Moycullen Mardi Gras

Date Published: 21-Feb-2008

CHILDREN danced in the streets, grown men wept openly and those who never frequent the local bars were ‘pubbing’ on Sunday night.

It wasn’t Rio but the atmosphere wasn’t far from it in Moycullen on Sunday night as over 2,000 people took to the streets to welcome home the victorious Intermediate football team who had just secured the club’s second national title in its 95 year history — the other was Comórtas Péile na Gaeltachta some years ago.

For a village that is on the up and up development wise, this win is a huge bonus for community confidence. Young and old, locals and ‘blow-ins’ joined in the celebrations on Sunday in front of the stage — promptly erected that day by the O’Toole family who run a hauliers company, and Pete Fox who provided the sound equipment — at An Fuarán.

In fact, just a decade ago, there probably wasn’t a public plaza like An Fuarán where such an event could be staged. Half the community travelled by bus and train earlier that day to Croke Park to support this promising team. And even after a long day’s travelling, they still waited in the street for the team’s homecoming.

Bonfires blazed all along the main road from Galway City to greet the team, which had chartered their own train for the event, and indeed many other local clubs from all over Connemara had wished them well with roadsigns the previous week.

The team are on a roll, not having lost any of the last 27 games they have played but their manager, Seán O’Dea, was philisophical about a defeat in the future saying that they would learn from it but it wouldn’t faze them.

On Sunday however they were all on top of the world – and as All-Ireland champions, why wouldn’t they?

Seán O’Dea gave a bi-lingual speech that would put any US TV evangalist or motivational speaker to shame. The crowd went wild as he spoke about a win like that bringing out the child in everyone.

“On an occasion like this, we ……………………