US President Joe Biden on Friday delighted thousands of locals from his Irish ancestral home of Ballina when he saved the final words of his Ireland tour to back their Gaelic football team to break a famous decades-long curse.
The proud Irish-American, wrapping up a nostalgic three-day visit to Ireland with a rally in the County Mayo town that his great-great-great-grandfather left for the US in 1851, got the biggest cheer of the night with three parting words: “Mayo for Sam.”
That was a reference to the Sam Maguire Cup that Mayo last won in 1951, when a local priest was said to have put a curse on the team for a lack of respect when their bus passed a funeral on their way home from the final in Dublin.
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Ireland’s hugely popular national sports of Gaelic football draws capacity crowds of up to 82,000 for the finals each year. Mayo have lost 11 of them since 1989, and six in the last decade alone.
“Oh one more thing. Mayo for Sam. Mayo for Sam,” Biden told a crowd waving Irish and US flags, raising his fist in the air.
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