The football summer of 2026 will forever be remembered as the summer of Kobe and Mayo

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter.

"Tomorrow we will run faster and stretch out our arms farther....

"And one fine morning.” 

(The Great Gatsby) 

With the clock on 69 minutes 37 seconds on final day Kobe, in space, receives the ball on the left and starts gliding towards the Davin End of Croke Park. 

That’s the moment everybody knew they had it - Mayo were going to the All-Ireland for the first time in 75 years. 

He must have bene completely aware of the time and has the choice of bearing down on goal or heading for the corner flag; playing keep ball, a forced sideline or some such, and end the game winning by two points down at the corner flag. 

Kobe eschews the latter and heads for goal. 

The Kerry walls are falling down in front of him now and he effortlessly slaloms past one despairing diver. 

Four defenders move towards him and with fiendishly fast hands he parts left to Tommy Conroy and runs for the return pass. 

The goal is gaping now and Shane Murphy nowhere and Kobe is wide open for the return.

But Tommy does the practical thing and fists the point.

And Kobe runs off to celebrate with his hands behind his ears.

And so ends the summer of Kobe. 

A surreal summer when a boy of prodigious talent rises from the ashes out west, messianic like but a messiah with an end date in sight.

This is one of the most important moments in the GAA’s storied history. 

It is of course the story of Mayo, of a dispossessed people, long ridiculed and perhaps even scorned and yet……one fine morning.

The closest GAA moment we can compare it to was when a wily and grizzled old forward with a flexible attitude to training, but buckets of ability, came off the bench to find the top corner and down a kingdom 44 years ago. 

Seamus Darby wasn’t bound for Australia and for him it was the end of his career, the pinnacle coming after being dropped for the previous six years. 

But great and all as that moment was and wonderful and all as the doyenne of commentators, Micheál O’Hehir, made us, his entranced listeners feel, it is not as seismic as this moment. 

Mainly because some of those Offaly players, including Darby himself, already had All-Ireland medals from the two wins of the previous decade. There was no famine here.

So then, if better than ’82, was it better than the maiden wins of so many football counties of the last 40 years such as Armagh in 2002, Tyrone in 2003, Donegal in 1992 or Derry a year later?

It was different for them. 

These counties had not grown up on race memories of All-Ireland wins from decades before; did not have to endure their grandfathers bemoaning the painful absence of the footballers of yore. 

Those first-time wins were great and carried freshness and ground-breaking originality, but they did not carry the weight of history quite so much as this win does. 

Mayo were always the ‘old money’ who had fallen on leaner times and entered a cycle, that self-fulfilling cycle, of forever losing. 

Doomed, perpetually it seemed, like Sisyphus, to roll the boulder up the hill and then each day have it roll back down again. 

Doomed to comparison.

Mayo winning this year was a people reconnecting with their storied past and reconnecting with their lover, like Odysseus managed to do at the end of his arduous journey, a lover that seemed forever just out of range.

Above anybody else, Kobe brought it into range.

His story is in one sense, the greatest GAA story ever told. He is the young messiah. Without him it could not have happened. 

Not just his youthful brio and audacity or his outrageous talent. (Has any 18 year old ever lit up a season or lit up Croke Park on final day quite like that?).

He is Luke Skywalker taking on unbeatable forces who Obi-Wan Kenobi urges to “Use the force Luke”.

I don’t know who Kobe’s Obi-Wan is. Is it Andy Moran? His dad Ciarán maybe?

The story of Kobe is made all the more glorious by the fact that he leaves soon and he hasn’t even got his leaving cert results yet!

The story of Kobe is the modern-day story of redemption, of facing unassailable odds in the spirit of a champion and facing down those odds to carry the day and lead your people to the promised land. 

Not so much, youth has no fear, as youth is full of unbridled courage.

This year has been a glorious vindication of Jim Gavin, Eamonn Fitzmaurice et al and the new game they have created. 

This is not the old game restored. This is a new game, a beautiful game, a game to set the pulse racing.

The great writer, Scott Fitzgerald, conceived of Gatsby and Gatsy believed in the green light but somehow fell foul of it.

Kobe became the symbol of a new Mayo and he, in a sense, became the green light.

His leaving soon merely adds lustre to the story.

If he stays in Australia and makes the successful AFL career that is predicted, we will probably never see him star in a GAA match again.

So, he will remain forever young to us, impossibly perfect, an almost godlike figure.

And perhaps that is his final gift to us.