It’s been really fun to watch clips of this Sunday’s All-Ireland Gaelic football championship go viral across social media.
The more I watch of Irish sport, the more intoxicated I become by it.
They exist in this bubble of genuine fanaticism that doesn’t extend beyond their shores with vast swathes of their country FULLY bought in.
Had no idea it was going on and look at the scenes. Unreal. https://t.co/AgxIDMu23h
— HLTCO (@HLTCO) July 27, 2026
Don’t have a single clue of the Gaelic football rules but this is what sports are all about, a moment all those fans waited 75 years for
Also “The curse be damned!” is elite commentating https://t.co/kWJIOHf5aw
— jerry jones’s brain worm (@daydenjaniels5) July 28, 2026
It’s true. “The famine is over. The curse be damned! Hit the nuclear button!” is one of the all-time most unhinged, thrilling sports calls ever made.
I think it’s attracting so much attention because of what the social media user identified above. Ireland plays an outsized role in the English-speaking world, and in Europe, but Gaelic sports are obscure outside the Irish world. Here’s a stadium of 80,000 fans, and many of them are losing their marbles. Even though this is big-time television in Ireland, the athletes are all amateurs, playing for their home county. The players have jobs and vocations or are students. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is so successful that, at the senior county level, the teams have some of the accoutrements of professional athletes, like dedicated training staff and physiotherapists.
This was a particularly notable final because County Mayo hasn’t won since 1951, though the team has been to the final 13 times between then and now. There is an urban legend that the 1951 champions continued celebrating on their bus as they passed a funeral. For failing to pay their respects, a Catholic priest cursed the team, saying that Mayo would never win the All-Ireland so long as any of those players lived. The last living player, a substitute, died in 2023. One notable Mayo fan spent the morning of the All-Ireland climbing the mountain Croagh Patrick to leave flowers by the altar at the top, in reparation or in hope. Probably both.
The GAA was established in the late 1800s to preserve and promote distinctively Irish sports: Gaelic football and hurling most popularly, but also camogie and rounders. The GAA also, to a lesser degree, promotes the Irish language and dancing. It was part of a broader cultural and political nationalist movement of over a century ago. Until the 1970s, members of the association were forbidden from playing “foreign” sports: soccer, rugby, etc. I think the GAA is one of the greatest and most successful free civic associations on the planet. Although sometimes local governments can butt their way in, and corporations have found cracks in it, the GAA remains a creature of Irish civil society, uniting every town across the island. Children play for the local towns, and the best players filter up and represent their counties. I sometimes think we’d be lucky if distinctively American sports were organized this way. The madness and passion you see in the scenes from Croke Park in Dublin are really the love of home, and tradition mobilized into the frenzy of athletic competition.