Ciarán Murphy: The alarm clock is sadly already set to end the Mayo dream of Kobe McDonald

I had the privilege recently of hosting an event celebrating the three adult county titles my club, Milltown in Co Galway, have won in our history – the county junior title in 1961 which won us promotion to the senior ranks, and our two senior titles in 1971 and 1981.

The county junior final was actually played on New Year’s Day, 1962, and our victory was the first GAA result ever announced on the new State television station, Raidió Teilifís Éireann, which had launched the previous night. They’ll never take that one away from us.

We were honoured to have quite a few players from that team present, and in talking to two of them in the run-up to the event, a strange kind of symmetry presented itself. One, James Saunderson, was a cadet in the army at the time, and the other Fr Séamus Flannery, was in All Hallows studying for the priesthood. The timing of that county final was the only thing that allowed them to play. They were both home for Christmas, otherwise they would have missed out.

James would go on to serve with distinction for his entire life and retire as a brigadier general and one of the highest-ranked people in the Irish Defence Forces, but that county final was the last game he ever played for Milltown. He was a magnificent footballer, an All-Ireland winner with St Jarlath’s and with the Galway minor team. But that was that.

Likewise Fr Séamus would soon have to give up football for the priesthood. That night I met his brother, Fr John D Flannery, and he told me the best footballer he’d ever seen was Fr Peter Tierney, an older brother of the immortal Noel of the Galway three-in-a-row team of the 1960s. Fr Peter played with Dunmore before Milltown GAA club was formed, and he would have more than held his own against “The Master”, Tuam’s Seán Purcell, in county finals in the 1950s. But of course, in the Ireland of the time, the priesthood took precedence over football.

They were just a few of the footballers that we inevitably had to say goodbye to in the 1950s and 1960s. Many more were on a boat from Dún Laoghaire before they were 18. That was how it was in the country at that time, most acutely in the west. “You can’t eat scenery” is a common refrain in Galway and Mayo, and football wasn’t going to put food on the table either.

Maybe it’s the freshness of those conversations in my memory that has me feeling wistful about Kobe McDonald. There’s a kind of pre-grieving that’s been going on since his coruscating 18-minute debut for Mayo against Monaghan on Sunday.

You’ve probably already seen it. But five touches for 1-4, and a beautiful assist for another point. He is a generational talent, and he’s a star with it. The goal was glorious self-expression (where had we seen that raised single-finger celebration before?), and it was genuinely joyous, regardless of your county allegiances. And soon, he’ll be gone.

Keith Duggan of this parish wrote the greatest GAA book of them all, House Of Pain – Through the Rooms of Mayo Football, and through it runs a strain of pathos a mile wide. From the loss to a stellar medical career of the Flying Doctor, Pádraig Carney, in the 1950s, to John O’Mahony’s lonely phone calls at 5am in the morning to a flat in Chicago trying to convince Ger Geraghty (“the best Mayo player I ever played with” according to Kevin McStay) to come home for the 1989 season, all the way through to Pearse Hanley and latterly Oisín Mullin in Australia, Mayo are used to this feeling.

What is different about Kobe is that Sunday was both his debut and the start of the long goodbye. Mayo fans didn’t even get one season of the beautiful, useless feeling you get when watching a great one emerge – when the future is unwritten, and there are no limits on where you think this guy can take you. The alarm clock is already set to end the dream of Kobe.

There will be plenty who will try to forestall that, of course. The clamour to find some way to entice him to stay home will only increase after Sunday. He has made his mind up. But maybe this teenager’s mind can be changed? He will play championship for Mayo this year, and Andy Moran has suggested that Crossmolina may even have him for the club championship this year as well, before his Australian adventure begins.

In his bones, his father Ciarán will have known that the decision to sign a contract and go to St Kilda would only be seen as an opening gambit to the Mayo public. He knows better than anyone how good the young man is, and how much pressure is inevitably going to come on.

What’s important to remember is that not every day in the green and red will feel as good as last Sunday. No one is better placed to tell him about the ups and downs of being a Mayo footballer than his dad. He was not a man who was happy going with the herd, and the kid’s lucky if he has inherited that from him. What will be, will be. For now, best for all of us to just to enjoy the ride.

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