Seventy-five years. Thirteen lost finals. Two replay heartbreaks. A Wikipedia page so grim that contributors from South America felt compelled to tidy it up. And now, finally, none of it matters.
Mayo are All-Ireland Senior Football champions for the first time since 1951, beating Kerry 1-20 to 1-17 in a final at Croke Park that started as a nightmare and ended as a coronation. The victory delivers the county’s fourth Sam Maguire and closes the longest gap between titles in the championship’s modern history.
Kerry came in chasing their 40th All-Ireland and a second straight crown under Jack O’Connor, in his ninth final on the sideline. For the opening 15 minutes, they played like a team that had never lost to Mayo on this stage — because they hadn’t, in four previous final meetings across 1932, 1997, 2004, and 2006. David Clifford, the championship’s leading scorer with 6-44 (62 points) coming in, blasted a goal past Jack Livingstone after sneaking behind Donnacha McHugh and rounding the keeper. Kerry led 1-6 to 0-3. The familiar script was writing itself.
Then Mayo ripped it up. Ryan O’Donoghue — second to Clifford in the scoring race all year at 2-51 (57) — struck a superb two-pointer. Tommy Conroy came off the bench for Paul Towey and changed the texture of the game. Darragh Beirne and O’Donoghue slotted frees, Sam Callinan chimed in, and suddenly a seven-point deficit was one. Kerry led 1-8 to 0-10 at the break, but the momentum had turned completely.
The third quarter belonged to Mayo and to Beirne. His goal helped the Westerners build a five-point lead, and for the first time in this fixture’s long and lopsided history, Kerry were the team chasing. They got within two late, pressing for a leveller that never came. Conroy’s score in the dying moments sealed it — 1-20 to 1-17 — and the emotion poured out of a squad and a support base that has carried more grief than any county in the game.
For manager Andy Moran, it was an improbable first-season triumph. Moran lost six All-Ireland finals during his Mayo playing days, including the 2004 and 2006 defeats to this same Kerry outfit. He took the job and outlasted 31 of 33 teams in the 2026 championship. His side kept three clean sheets in the campaign — against Tyrone, Cork, and Louth — and conceded just seven goals across seven matches, the stingiest record of any contender.
The win also sends 18-year-old Kobe McDonald off to Australia as an All-Ireland champion. McDonald, who lined out alongside Jordan Flynn — one of two sets of brothers in the final alongside Kerry’s David and Paudie Clifford — departs with a medal that eluded Mayo greats across three generations.
Thirteen counties had won the All-Ireland since Mayo’s last title in 1951. Kerry alone had beaten them in four finals. The historical head-to-head coming in stood at 20-6 in Kerry’s favor across 30 championship meetings. None of that survived the afternoon.
Mayo lit the candle one more time. This time, it didn’t go out.
Sources
- RTÉ — All-Ireland SFC final: Mayo 1-20 Kerry 1-17
- Yahoo Sports — Mayo beat Kerry in thriller to end 75-year All-Ireland wait
- Irish Times — All-Ireland football final by the numbers
- RTÉ — Mayo continue to light the candle despite final horrors
- Irish News — Mayo vs Kerry: Tale of the tape