AS THE HOOTER blew at Croke Park on Sunday and confirmed that Mayo had just ended 75 years of pain, a fitting song began to play across the stadium: the Green and Red of Mayo.

The song, an ode to the idyllic landscape of the county, was released by the Saw Doctors in 1992, but its presence at full-time also came as a shock to the band’s co-founder Leo Moran.

“We got heavy rotation yesterday but, oh god, I no idea that they would play it,” Moran told The Journal.

There was further good news on Monday evening as the song soared to number one spot on Spotify’s Ireland chart.

Like many others, he “had no great hopes” of success for Mayo against Kerry, but “to be involved in the biggest day of their football in more than 70 years” has been a nice surprise.

“It’s amazing that it’s been adopted so warmly,” Moran added.

Despite being a famously Galwegian band – thanks especially to the famous N17 – Moran said he was “completely behind” his native county’s neighbours. “I might be only have been a couple of percent off as delighted as if Galway had won it,” he said.

The song can be traced back to 1990 when the band had played a festival on Clare Island, off Mayo, before getting the boat back to the mainland.

Included on the journey were long-time band member Davy Carton and the late Gerry Mulholland, a Saw Doctors collaborator (and who had his own GAA connection, as his nephew Alan Mulholland was later Galway manager).

It was beautiful weather, a cloudless, warm sunny day. I can remember looking across at the hills of Croagh Patrick and thinking of the heather and the grass, that maybe that’s where they got the idea for the jersey colours from. We started writing a poem on the boat with Gerry Mulholland. Davy put music to it, and we had a song shortly afterwards.

Band manager Ollie Jennings recalled the song as a “slow burner” that didn’t pick up momentum until some years after its release on the band’s second album, All the Way from Tuam, in 1992.

“It didn’t shoot the lights initially, we didn’t have an I Useta Lover on it, but it was Paul Claffey from Midwest Radio who loved that song and he, if you were to talk to anyone about promoting it, he felt this was going to be a big Mayo anthem.”

As for whether Saw Doctors might make any surprise appearances in Mayo this week, it doesn’t look likely.

They’re in the middle of recording their first album in 15 years, with the only Irish gigs for the rest of the summer being the main stage at Electric Picnic on 7 August and Falls Park for Belfast’s Féile.

Breslin – whose mother was a Mayo woman and fondly remembers summers growing up in Belcarra, near Castlebar – recalled the stress of the occasion as the clock ticked down yesterday.

“There were five minutes to go and I thought, Jesus, Kerry are going to come back, but they kept them out. They’ve great heart.”