Galway footballing legend loved his jousts with Mayo

Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon

One of the great rivalries of Gaelic football will be renewed in Pearse Stadium on Sunday as Galway and Mayo go head to head in the Connacht senior football championship semi-final. For former Galway star Sean Óg de Paor, the mere mention of it – the 85th championship tie between them – stirs the emotions.

Indeed, when Talking Sport catches up with the An Cheathrú Rua man, who won the Sam Maguire Cup with the Tribesmen in 1998 and 2001, it is with relish he declares that the tickets have already been purchased. “I bought them yesterday on the internet and I am really looking forward to it,” he smiles.

For de Paor, his relationship with the neighbours is a special one, having made his debut against Mayo in the early 1990s and played his last minutes of championship football against them in 2005. “In 1990, I had actually sat on the bench but I never played when Mayo came to Tuam and we beat them.”

At any rate, by 1991, he had nailed down a starting place – not as the two-time All-Star wing-back he would later become but as a sniping corner forward. “We would have had lots of battles down through the years but that day they absolutely hockeyed us.

“When you are just starting out, you are a slip of a lad and I remember going in and there was a guy called Denis Kearney waiting for me. He has since been a selector for Mayo. He was corner back and he let me know he was there. Welcome to senior championship. I would have been 20.”

While Mayo enjoyed the upper hand over Galway in the early 1990s, the Tribesmen finally set the record straight when defeating their rivals 0-17 to 1-7 in the Connacht decider in 1995. That victory for Bosco McDermott’s charges ended an eight-year provincial famine for Galway.

“After coming through those beatings, ’95 was very sweet,” recalls de Paor. “It was my first win playing against Mayo and I would say there was about 10 minutes left in the match and you knew you were going to win it. That would be a luxury when you are playing against Mayo. Val Daly was super that day.

“Then in ’96, we played them in Castlebar and there was four points in it but we could easily have won that match. We were attacking with just minutes to go – we were a point down – and we hit the post. If we got that, the momentum would have been with us. Instead, they went down the field and scored a goal. Four points up, game over. This was the Mayo team that should have won the All-Ireland in ‘96.”

The following year, Mayo took Galway to task again but de Paor says with the likes of Michael Donnellan, Padraic Joyce and the Meehans – Tomas and Declan – arriving on the scene, there were encouraging signs. “The championship back then was ruthless. When you were beaten, you were gone.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.