County Mayo breaks fabled 75-year-old curse to win All-Ireland football championship

Legend has it the last time County Mayo won the Gaelic Football All-Ireland in 1951, an angry priest cursed the team to never win another championship so long as they lived.

But on Sunday — five years after the 1951 team's last surviving member died — Mayo beat Kerry to claim ​the Sam Maguire Cup for the first time in 75 years.

John Gunnigan, host of the Mayo Football Talk podcast, watched the victory live at Dublin's Croke Park stadium. He says it was a moment the people of Mayo will never forget.

"I have been to Croke Park for over 50 years at this stage, and I have never, ever experienced anything like that," Gunnigan told As It Happens guest host Loren McGinnis. 

"I've never seen so many people crying, including myself."

Gaelic Football All-Ireland is the national championship for Gaelic football, an Irish soccer-like sport that pits two teams of 15 against each other.

Gunnigan says the event is massively popular in Ireland and among the Irish diaspora. Bigger, even, than the World Cup.

"It's a huge occasion, and we're one of the minnows of the game," he said. "To get to a final is a big, big deal."

Mayo has competed in 11 All-Ireland championships since their 1951 victory, and lost every one.

Eventually, Gunnigan said, people started to blame the losing streak on a curse, which the 1951 team reportedly acquired while celebrating their victory in the town of Foxford.

"The story goes that as they were coming through ... they got in the way of a funeral that was taking place in the town and delayed the funeral, " Gunnigan said.

"The priest was not best chuffed, and you didn't cross a priest in those days. So the priest allegedly was so annoyed with the team that he said that for however long any member of that team