He walks into the dining room where a portrait hangs on the wall. A story to that one, too. After Mayo’s second successive All-Ireland title in 1951, a Dublin-based artist asked full-back Paddy Prendergast to sit for a portrait. He was known as the prince of full-backs, but the plan to immortalise him at his peak hit some snags. The artist needed Paddy in Dublin, but Paddy liked to move around. Nailing him down for sittings was almost impossible. In the end, the artist compromised. If he could record some decent impressions of Paddy’s hands and face, Mongey’s body was similar enough in shape to pass for Prendergast’s.
When Prendergast’s painting was completed, the artist asked Mongey if he could paint his portrait. “I couldn’t afford it at the time, but the artist said he really wanted to paint me, so I could have it for the price of the frame.”
So Mongey sat, his right hand across his chest holding his left arm, evidence of a football injury. He gazes at the picture now. He has lived a thousand lives since. He was a barrister and registrar to the High and Supreme Courts. He was a footballer, journalist, author, tenor and occasional impresario. He wrote the Weird and Wonderful World of Wills and a book on probate law that sold over 20,000 copies. He sang with the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society for 10 years, occasionally for the pleasure of the residents of the Dundrum Criminal and Lunatic Asylum, (“I must say I could identify about five murderers”), and drove Mayo players from Dublin across the country for matches and training.
Fifty-five years have passed since the Sunday morning Mongey took a bus from Milltown to O’Connell Street and another to Croke Park before walking anonymously into the ground to win his second successive All-Ireland title. Mayo haven’t seen a day like it since, or a team.
Everything about them was different. The players were scattered all over Ireland. At a time when university was the preserve of the minority and jobs were scarce the team comprised five medical students, three lawyers, two priests, two Gardaí, one engineer and a fitter.
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They were dreamers, too. The Mayo team would eventually provide two players for the GAA’s Team of the Millennium, Sean Flanagan and Tom Langan. Mongey played at centrefield: cool, calm, cerebral, but above them all was Flanagan, a young politician. Their captain. Their rock.
“He gave you that feeling of confidence,” says Mongey. “Even when he was leading the team round Croke Park you’d see himself out in front, chest out. He was considered a very arrogant person by some people but when you saw him marching along, it was all saying ‘you have to beat us’.
“We used write letters to one another about various tactics when we were playing football. He was a great student of psychology. I remember him once saying ‘we’ll win next Sunday but a lot depends on you. When the opportunity presents itself you will will the ball over the bar’. There’s a lot in that, even for the current team.”
Mongey also remembers the chaos from whence a great team came, racing down the platform at Harcourt Street Station, watching the bright red light atop the Rosslare train disappear into the darkness. One August weekend in 1947, Mayo were invited to London to play Kildare but the route designed by Mayo county board would test the resilience of Tom Crean. The team set out from Castlebar by train for Westland Row. From there they hired taxis to Harcourt Street to catch the Rosslare train. The boat would sail for Fishguard where more taxis would take them to a train destined for London.
“I needn’t tell you what happened,” says Mongey.
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Having missed their train at Harcourt Street, a convoy of taxis was rounded up to take the players to Rosslare. By then interest in the game had started to wane. “When they were leaving Castlebar somebody thought the thing the people in England needed was some form of alcoholic nourishment, because the war effects were still to be found. One of the lads thoughtfully brought a case of booze. But after getting about nine miles out of Castlebar, they reasoned that it’d be wrong to give this stuff to the young fellows in London without trying it out first. So they started sampling.”
By the time they reached the Bray road, the players had sampled so much they were singing songs. Five years after playing his first game for Mayo at 16, Mongey was still among the youngest and landed in the front seat. The taxi driver had his foot to the floor, but the old jalopy was struggling to break 30mph.
“I turned to the lads and said ‘are ye not worried about catching this boat at all?’ One fella says ‘we’re not in the least bit worried and if you don’t mind me saying so, we’re going every bit as fast as you are’.”
At Rosslare, the Kildare players had asked the captain to hold the boat and Mayo made it. The game was a disaster. After the game Sean Flanagan swore never to play for Mayo again. Mongey’s brother Finn was Mayo county board secretary, and through a series of letters that winter asked Mongey to convince Flanagan to return. There was a challenge game against Kerry in Tralee coming up. Mongey met him, and eventually persuaded him to travel down with the four other Dublin boys.
When they got to Tralee 14 players had turned up. One of the drivers, John Mulvey, togged out at corner-forward while Finn Mongey, the board’s only representative, was named substitute. Kerry had just lost the All-Ireland final to Cavan, but only scraped a draw with a point in the last minute.
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“We decided to write a letter to the county board signed by the players from Dublin,” says Mongey. “We hadn’t even won a provincial title for nine years. We set out what we thought was wrong with the administration. We set out how we wanted them to change their tune. If they did we guaranteed them success in 1948, which was a big mouthful.”
The county board supported them. Mongey and Flanagan suggested some footballers that could be brought in and started to think tactics. The team was packed with good players and deep thinkers. Ideas about the room when they came together. In 1948 they drew with Galway in the Connacht final. The replay became an epic.
With the game in injury-time, Mayo trailed by a point. As Padraic Carney stood over a free to level the game wing-back Peter Quinn, then training for the priesthood, stood with his head bowed and his hands joined in prayer. The ball bounced off the crossbar and over. In extra-time, Mayo won by three points. Their pact with the county board had been honoured. The following month, Mayo met Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final.
“A member of the Mayo reception committee said to me ‘we’re going to give ye a great reception because we don’t think ye’ll be up for the final. I said ‘have a care now. Just watch that’. Flanagan again set the whole theme for the day when he played some of the best football I’ve seen in Croke Park to get the team to settle. Then, we just took over.”
Kerry were crushed by 10 points. Mayo lost the final to Cavan by a point, but having failed to score in the first half and trailing by 11 points, there was satisfaction in their comeback. “There was a spirit generated I was delighted to see again with the Mayo team the last day against Dublin. They kept playing, kept their cool. We played in three All-Ireland finals and were led in each one of them, but we came back.
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“In the 1950 final we were down again against Louth but about 10 minutes from the end Mick Flanagan got the goal that won the match for us. The most dramatic of all was when we played Kerry (in the 1951 semi-final). They were leading by four points in injury-time and we scored 1-1 to level the match. Then we beat them in the replay. It was a matter of never giving up.”
In the 1950 final against Louth, Mayo were reborn. Fourteen years had passed since their last title, Mongey played the game of his life and Mayo won by two points. They returned home as immortals.
“You get an idea in Croke Park when you’ve won, but then you get down to the county, and you have people coming out with tears in their eyes. I remember the train coming into Castlebar and the flags. There were foghorns and explosives along the line. It was terribly important for a county like Mayo which was going through a difficult economic period to find they were on top of the world at something.”
The team thundered into 1951. In Mongey’s mind, winning an All-Ireland could be achieved through luck or by a decent team. Winning two would elevate them above the rest. This was their shot at greatness.
“I never played for Mayo without expecting to win. As far as I was concerned my own personal preparation was so thorough, in a strange kind of way coming up to a match I’d begun to feel sorry for the fella I was going to mark. Obviously you’re not always going to beat this guy, but we had this belief in ourselves which was passed from one to another.”
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As they assembled in the dressing-room before the final against Meath Flanagan delivered a stirring speech, which was suddenly followed by a knock on the door. A cameraman stood outside. Normally the company filming the final brought two cameras to capture both teams leaving their dressing-room, but they had only one. In a few minutes Meath would file through Mayo’s dressing-room, followed by Mayo.
“Sean Flanagan stands up on the table and says ‘no Mayo man is to speak to or acknowledge the presence of any Meath man passing through this dressing-room’. We all felt a bit eerie about it. The Meath lads came in smiling to total silence.”
The game was a battle. Every time Meath threatened to slip beyond reach, Mayo reeled them in. Before half-time, full-forward Tom Langan rounded Meath full-back Paddy O’Brien and screwed a shot to the net. Mongey remembered him in Barry’s Hotel that morning, practising the sidestep that took him past O’Brien and kicking a rolled up towel into an imaginary net. Plus, nobody could make a ball swerve and spin like Langan. His shot was unrehearsable genius. In the end Mayo won by five points. Like everything else, what they dreamed of and planned for had become reality.
After 1951 the team began to split. While other counties celebrated their All-Ireland winners, Mayo county board sent the winners’ medals by registered post. With no work at home, players started to leave. Six emigrated. A study carried out by Mongey in 1965 revealed that over 10,000 people had left Mayo since 1955, the equivalent of the combined populations of Castlebar, Ballina, Ballyhaunis, Claremorris and Ballinrobe. Even the dreamers did not escape.
By 1955 Mongey was training the Dublin-based players and his name was added to the substitutes list. Mayo held Dublin to a draw and Kevin Heffernan scoreless, but lost the replay. Mongey retired, and suddenly Mayo were gone.
“We thought, in our innocence, that we’d leave a benchmark that would carry on through Mayo for years. It’s almost heartbreaking that they haven’t won a senior All-Ireland since 1951. It’s been the greatest regret.”
The adventures continued. For years he drove the Mayo players west for training and matches, organised a pair of hugely successful dances after a mishap with the car and briefly considered a career as an impresario. A reporter once called to him in the Four Courts for a few quotes before a match and Mongey ended the day with a Sunday Press newspaper column that lasted 25 years. Meanwhile, the iron belief his generation had hoped to bequeath to other Mayo teams slowly melted down.
“I’ve had a triple bypass, two angioplasties, two stents, a new hip and all my veins re-aligned. I’ve got a defibrillator and a pacemaker and I’ve had asthma for about 25 years. I keep hoping that one of the reasons I’ve taken such precautions to stay alive is I’m waiting for Mayo to win the next All-Ireland.”
He saw a little of his own team in them against Dublin. Same calm. Same belief. Next Sunday he will be in Croke Park, still waiting and hoping. Two candles flickering, refusing to be quenched.