Mayo footballers go viral after joining The Saw Doctors on stage at Electric Picnic for ‘The Green and Red of Mayo’ and ‘N17’

Even without Sam Maguire, the Mayo men can enrapture a crowd of thousands.

They came to see The Saw Doctors, but the viral moment came when 14 All-Ireland-winning Mayo footballers strode onto Electric Picnic’s main stage to join the men from Tuam in perhaps the most memorable version of “The Green and Red of Mayo” yet.

Kobe McDonald said afterwards that it was the coolest thing he’d ever done.

That’s coming from a man who won an All-Ireland with Mayo before he got his Leaving Cert results.

“It was unreal. It was one of the coolest things, something you don’t think you’ll ever experience,” Matthew Ruane, another one of the lucky 14, told the Irish Independent.

Since July 26, 2026, no song has been sung so frequently in the county, so publicly, and with such patriotic gusto as Mayo’s unofficial anthem.

But if you needed any more proof of the degree to which Mayo’s Greatest Day has touched hearts, minds and souls beyond the Black River and Blacksod, then you got it on Sunday.

The Mayo men locked arms for the last chorus of “The Green and Red of Mayo”.

Instead of shuffling offstage at the end, Kobe and the boys waited around for more.

The band started into N17. Next thing, Eoin McGreal and Fenton Kelly were down the walkway with big grins on their faces.

Before they knew it, their teammates were out there with them, jumping, raving and leppin’ and hoppin’ around the place to a tune that’s as “Mayo” as it is “Galway”.

They had no Sam with them. But it’s unlikely that anybody cared.

Since Jack Coyne hoisted it on the steps of the Hogan Stand on July 26, Sam has been carted the length and breadth of Mayo, from Coyne’s own Ballyhaunis, where it will spend Christmas Day, and as far west as Clare Island and Inishturk.

In the coming weeks, it will visit schools and GAA clubs around Mayo, appear at players’ weddings, travel to the United States and make appearances on the Late Late Show and at the All-Stars banquet.

However, Sam may not be brought to ticketed, non-GAA-related events with clubs, schools and nursing homes given priority and then it’s case by case after that.

On the weekend of EP, some of the older Mayo players were caught up with Cillian O’Connor’s wedding to Hannah Wallace, which took place in Mount Juliet Estate in Kilkenny.

Sam Maguire was down there with them, and from there he would not stir.

But with or without Sam, the Mayo footballers were going to EP, come hell or high water.

Much like the Mayo fans who got “sorted” for All-Ireland final tickets hours before the match, the Mayo footballers only got their EP tickets days before Leo and Davy and the boys were due to throw-in the ball.

Ruane (29) was the oldest Mayo footballer to travel to EP. The youngest was Kobe, who’s still 18. The rest were somewhere in the middle, right in the sweet spot for your typical festival goer.

Ruane travelled to Stradbally straight after training with Breaffy on the Sunday morning.

Upon arriving, he quickly met up with his teammates, who were diverted away from the muddy masses into the quiet guest area.

“We didn’t realise that The Saw Doctors had actually started and we missed most of it at the start,” said Ruane.

“One of the producers had said to us, ‘You’re going to go on for The Green and Red of Mayo, and then you can come off after that’.”

The lads were kitted out in white tracksuits designed by Cavasa, who clearly saw an unmissable marketing opportunity.

“They reached out to us saying they wanted to sort out the lads with gear. We were kind of waiting for it and that rumour came out that we were going on stage [at Electric Picnic] and they kind of accelerated that,” said Ruane.

Far from foam rollers, stretch bands and masseuses, the Mayo lads warmed up backstage by bouncing around in a 14-man-huddle to “To Win Just Once”.

If anybody knows the real meaning of that song, it’s these men.

Matthew Ruane wasn’t quite so philosophical.

“It’s just a class song. I love the song. It’s just mad, surreal.”

Tom Coll and Conor Deegan, two former schoolmates of Ruane’s in St Gerald’s College, joined the Mayo men on stage for the final few bars of the N17.

How did walking out to thousands of soggy, music fans compare to running out in Croke Park in front of 82,300 football fans?

“There’s no pressure when you’re going out. A couple of lads were saying they were nervous alright, but I loved it. I couldn’t wait to get out,” said Ruane.

“I’d be the exact same way on the football pitch a lot of the time. Definitely, this year I didn’t feel any nerves at all. It was the first time I had played that role coming off the bench, as I was injured for a lot of the year.

“We’ve been here before, we’ve lost finals here before, and at the end of the day, it’s not the worst thing in the world if you go and lose a game of football. That kind of helps me take the pressure off, take the weight off. I just go out and enjoy it.

“It was the last thing Andy had said to me before a lot of the games this year, ‘Just go out and enjoy it’. Go out and hit a few tackles, kick a few spinners, turn the ball over, win a few kickouts, that’s all it is. It’s great.”

“It was an absolutely unbelievable experience which almost felt like an extension of the homecoming,” Ballina native Eric Conlon told the Irish Independent.

“There was Mayo jerseys, bucket hats and headbands everywhere you looked around the festival from the get-go and real great energy about the place.”

Conlon, who fronts London-based rock band The Properness, had heard the rumours that the Mayo players would be making an appearance at EP.

Some of them were spotted around the place by the time he and his friends made it down to the main stage at 5pm, approximately 30 minutes before The Saw Doctors were due to start.

“It was absolutely lashing down with rain, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone. In fact, it even added to the occasion as people let the hair down and went ‘a bit nuts’, as Andy Moran would say,” said Conlon.

“They played their way through all the classics, and the crowd were loving it. There was people on shoulders, people crowd surfing, people throwing the wood chips from the ground up in the air like confetti.”

Excitement turned to bedlam when the Mayo men strode onto the stage.

“Everywhere you looked there was people with tears in their eyes,” recalled Conlon.

By the time they finished the “N17”, the crowd had still not had their fill.

One final, spontaneous, heartfelt, a capella burst of “The Green and Red of Mayo” later, and the Mayo men set sail again.

“A very special set that will live long in the memory,” Conlon said.

The Mayo men stayed backstage to watch Amble. They also got to see some of Fontaines DC’s set.

Then it was home again to Mayo that night for Matthew Ruane, back working remotely as a data analyst for a Dublin-based firm the following morning.

Ruane’s teammate, David McBrien, was asked on Today FM if the Mayo footballers will ever get sick of “The Green and Red of Mayo?”

“No,” the Ballaghaderreen man replied, without hesitation, “we’ll never get sick of listening to that. Play it on repeat the whole time.”