All-Ireland Final win has given Ryan O'Donoghue peace

By John Harrington

Winning the Sam Maguire Cup has finally given Ryan O’Donoghue some peace.

When the final whistle blew against Kerry, five years of self-recrimination were washed away.

For so long he’d been haunted by the memory of the penalty he missed in the 2021 All-Ireland Final against Tyrone, but now that ghost has been exorcised at last.

“There wasn't a week that went by where it didn't enter my head, and I'd get angry, I'd get upset,” admits O’Donoghue who was announced today as the PwC GAA/GPA Footballer of the month for July.

“Why did I do that? Why this? Why that?

“I would never have admitted that until Sunday, July 26 I would have never admitted that to anyone, bar (Mayo manager) Andy (Moran), actually.

“Since Sunday, the 26th of July, I don't care what happened in 2021 now.

“Obviously it would be nice to win in 2021, I don't want to dismiss it like that, but for me, yeah, I can now have peace with that.

“I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. And maybe if that didn't happen, and the Roscommon game didn't happen (this year), who knows, last Sunday might not have happened.

“You've just got to learn from your mistakes. And if you learn from them, then it was all worth it.”

O’Donoghue believes the lessons learned from that penalty miss against Tyrone five years ago ultimately stood him in good stead in this year’s All-Ireland Final.

“It was just the mindset around it,” he says. “I didn't deal with it after the penalty miss. The game for me was over. Looking back on it, I was still thinking of it and I don't know how many times I touched the ball after that.

“It’s just about learning how to deal with things going wrong. Fast forward to 2026, I dropped the first ball short into Shane Murphy's hands, and then the next one I put it over the bar for a two-pointer.

“So for dealing with things and working with sports psychologists, how to deal with mistakes in games quickly, and to go on to the next task, that's probably the most important thing I learned.”

He has countless golden memories from the celebrations that followed Mayo’s victory, but bringing the Sam Maguire Cup back to Belmullet on the Wednesday after the game was extra-special.

In a way, Belmullet has made O’Donoghue the sportsman he is. Its geographical isolation has meant excelling in sport has been a more difficult journey for him than it has been for many of his peers, but that adversity has made him stronger.

“I don't know if people believe me or not, but it is different, it is harder,” he says.

“From when I was 11 years of age, going up to Dublin and to the National Stadium, boxing, we were four and a half hours from there.

“Then the following year after that, when I made the Irish boxing team, me and Dad used to leave at half four in the morning to be in the National Stadium for training at nine o'clock.

“Some of the lads from Dublin were ten minutes over the road. Even going up and down the Castlebar Road, playing Kennedy Cup for soccer. Up and down the road, playing for Sligo Rovers.

“The sacrifices my parents made. Even going to training. I even live back further than Belmullet now. I'm an hour and 17 minutes from Castlebar and Aido (Aidan O’Shea) is three minutes over the road. I think it is more difficult, but that's what makes it all the more sweeter.

“When I played soccer for Ireland, I was kind of disrespected. I was laughed at when we were asked where we were from, and I said Belmullet. A fella goes, 'where's that?' And they all went laughing. That stuck with me for a long time. I think they know where Belmullet is now.

“We are a bit of a wild bunch below in Belmullet, but that's what makes it special. We're such a tight-knit community. It can be harder, but when things go wrong or things go really right, it's a really special place to be in Belmullet because everyone comes together.

“For me and my family and (my fiancé) Courtney, that was really special on Wednesday.”

Too many Gaelic games coaches try to force young players to specialise in one code rather than encourage them to play as many sports as they can.

Plenty of studies have been published about the benefits of multi-sport participation at a young age, and O’Donoghue’s very well-rounded skill-set as a footballer proves playing multiple sports is a help rather than a hindrance to excelling in one.

He has no doubt himself that he wouldn’t be an All-Ireland winner with Mayo now had he not also pushed himself to be the best he could be in boxing and soccer as well.

“Definitely,” says O’Donoghue. “Any sport that I do or want to do, I want to be good at it, to be honest with you.

“I'm not a fan of losing, I've done a lot of losing in my life, lost a lot of All-Ireland finals, boxing, soccer, school, Gaelic. So anything that I take up, I kind of want to get good at.

“Yeah, definitely, first of all, the boxing, like the training I done when I was 11, 12, 13 years old, getting up at six in the morning, running before school with my dad behind me in the Berlingo van, going to school, running home from school, going to eat my dinner, going for a nap, running back into training, training from seven to nine in Belmullet.

“The Broadhaven Bay Hotel used to have a sauna at the time. I'd run back out to the hotel and sleep in the sauna to lose some weight for as long as I can until Dad seen me lying there and pulled me out of it.

“I'd do that Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I was only 33 kilos at the time, so that stood with me forever. And then to the soccer, like just technical ability and seeing how other athletes do it, professional athletes do it, I took a lot from that as well.

“So every single sport that I've taken up definitely has helped me in my journey.”

The support that his father Michael and his mother Brenda has given him throughout his sporting life has been the biggest influence of all on O’Donoghue’s journey to winning the Sam Maguire Cup.

At times he felt like his father pushed him too hard, but he can see now with the benefit of hindsight he wouldn’t be where he is today without his parents.

“He did push me hard, yeah,” says O’Donoghue.

“He was my boxing coach as well, one of them, and he could see that I suppose I had a potential and he wanted to just make sure that I fulfilled it.

“And they just gave me every opportunity under the sun, whether it was Dad working two jobs in 2014 around that time to be able to give me the opportunity to go up and down to Sligo where we didn't get expenses and we actually had to pay a membership to play with them and then obviously diesel and that.

“He did push me hard. There was mornings I was getting up before school and I didn't really want to but we had to if I wanted to win the All-Ireland and I won one, the 33 kilos title, which was great. Dad pushed me a lot and so did my mother as well.

“I pushed back plenty of times, but it's all worth it now.”