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Dublin , Ireland - 26 July 2026; Mayo players and supporters celebrate after the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship final match between Kerry and Mayo at Croke Park in Dublin.
Curses, drought, and famine. This story has it all. County Mayo snapped a 75-year championship drought in Gaelic Football and broke one of the longest-running curses in professional sports in the process.
Mayo had lost ELEVEN times in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship finals before beating Kerry to win the Sam Maguire Cup for the club’s first championship since 1951 when the curse began.
Gaelic Football Team Mayo Breaks Curse, Wins First Championship In 75 Years, Announcers Go Wild
As Mayo held on to win the ‘ship, the announcers lost their minds and the video below is truly electric. In fact, the video is what drew me to the story to begin with but the curse and its backstory is what really captured my attention.
In 1951, after Mayo won the 1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, the team was celebrating on an open-top bus. Legend goes they failed to quiet down and show respect for a funeral procession in the village of Foxford and the priest presiding over the funeral placed a curse on the County Mayo Gaelic football team. It was believed the curse would not be lifted until ever player on that bus was no longer alive. There was no clear evidence of the incident but lore is lore.
Well, that was 75 years ago and the curse has now been lifted. Here is the moment Mayo beat Kerry to win the club’s first championship in 75 years.
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The announcers lose it. He’s screaming “the famine is over, the famine is over. The curse be damned. Hit the nuclear button.” At one point their screams just meld into one voice. Somehow they manage to keep it semi-clean with no hard profanity. Because it wasn’t abundantly clear the announcers even knew what they were saying at that time but “the famine is over” is a BOLD choice of words when talking about Gaelic Football.
Trophy lifted, curse is over:
To all the Mayo fans out there, they can rest easy now knowing one of the longest-running curses in sports is over.