Mayo and Roscommon served up arguably the best Croke Park atmosphere of the Championship so far in their exhaustive, helter-skelter draw in yesterday's All-Ireland quarter-final.
The crowd noise tumbled between ferocious, frenetic and frayed as the two sides slugged it out chasing a victory as slippery as the pitch underneath. Martin Carney, however, felt that the atmosphere was blemished somewhat by the behaviour of some Roscommon fans, who roundly booed Andy Moran any time he got on the ball.
Carney was critical of the booing during his live commentary on the game with MidWest Radio:
I love to see Andy Moran stuffing them. Because every time he gets the ball he is being unfairly booed. He is a most sporting player, he has played well today, but every time he gets the ball, my god, he gets hisses, boos, and anything else Roscommon people can throw at him.
Andy Moran does not deserve to be booed like this by a section of the Roscommon crowd. It is most unbecoming.
To understand why Moran was booed requires a bit of a detour through history.
Moran plays his club football with his home club of Ballaghaderreen, which is technically in the county of Roscommon. The club, however, play in the Mayo football championship.
As with most things, it starts with the Brits. In 1898, the UK parliament re-zoned Ballaghaderreen under the Local Government Act, and pushed it within the jurisdiction of Roscommon. The GAA club stuck with Mayo football, as they had since their foundation in 1885, and it remains that way today.
So Moran has always cut a little close to the bone for some Roscommon fans, and he apparently angered them over a supposedly over-exuberant goal celebration in an FBD League game earlier this year.
Carney went on The Tommy Marren Show on MidWest Radio this morning to elaborate further on why he found the booing unacceptable:
I feel the same way. It was a wonderful occasion, a fabulous game, football's version of helter-skelter, and a very sporting game. But I just felt that a small section of the stadium sullied the occasion by repeatedly subjecting Andy to a chorus of booing every time he got possession. Andy is a proud Ballaghdreen man, a very sporting player, a player who has given huge service to the county, but he didn't deserve to be booed every time he got the ball. It's not Andy's fault that the GAA made the decision in the early 1900s to leave Ballaghdreen as part of Mayo football....
...It's the first time I've noticed Andy Moran being subjected to that. It's an unusual facet of Gaelic football to hear the booing of a player like that. You can understand if a player was acting the maggot on the pitch but a player of Andy's stature, and of Andy's sportsmanship, did not deserve that.
The Roscommon supporters yesterday were absolutely wonderful. I was outside Croke Park Hotel at about 11 o'clock, and even at that time of the morning you could sense the passion, the joy, the colour. You could sense the joy that they held coming up to support their county. They held it so well, and held it so gracefully and so raucously. It's such a shame that a small section ruined that.
You can listen to the full slot below.
