Mayo’s 2026 All-Ireland triumph inspires Liam Horan’s new book
What do all those years following Mayo look like now that Mayo have finally won?
That question, and the historic All-Ireland triumph that prompted it, are at the heart of I Can See It Still, a new book by Mayo author and journalist Liam Horan.
Inspired by the events of 2026, Horan looks back on more than five decades of following Mayo and at the people, places and memories gathered along the way. Horan will launch the book at An Sportlann (home of Castlebar Mitchels), Castlebar, on Friday, October 16, at 7.45 p.m. All are welcome to attend. Please note the venue change.
Pre-orders are now open through local bookshops and online here. The book will be available from October 16.
The book’s tagline, ‘Mayo football all those years. And then 2026’, captures its starting point. It is about the long experience of following Mayo, and about how all those years of hope, disappointment, people, places and memories can look different after the county finally wins.
Published by Townland Press, I Can See It Still ranges across the history of Mayo football, the extraordinary 2026 season and Horan’s own years close to the county team as communications manager. But its canvas is wider than matches and results.
He writes about Mayo football as he experienced it, and about the people, incidents and memories gathered along the way. Personal and reflective, the book looks back across decades of following Mayo and asks what all those years look like now that Mayo have finally won.
As well as being a lifelong supporter, Horan has been a football player as he puts it “of, at best, average ability,” a local and national journalist, club officer, chair of the committee that produced the controversial Mayo GAA Strategic Plan, and communications manager to the Mayo senior football team under two different managements.
“I wanted to write about what Mayo football felt like from where I happened to be standing over the years. Sometimes that was on the terrace, sometimes in a press box or a dressing room,’ says Horan, a native of Ballinrobe.
“Then 2026 happened, and suddenly all the years that went before it looked a little different. “This book is my attempt to make sense of some of that, and to remember the people, places and moments that made following Mayo what it was.”
The book arrives in the aftermath of Mayo’s historic 2026 All-Ireland success, but many of its stories were years in the making.
Horan’s previous books are Second Chance & Other Stories, published by Mayo Books Press in 2022, and On The Way Out, published by Savoy Editions in 2025. On The Way Out won the Gerald Griffin Competition for First Original Adult Fiction in 2025. On The Way Out was named Mayo County Library’s One County, One Book programme selection for 2026, the 100th anniversary of the library.