DUBLIN — The All-Ireland Senior Football final, the Irish Super Bowl, takes place Sunday, July 26, at Dublin's historic Croke Park. This year’s game mismatches Kerry and Mayo, Gaelic football’s biggest winners against the most notorious losers in the ancient sport’s history. 

Kerry fans expected their team to be here. They always do. They’re the defending champs, and will be playing for their 40th title. No other county comes close. Legendary manager Paidi Ó Sé once called his team’s supporters "the roughest type of fucking animals you could ever deal with,” because of their Sam-Maguire-Cup-or-bust standard. The star-laden squad relies most on David Clifford, a three-time player of the year and the only player of his generation that comes up in GOAT conversations.

All of Ireland expects Mayo to lose.

And everybody outside of County Kerry will be pulling for Mayo.

Mayo was already known for being particularly devastated by the Great Famine when the football-crazy county gained renown for a hunger of another sort. “Our county has been starved,” Mayo’s first-year manager, Andy Moran, said at a press conference after his team’s destruction of Louth in the semifinals. He was talking about football titles. Mayo come into the weekend riding a 75-year losing skein in All-Ireland finals. Since 1989 they’ve played in 11 finals, plus two replays, and won zero. While Kerry fans conjure fight songs like “Five in a Row,” Mayo supporters croon, “To Win Just Once,” what has to be the most desperate and pathetic fight song extant. We’re talkin’ ”We Are The Champions”in Oppositeland. The chorus:

To win just once

To win just once

To win just once

That would be enough 

It’s not just the county squad’s record in the big games (0-13!) that stands out, but the manner in which the awful streak has been kept alive. Mayo fans will see your “Wide Right" with the Bounce from Hell from the 1996 final, and raise with the double own-goals game in 2016. Around the turn of the century, as Finals losses piled up at an accelerated rate, the Mayo faithful began believing the gods were against them. The Irish love a good myth. St. Patrick’s most saintly act was ridding the island of snakes; thanks to science, we now know Ireland never had snakes. But nobody’s let reality stop the green beer from flowing every March. In that same vein, the Curse of County Mayo took shape.

The legend holds that after the 1951 All-Ireland win, on their way home from Dublin a noisy gaggle of celebrating Mayo players disrupted a funeral while driving through the town of Foxford in a bus or on the back of a truck. A priest was so disturbed by the ungodly display that he decreed the county will never win another title for as long as anybody on the disrespectful championship team was alive.

Whether the curse was fictional or not, the losing was real. By 2021, Mayo remained titleless, and word got around that Dr. Mick Loftus, from the village of Crossmolina, was the only surviving member of the 1951 Mayo team. He pooh-poohed the curse to anybody who asked. “'I didn't even see a funeral,” he said after becoming the Last Man Standing. I interviewed his granddaughter, Rosanna Loftus, in March 2023, while Dr. Loftus was in declining health. She recounted an incident in which her family had been heckled in an airport by Mayo fans who let it be known they wished Dr. Loftus dead, just so the curse could be lifted. A month after she told me that story, Dr. Loftus died at 93 years old.

The county team was hit with turnover in the management and player ranks last season, and no supporters expected them to be any good this year, let alone still be alive in the final weekend. But fate or the football gods or whoever pulls the strings on these things delivered Mayo Kobe McDonald. He’s a Can’t-Miss Kid from Crossmolina, same hometown as Dr. Loftus. Kobe (nobody in Ireland calls him “McDonald”) also learned the game playing for the Deel Rovers, the same local parish team that produced the departed doctor. It’s hard to remember a player having such an impact so fast. Immediately upon debuting in a February win over Monaghan, the 18-year-old became the face and feet of the team. His long-range boots, in which he leans ridiculously far back while running full speed to blast shots goalward from beyond the two-point arc—an innovation only added last year by the Gaelic Athletic Association–were the most thrilling thing in football this season. Kobe’s dink to fellow forward Ryan O'Donoghue for an early goal in the semis got the romp started for Mayo. Sadly for all Mayo supporters, Kobe's first season with the senior squad, transcendent as it’s been, could be his last: He’s signed a contract with St Kilda in Melbourne to play Aussie Rules Football. He could be finished with Gaelic after this weekend, win or lose.

Mayo’s sad history in the big game was laid bare at the annual Legends Lunch put on by the Gaelic Players Association at Croke Park. This year’s event honored those All-Ireland winning teams celebrating anniversaries in 10-year increments. That meant Tom Parsons, a former Mayo player now serving as CEO of the GPA, got to laud Meath’s 1996 team, which beat Mayo by a single point, 2-9 to 1-11, in a replay. Also, Kerry’s 2006 squad, which handed Mayo the severest of all its championship whuppings. And Dublin’s 2016 team, the other team to beat Mayo by a point, 1-15 to 1-14, in a replay.

“I was hoping it wasn’t a curse of the sixes!” said Parsons, a member of the losing 2016 side.

“Does anyone here think Mayo are going to win the All-Ireland final?” Moran asked at a recent press conference. Nobody raised their hand. “Thank you!” said the Mayo manager, who as a player for the county was part of teams that went 0-6 in All-Ireland finals.

At the luncheon, I ask a nearby legend, former Dublin great Paddy Andrews, if Mayo can win. Hard “Nah!”

“Mayo’s time will come,” said Andrews, who retired after winning seven All-Irelands as a player, the last over Mayo in the 2021 final, and is now a leading Gaelic pundit on Irish television, “but it’s going to be a while. It’s just a matter of quality. Kerry have the quality. Not going to happen this weekend.”

One of the many white-haired football obsessives in the dining hall, hearing Andrews giving his level-headed pro-Kerry take to this foreign reporter, interrupts the decorated veteran to voice disagreement.

“It’s the 75th anniversary [of Mayo’s last win],” says this particular obsessive, who identifies himself as Gabriel Bradley of Dublin. “And 75 has a nice ring to it.” Bradley also points out that Mayo, because of a color clash with Kerry's kit, had to discard its traditional green and red uniforms, and will instead favor of an all-white ensemble. “Last time they wore white?” Bradley says. “That was 1951! Last time they won! They can do it!”

Andrews can’t take that take. “Ah, you’re looking for leprechauns!” he said, walking away.

“So?” asks Bradley.

Point taken. Mayo for Sam!