The message he wrote on his wrist tape said, \u201cone chance\u201d and Kobe McDonald certainly made the most of it.<\/p>\n
The talented 18-year-old is set to begin his career in the Australian Football League in the near future having also used his pen to sign a professional deal with St Kilda.<\/p>\n
That meant if he was to taste All-Ireland final glory with his county before heading Down Under, he would have to do it on Sunday against the reigning All-Ireland champions Kerry.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s exactly what he did as his three points from play helped his county lift their first Sam Maguire title in 75-years with a three-point triumph over the Kingdom.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest with you, it\u2019s impossible to put into words,\u201d began McDonald when speaking to RT\u00c9 shortly after full-time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a tough year, a lot of the country probably wrote us off after that tough day against Roscommon.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Andy (Moran) is so big on trusting our process and we said at the start of the year that our goal was to climb the Hogan steps and to be honest it\u2019s still surreal that we are just after doing that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very easy when every single player and every single coaching staff give you the license to go out and express yourself and enjoy yourself. When you are playing in front of 80,000 it\u2019s hard not to have a bit of fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, to be honest, I\u2019m not thinking about Australia right now. I\u2019m just going to soak every bit of this in. This is where I come from and to give these people of Mayo something to cheer about is special.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery team probably says it but we are like a family. When we come into training three times a week it\u2019s like 40 brothers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know every single person in there has each other\u2019s backs. No matter what anyone says outside the group, it doesn\u2019t affect us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The message he wrote on his wrist tape said, \u201cone chance\u201d and Kobe McDonald certainly made the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[233554,194555,10416,18,19,17,26710,132],"class_list":["post-605979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-all-ireland-football-final","tag-championship-2026","tag-kerry-gaa","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mayo-gaa","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116990336441274278","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}