All you read is love: The books about Mayo’s All-Ireland win that just had to be written

Never has one sporting moment inspired so much literary output so quicklyMayo's manager Andy Moran celebrates with fans after the All-Ireland final. It's unclear whether Mayo's celebrations will ever end. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho “It’s a release,” says Liam Horan. He not talking about his upcoming book on Mayo football, or at least not specifically about it just in this instance. No, he’s talking about the whole thing, the essential mist of star-crossed magic that has fallen over the county since July 26th. And the fact there is no sign of it lifting any time soon.“I was on community radio in Castlebar the other day,” Horan continues, “and they quoted a local councillor who said it was like an emotional time bomb. It definitely was. That release was felt in all sorts of ways in the conversations you were having in pubs and the people you were meeting at homecomings. The liberation of it. I mean, it’s language you wouldn’t necessarily associate with sport.”With the liberation comes the literature. Horan’s book, I Can See It Still, is one of at least six to hit the shelves in the coming weeks that will use Mayo’s All-Ireland as the centrepiece. It’s one of two, in fact, to steal a line from The Saw Doctors for its title – Forever More is Kieran Shannon’s account of the triumph, told through the voices of the players and management themselves.For the record, the full list also includes Keeping The Faith by John Gunnigan of the Mayo Football Talk website, as well as Never Stop Dreaming by long-standing Mayo football chroniclers Ed McGreal and Anthony Hennigan, with photos by Michael McLaughlin. Others include Peter Costello’s book of poetry Mayo’s Quest For Sam and Seamus Murphy’s The Year The Curse Was Broken. You could even, at a push, include the 2026 edition of Season Of Sundays, which is sure to be heavy on the Mayo as well. READ MORESo, what gives? Mayo aren’t the first county to win an All-Ireland after a long wait, nor the first sports team to make a breakthrough that captures the wider imagination. But nothing – not Munster rugby, not Grand Slams, not the Dubs or Limerick nor any of the rest of it – nothing matches this for volume and speed. Never has so much been turned around so quickly in the glorification of one sporting moment.“It is a unique story,” says Gunnigan, who has run the Mayo GAA Blog since 2007 and first started writing his book sometime in 2013. “Unique globally, even. I was on Australian radio talking about it, on Canadian radio. We had an American guy on the Mayo Football Talk podcast, the BBC were all over it. Mayo's Jordan Flynn and Kobe McDonald were in no rush to leave Croke Park after beating Kerry in the All-Ireland final in July. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho “I don’t think it’s because we came from nowhere after 75 years. It’s because we built up such resilience and had all those failures. The redemption is what’s chimed with so many people. And so with the books, it’s not that it’s one type of story. We all have our own version of it.”All the books have different origin stories. Shannon did 30 hours of interviews with the players in the months after the final, sitting them down in between their public appearances to get them to tell it from the inside. McGreal and Hennigan were there every step of the way as reporters and so they told the tale of the season from the first FBD game in Charlestown. There had always been a loose arrangement with Mayo Books that if the mad thing happened and Mayo finally got it done, they’d almost certainly do something. And then the hooter went and they had to start thinking about it.“I got a call from David Brennan, the MD of Mayo Books on the Monday after the final,” McGreal says. “I saw his number flash up and I was filing for the Western People at the time so I was up to 90. I answered and said, ‘David, I know why you’re calling but I just haven’t the head space to talk about it right now!’”[ The History of the World in 12 Soccer Matches: Players become spectators of the social upheavals surrounding themOpens in new window ]By the time they did, it was the following Monday and the clock started ticking. When it comes to turning these things around, a final on the last Sunday of July is obviously better than one on the last Sunday in September. But it’s still a headlong dash. You’ve still got to sit your ass in the chair and get it done, even as the great world spins around you and the whole of Mayo is throbbing. Manager Andy Moran and captain Jack Coyne lift the Sam Maguire Cup on behalf of all of Mayo. Photograph: Tom Maher/Inpho “This has been such a collective thing in Mayo,” McGreal says. “I think maybe we didn’t realise how much of an impact all the losses had on us until the visceral relief and release of emotion after the final. You’re still kind of caught up in it. “I had to listen back to Jack Coyne’s speech one morning because we run it in full in the book and wanted to get it word-perfect. But sure I was listening to it and it took me about 20 minutes because I started crying again. This is two months later! It’s basically the book you always wanted to write. We’ll never experience anything like it again.”When it comes right down to it, that’s what the glut of Mayo books is about. You can call them cash-ins if you like but anyone who knows the sportsbook industry will tell you not even a Mayo All-Ireland is going to make any of the authors rich – one miracle a year, etc. No, it’s more that these are books that the people involved can’t not write. Mayo's Fenton Kelly, perhaps realising the enormity of what he and Mayo achieved by beating Kerry. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho “The Sunday after the All-Ireland final, I went for coffee with a friend of mine in a bar, in Seamus O’Malley’s ancestral home in Ballinrobe,” says Horan. “It was the middle of the day and a stag party arrived in, a crowd of lads from Crossmolina. They were heading for Galway but they stopped off for a pint and the stag himself was a beautiful singer. [ Hurling’s professional age: Novel shines light on a forgotten Ireland 216 years removedOpens in new window ]“So they had a pint and they sang and next thing there was a crowd gathered around them and the bus was delayed but nobody cared. They were just singing songs. This was seven days after the final and that was the mood basically the length and breadth of Mayo. “That was going on everywhere. And I think you could say that the literary output has come from there. It’s people being in the middle of it and going, ‘Jesus, I just have to get this off my chest.’”IN THIS SECTION