Hardy and Deiseach have summed it up. Players don't live in bubbles. They live in and come from cultures. Some have winning cultures, some have losing. Deiseach's grim image of climbing over the bodies of the dead is the same in Mayo. The vague sense of doom hangs heavy in the air. And pretending it isn't there won't make it go away.
Hardy's comments about the Meath-never-bet mentality being underground but not extinct is interesting, especially in the light of the game in August between Mayo and Meath. No-one in Mayo doubted that Mayo would beat Meath that day. Confidence was high. And even watching the Meath players during the warm-up it struck me that they were men who weren't looking forward to events.
And after fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, Mayo hadn't torn into them, and you could see Meath growing in confidence as the game went on, while Mayo started to implode. By the end, Meath were in full sail, popping them over for fun while the Mayomen looked at their boots.
And what I'm wondering is: if the situation had been reversed, if Mayo had been the underdogs in that game and Meath Provincial Champions, would Meath still have found a way to win even though they weren't playing badly? Would Mayo have been able to take their chance the way that Meath were able to take theirs, when it arose?
You can break losing traditions, lose winning traditions, a whole host of things. But you have to be aware that they are there, and that you need to keep the fire glowing the tradition helps you, and stamp it out if it's destroying you.