Gaelic football commentators go ballistic celebrating Mayo’s All-Ireland championship
· Yahoo Sports
There’s a good chance you thought LeBron James’s decision to join the Philadelphia 76ers was the biggest moment of the sporting weekend, and for American audiences, you’d be mostly correct.
But on another plane of the sports universe, the biggest headlines instead belonged to much-maligned Gaelic football squad Mayo, which won its first All-Ireland Senior Football Championship in 75 years with a victory over Kerry at Croke Park on Sunday.
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Understanding just how big a moment is in a sport one doesn’t watch regularly can sometimes be a challenge. Thankfully, a euphoric call from Midwest Radio’s Stephen Grealis and Martin Carney helps the seismic weight of the moment come through loud and clear.
Do we know how scoring works in Gaelic football? Vaguely. Were we familiar with Mayo’s devastating history of championship defeats before seeing this clip? Not at all. But the emotion that Grealis and Carney put into the call makes it abundantly clear that we are watching history.
Sound on, please.
MidWest Radio meltdown during the last minutes of the Mayo match. Volume DOWN pic.twitter.com/pUrDTxW3J7
— Craic Of The Ash (@CraicOfTheAsh) July 26, 2026
That’s Grealis on play-by-play, screaming through Mayo’s final possession and point that sealed the championship win. Carney, who played for Mayo for a decade, is on color commentary, squeaking out as much coherent thought as he can manage in his moment of elation.
“Delirium! Delirium! It’s over! There’s five seconds to go!” Grealis cries after the point, which put Mayo’s lead at an insurmountable three points in the final seconds. “The famine is over! The famine is over! The curse be damned! Hit the nuclear button! Mayo have won the All-Ireland!”
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Again, it’s not exactly necessary to understand the full context of Mayo’s title drought to appreciate the moment thanks to Grealis’s call. If that didn’t do enough to get the point across, the crowd shots of basically every person in the stadium crying should do the trick. But in case you were curious: Mayo had not won a title in 75 years, and had lost in the final 11 times since 1989.
As Grealis noted, Mayo also carried a folkloric curse, similar to that of the Red Sox’s Curse of the Bambino. As the legend went, per Conor O’Neil of The Athletic, the previous Mayo squad that won a championship all the way back in 1951 was partying on their return from the title game and passed by a funeral procession. The players apparently didn’t show the proper amount of respect for the somber surroundings, choosing to carry on their celebrations, prompting a priest to curse the team. While players from that team have denied the story, it’s understandable that fans might get a bit superstitious when a title drought lasts more than seven decades.
Cheering from the press box may be frowned upon in some circles, but it is very much a part of the deal in many European sports. Calls like this make the practice well worth it.
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