Mayo end 75-year wait for All-Ireland football title

Mayo finally ended a 75-year wait for their fourth All-Ireland Senior Football title, beating Kerry to lift the championship for the first time since 1951. The result turned one county’s long drought into a moment of release that travelled well beyond Gaelic football, drawing attention from figures as far apart as former US president Joe Biden, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and members of Oasis.

The final against Kerry carried the weight of a long-running sporting memory. Mayo and Kerry had last met in an All-Ireland final in 2006, another reference point in a rivalry that has come to define Mayo’s near-misses. This time, Mayo closed it out and, in the words used around the team’s run, ended “75 years of hurt” by downing Kerry.

The reaction showed how deeply that history had travelled. Mayo fans called the victory “worth waiting for”, a plain but telling verdict after decades in which the county’s football story became one of the most familiar in the sport. The tributes from Biden, Carney and Oasis underlined that Mayo’s wait had become part of a wider Irish cultural memory, one that resonates not only with local supporters but with people who have carried Irish sporting loyalties across borders and generations.

Kerry boss Jack O'Connor summed up the final from the losing side, saying Mayo “were better than us”. O'Donoghue was named man of the match and TSG player of the season, recognition that matched the scale of the result and the pressure attached to it. For Mayo, the win was not just another championship title. It was the county’s fourth All-Ireland Senior Football crown, and the first since 1951, ending one of the most discussed waits in Gaelic football and giving Irish fans at home and abroad a rare, shared release.