As a proud Donegal man and Gaelic Football fanatic, leaving Croke Park on Sunday evening was a painful endeavour. Unless you’re from Kerry or Dublin, genuine All-Ireland winning chances don’t come around too often, and when it’s a fortunate goal and a few minor breaks that separate the teams at the end of the 70 minutes, those defeats are hard to take.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s no sour grapes. Galway are a hard team to dislike and their fanbase are no different, but though they probably just shaded the encounter, the game could’ve gone either way and that’s where the pain comes in.
I know there are tons of football supporters who’d give their right arms for a run to the All-Ireland semis and to be within a kick of the GAA’s showpiece event, so I’m not looking for sympathy here, but even Spain’s late winner in the Euros Final was scant consolation.
My better half, who has zero interest in Gaelic Football and has never pretended different, had travelled with me and headed for the shopping centres on the city outskirts while I headed for the theatre of dreams in Drumcondra. On the drive home, I was largely silent, running through various ‘what ifs’ in my head, but as we crossed the Shannon, my thoughts began to stray from Croke Park, drifting across the Atlantic and settling at Pinehurst. Because misery loves company, I suppose.
Both Donegal’s loss to Galway and Rory McIlroy’s defeat at the hands of Bryson DeChambeau were gut punches delivered with similar force. The big difference is that Rory gets a chance to banish those ghosts this week at Royal Troon, Donegal’s wait for another opportunity to reach an All-Ireland final is a full year away at the earliest, and as they’ve only been in three semi-finals this century, there are no guarantees that the wait won’t be considerably longer.
We’re on the 38th leg of 38 in the 10 years since Rory last won a major championship, but none of 37 previous – even the tearful near miss at St. Andrews in 2022 – will have cut quite as deeply as the loss at Pinehurst.
They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In the hours and days following McIlroy’s collapse, I covered the first four quite quickly. Acceptance, however, was hard to come by. What was I to accept? That he’d lost? The manner of the loss? That he’d played so well for 68 of the 72 holes? That he’d never win another major championship? Or that he’d shown how close he was and that it was only a matter of time before win Major win number five came along?
In a way, that All-Ireland semi-final loss at Croke Park finally brought that fifth and final stage of grief home. Acceptance for Pinehurst has finally come, and I’m ready to get back on the rollercoaster.
Call me a glutton for punishment, but I’m starting to believe again. Less than a month after declaring that McIlroy would never win another major title – probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve found myself that side of the fence – I’m back to thinking that Rory is among the favourites to win at Royal Troon.
Sure, to do so he’ll have to beat 155 of the best golfers in the world, he’ll need Lady Luck to smile upon him on occasion, and he’ll need to hold his nerve coming down the stretch with all manner of goblins and gremlins attempting to pierce their way into his psyche, but there aren’t many better at getting back on the horse.
Donegal rebounded from a two-point semi-final loss to Dublin in 2011 and won the All-Ireland in 2012, but I’d settle for Rory McIlroy providing the rags to riches comeback tale this time.
But then again, don’t they say heartbreak comes in threes?