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Will Galway Beat Mayo?, by James Laffey

In this absorbing and multi-layered narrative award winning author James Laffey goes beyond the football fields to chronicle a fascinating sporting story in the context of an era of sweeping change. Ballrooms, carnivals, black and white television, Austin A40 cars, JFK in Galway…it’s all here in this entertaining account of a magical decade when the West suddenly found its voice. At the heart of that reawakening one of the older rivalries in the GAA, a gripping power struggle between neighbours that left everybody asking the same question in the summer of 1966 “Will Galway Beat Mayo?”

Laffey captures this tsunami of cultural and social change to such an extent the reader is totally absorbed, but the author never loses sight of the one cultural force that remained a constant throughout the decade – the football championship. In fact, so intense is the narrative, those of us of a certain age can almost taste the spirit of change, optimism, and excitement of those heady years.