History woven into the colours sported in battle

By Cian Murphy

There’s nothing like an All-Ireland final to bring the piseógs or superstitions to the surface and the coin toss for the jersey colours in the football final has played its part.

First blood went to Kerry, who won the toss and who will play in their famous green with a gold band jersey.

It’s a jersey which, like many others, has superstition and perceived good fortune woven into it.

But Mayo are not without hope. On a day when every possible advantage and help is sought, both Kerry and Mayo have hopeful allies in the colours they sport this Sunday.

Kerry top the football roll of honour with 39 titles – but the Kingdom’s first crown didn’t arrive until 1903, which was 16 years after the Championships began.

The 1903 final was a three-match saga with Kildare. At the start of the drama the Kerry team wore a green and red jersey. But for the final match in the ‘home’ final and the subsequent away final v London, Kerry wore a green and gold jersey and those historic colours in their first success inspired the county ever after.

The first ever All-Ireland senior title to be captured by Kerry was the 1891 hurling crown, won against Wexford at Drumcondra’s Clonturk Park. That Kerry team, comprised mainly of players from county champions Ballyduff, wore white vests with the words Kerry emblazoned on them. They also played in that final bare foot.

However, a white Kerry jersey in more modern times is more infamously associated with the shock 15-point collapse which befell Kerry against Meath in the 2001 All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park. It wasn’t seen again. Last year against Donegal, Kerry wore the Royal Blue as Munster champions to win the title, a colour they have had success wearing in the past as Munster champions.

Mayo have had several alternate jerseys. There is a blue and green trim and a black and red trim that have seen action in recent years, as well as a predominantly red with green trim shirt before that.

Their choice of a white jersey is not without significance as it was the jersey worn by Mayo when they last won the Sam Maguire, defeating Meath at Croke Park in 1951 – a victory that actually saw them retain the title. White jerseys also represent the Connacht Railway Cup history and have been worn by successful Galway teams in the past.

As most people know, after 50/51 Mayo didn’t reach a final again until 1989 and their subsequent run of losses in finals since then has, for some, been attributed to an alleged curse on the county team. The fact that this supposed curse is a new phenomenon and wasn’t in the public domain at the time of their 1989 appearance nor indeed in 1996 and 1997 seems to matter little.

Whatever the 1951 team is supposed to have done or not done – the fact is this Sunday will be the first time since 1951 that Mayo have worn white in an All-Ireland senior final. In deciding on what colour to wear, it is no surprise that Mayo have gone with a colour that carries some meaning rather than none at all.

Mayo are the only county team to have a distinctive green and red jersey – but it is a colour choice that can be found all over Ireland - from Birr to Ballymun Kickhams to St Brigid’s of Roscommon. Other clubs around the GAA sport a red sash or red trim of some sort – with green the dominant colour.

Mayo’s association with the green and red can be traced thanks in no small part to the great research of James Laffey, Editor of the Western People, and Ballintubber’s Seán Hallinan who has carried out extensive work on the topic and had pieces published in the Western People and in PJ Cunningham’s excellent GAA Grassroots collection.

In June 1923 Mayo appeared in the delayed 1921 decider against Dublin and wore a green jersey with white trim. By the 1930s Mayo teams were associated with their distinctive green above the red and thanks to James and Seán it can be traced back to the GAA’s earliest years.

A Colonel Blake sponsored a two-hour football match at Towerhill under the new GAA rules in December 1885 between Carnacon and Ballyglass which is credited with reintroducing football to Mayo. A later Connacht Telegraph report from January 1887 between Towerhill and Carnacon references both teams wearing variations of green and red. The placing of the green above the red echoes the sentiments of Dr Croke, who in his letter accepting the offer of becoming GAA Patron in 1884 wrote:

… if we continue travelling for the next score years in the same direction that we have been going in for some time past, condemning the sports that were practised by our forefathers, effacing our national features as though we were ashamed of them, and putting on, with England’s stuffs and broad-cloths, her ‘masher’ habits and such other effeminate follies as she may recommend, we had better at once, and publicly, abjure our Nationality, clap hands for joy at sight of the Union Jack, and place ‘England’s bloody red’ exultingly ‘above the green.’

Croke’s emotive language here is itself a quote from writer and Young Irelander Thomas Davis (1814-1845) who wrote a poem about placing “the green above the red” in reference to Irish nationalism triumphing over English rule. It’s last verse reading:

We'll trust ourselves, for God is good, and blesses those who lean

On their brave hearts and not upon an earthly king or queen;

And, freely as we lift our hands, we vow our blood to shed

Once and for evermore to raise the Green above the Red.

A profile of Balla native Dick Walsh in the Western People in 2015 details an extraordinary life played out during the War of Independence years. A 1916 veteran, footballer, a Mayo county board treasurer, and later a TD, he is recorded as being the man who at a county board meeting on selecting the county colours led the charge for the green above the red to be the Mayo way.

It wasn’t until 1913 that the GAA formally requested that counties register their colours with Ard Chomhairle at the start of the season. By that stage many counties were already settled. Given its nationalist affiliations it is no surprise that variations on green, green and white or forms of green, white and orange/gold are the dominant jersey colours in the GAA – equally popular is Blue which historically would have been a colour associated with power going back to our Celtic heritage.

As clubs represented counties in the early years of the Association, it was the norm for the county champions to have the honour of being the colours of the county team. In some cases these colours are still there, such as Tubberadora’s Gold Mile influence on Tipperary.

But Kerry, like Cork, Galway, Armagh and many others, are teams who settled on a jersey that had a winning feel to it when it came to settling on their first choice. Mayo football can trace their association with green and red to 1887.

Legend and legacy get stitched into the fabric. For Kerry and Mayo, the history to their colours will have an important new chapter written by 5pm on Sunday evening.