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Belmullet face Garrymore in the Mayo senior football championship semi-final after beating Knockmore, as a new era sees emigration become a career choice rather than a necessity.
Belmullet will face Garrymore in the Mayo senior football championship semi-final on Sunday at James Stephens Park in Ballina at 1pm. The club from the Barony of Erris has never won the Paddy Moclair Cup, losing finals in 1945 and 1981.
Their progress this year comes down to availability. Not everyone is around Belmullet, but they are close enough to get there. They train in a variety of locations including GMIT for the student lads in Galway, Limerick and Claregalway. Eamon McAndrew, who scored the late goal against Knockmore a few weeks back, travels down from Cavan where he is based as a garda.
Belmullet Transport Costs For Members
Travelling is nothing to that community and to the club. Every year at their annual audit, the number opposite transport makes the eyes bulge. From U8s up to senior, they run mini-buses and buses. The nearest clubs are Crossmolina and Ballina.
Each is in excess of 100km for a round trip. And that is their derby. Ian McAndrew is a former club chairman, secretary and treasurer, twice each. He has headed up the lotto and done everything in between, but nowadays he says his taste for a good chat marks him out as something of an amateur club historian.
We are in a golden era in that we are in the semi-final, he says. It is against the odds this year, we were not given any chance in our group which was a very tough group; Knockmore and Breaffy were the warm favourites. As Jack Coyne reached the crescendo of his All-Ireland winning speech from the Hogan Stand in July, he spoke pure poetry and history entwined.
To every young boy and girl across Mayo and the diaspora across the world, never stop dreaming, stick your chest out, and be proud to be from Mayo. It was important that Coyne mentioned the diaspora. That he put them right up there in the moment of Mayo's greatest-ever triumph. A vale of tears had been shed for the departures, for the final leavings, for the poor souls that lost their way and the loneliness.
Belmullet Emigration History and Mayo
Now, it was another vale of tears. Some for those that passed on. But mostly of joy. If one of the common threads of Mayo is emigration, then you can say that the Barony of Erris bore more than most.
For many young Belmullet men of 20, there was an established path towards the potato fields of Lincolnshire, small towns like Caistor, or, for example, Grantham. The story goes that when Margaret Thatcher, née Roberts, beat Ted Heath in the 1975 Conservative Party leadership elections, the footage was beamed on a television screen in Belmullet. A local man glanced up at the screen and exclaimed, Jesus Christ, there's Maggie Roberts! One of ours went out with her!
The Mayo senior football championship has been like a Led Zeppelin concert this autumn. If there is a Bonzo Bonham character, it has been Belmullet. These punks from out west have been thumping the drums and raising Hell. Drawn in a group with Breaffy and Knockmore, they were meant to be relevant only in a scoring difference fashion for those that progressed.
But they went to Knockmore on a Friday night for the first round, beat them, and blew the doors off it all. With Ryan O'Donoghue bringing all his defiance of summer, with Seamus Howard let loose and under local management of former player Kieran Lavelle, they now face Garrymore in the county semi-final. A third loss in 2021 felt inevitable. Every time they looked like making headway, a fresh gust of emigration would rob the spine of a good team.
It is fair to say that Belmullet does not get the same tourism uptake as a Westport or Ballina. It is a question of isolation and remoteness.
Mayo Championship Celebration in Belmullet
However, the world got to see something incredible when the Mayo All-Ireland celebrations parked up for the Wednesday night after the final. The county board had chosen Belmullet and booked out the Broadhaven Bay Hotel for whoever to stay. On a beautiful evening, the club organised a constant park and ride service from the town out to their pitch in Tallaght townland, to avoid parking disasters.
I am 66 years here on the streets of Belmullet and I have never seen a street party like it in my life, says McAndrew. There were people up on roofs, up on chimney stacks. Thank God there were no accidents. Among the thousands there, he bumped into a couple from Ballindine.
The cup would be going much closer to them in the coming days, in Claremorris. But the couple knew the craic in Belmullet would be too good to miss. Half of Kilmeena came along, all of Jack Carney's connections. It was wild, free and uninhibited.
You had the team running up the main street of the town here at half four in the morning and a squad of people after them, says McAndrew. What stood out for him was the sight of so many former players enjoying themselves, such as their own Chris Barrett. The famous McDonnell's Pub, known as The Lobster Pot to the locals, was creaking under the weight of pressure.
They set up a bar in the yard, and manning it was more former players in Brendan Harrison and Seamus O'Shea. They were literally throwing out cans of Coors to anyone who would put up their hand and catch it. How the economics of it worked, I do not know, McAndrew chuckles. Sixteen years ago, Belmullet opened their new grounds.
Emigration Boosts Belmullet Club Finance
In the future they hope to add an all-weather pitch, subject to negotiations around the adjacent land. Emigration can now be a boost. Former clubman Pat Gorham owns MFE Formwork in Kuala Lumpur and is the club sponsor. Before that, it was Preform Construction in Hong Kong.
A few years ago they needed a dig out. And all the Belmullet businessmen in Dublin pulled them out. Emigration is now something people do for career advancement, rather than keeping body and soul together. A few years back, about six of the senior team left in one close season.
It is not the case right now. America was always huge. But even bigger for the Erris people was the agricultural work in Lincoln, says McAndrew. And now the club stands one win away from a first-ever county final appearance, carried by a community that has turned the pain of departure into the pride of belonging.
GAA Gaelic Football Mayo Paddy Moclair Way Out West Belmullet GAA Mayo Senior Football Championship Emigration In Mayo Barony Of Erris Paddy Moclair Cup
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