed venue and struggled to follow a game that I had a vague awareness of from growing up in the heavily Irish Boston of the 1980s and 1990s. The atmosphere in my new surroundings was electric. Galway was party-central. I am positive that most in the exhilarated crowds did not envisage that two decades would zip by before the Tribesmen would reach the final again.
Love for the GAA
It wasn’t on that glorious occasion, though, that I truly embraced the Gaelic Athletic Association. It was some months later when, on a visit to my familial home place in north Galway, I attended a football match with my cousin, Paddy Murphy, who was involved with the Cortoon Shamrocks club at the time.
The conditions for the match weren’t ideal; it was windy and showery, typical west of Ireland weather. Turning the clock back to when I was very much an American outsider clumsily learning the ropes, I recall pacing on the muddy sidelines of a pitch in the middle of nowhere while praying that the rain would stop – or at least taper off – and wondering what the hell I was doing there.
The match itself wasn’t particularly impressive. But the love of competition and of community and the passion that this love manifestly engendered in the players giving their all and the coaches and spectators urging them on captivated me.
As I remarked to my cousin afterwards, what I had frankly been dreading morphed into one of the best sporting events I have ever had the pleasure of attending. It is no understatement to say that, in some respects, it changed my life.
Since then, Galway’s GAA teams have been in a neck and neck race for supremacy in my heart with the storied sporting franchises in my cherished Boston. For one thing, the GAA’s amateur ethos persists in sharp contrast to the extraordinary greed on prominent display in professional sports in the United States and elsewhere.
That the women and men who tog out at the top echelon for clubs and counties do so without remuneration for their unwavering dedication is unique and special – notwithstanding a widespread tendency here to either overlook or be cynical about it.
Highs and lows
My journey as a Galway GAA supporter has been something of a rollercoaster ride, with plenty of lows and a handful of highs. At senior level, the ladies have claimed three All-Irelands (one in football and two in camogie), while the men have won a sole hurling title. Regrettably, I have not brought along much good luck from Boston.
In the past, I have gone to Galway matches throughout Ireland and to Ruislip in London with great friends and/or family. Unfortunately, the pandemic meant that our planned voyage to Gaelic Park in New York for the annual Connacht provincial opener in 2020 had to be abandoned. There were countless raucous weekends I honestly cannot remember, yet equally, will never forget.
More recently, I have frequently been joined in the stands, in the pub or on the couch at home by a new Galway die-hard fan. My Limerick-born wife was disbelieving and dismissive when I informed her that our infant son would absolutely be a supporter of the maroon and white, despite the facts that he is being raised in Wicklow and that his Galway DNA is even more distant than his father’s.
But Larry Óg took to it like a duck to water. He has been in Croke Park at least a dozen times and has twice made the pilgrimage to Pearse Stadium. We have viewed Galway matches in the early mornings on our travels stateside and in Irish pubs on holidays in Spain. He shouts unapologetically for his ancestral county no matter where we find ourselves.
That led one witty pub patron in Wicklow to label us – not entirely without justification – “two fake Galway men.”
We were in the Upper Cusack to witness Galway get through a poor first half and beat Derry soundly in the semi-final. Our heroes enter the decider as the underdog. Kerry is an excellent team. That said, they are far from invincible. Most impartial observers assert that Galway could prevail.
We haven’t yet managed to secure tickets for the big one. They are extremely difficult to come by, but the quest will continue until midday on Sunday. My namesake isn’t fully sure about another trip to headquarters. He’s afraid that he might not be able for a loss away from his creature comforts.
Regardless, we will be glued to proceedings, as will Galwegians across this island and around the world. Among them will definitely be the very many emigrants and their predecessors’ descendants who are ubiquitous in the place I am immensely proud to be from, the next parish over.
If there is a dead cert, it is that Kerry will be vastly outnumbered by Galway in Boston.
The closing words of the Saw Doctors’ poignant “Maroon and White” encapsulate perfectly both why we are all so excited right now and how we always feel – win or lose this Sunday:
“Cos me heart is in maroon and white;
I’ll stick with what I know;
Maroon and white forever;
In hailstones, rain or snow;
Yes, maroon and white forever;
That’s what I always say;
Maroon and white of Galway;
Forever and a day!”
Amen. Go on, Galway!
PS Mission accomplished: We got tickets.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a law lecturer at NUI Galway and a political columnist with The Journal. His book – “The Bostonian: Life in an Irish American Political Family” – is published by Gill and available online and in bookshops.
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