Sir, – Malachy Clerkin’s article (“Decades of hurt melt away as Mayo enjoy sweetest victory”, July 27th) captures the essence of Mayo’s wonderful All-Ireland Gaelic football win. I was there to witness it, and it is an event that I will never forget – even though I’m not from Mayo. There was a heightened charge in the air before the match as there often is when a David confronts a Goliath. Mayo supporters I spoke with before throw in found it hard to see where or how their team could possibly wound what we all know to be a wonderful Kerry team. Despite that fear, the stadium was teeming with Mayo supporters, all of whom quietly hoped that something might shift in the Kerry Rocks and their own team might slip through the cracks. With 20 seconds to go on the stadium clock and Mayo in possession of the ball, their players haring down the Cusack wing away from their own goal, it was clear that it was Mayo’s day. The Mayo man beside me, who told me he was born the year after the last win in 1951, softly said: “Thanks be to God. We have it now.” He was crying. We all were Mayo for that moment. The rocks had shifted or, more accurately, were pushed away, and Mayo had won at last. As Malachy wrote so perfectly: “Chisel it on the gravestones, scribble it in the sky.” What a sporting occasion. – Yours, etc,AODN O’CONNOR,Perrystown, Dublin 12.