How will Kobe McDonald & Mayo football deal with the hype train?

Analysis: The teenage Mayo star is the type of GAA player who comes along all too rarely, but such hype is always accompanied by a lot of pressure

Imagine typing your name into Google as a teenager only to find articles, videos and comments about how you "will be talked about for a generation". You'll play your debut season as a senior footballer with a county's hopes on your shoulders. Add in the fact that your county is Mayo, where the pressure to win the Sam Maguire for the first time since 1951 is on a much more extreme level than in most other counties.

This is the reality that 18 year old Gaelic footballer Kobe McDonald faces. He first came to prominence in 2023 in the All-Ireland minor football championship. He has excelled for years with his club Crossmolina Deel Rovers and his father Ciarán being a Mayo legend has meant that there would always be eyes on him. McDonald had a dream start to his senior intercounty career in February this year when he came on as a substitute versus Monaghan and ended up scoring 1-04 in 20 minutes. Since then, the public appraisals and high expectations have come flooding in. The hype train has left the station.

We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

From RTÉ Sport's GAA podcast, Kobe versus Clifford

Gaelic games are littered with outstanding talent you’ve never heard of because it didn’t work out somewhere along the way. They suffered a bad injury, clashed with management or didn’t have the commitment and simply packed it in.

Any or none of these things could yet happen to Kobe McDonald. The whole premise of hype is our fascination with the unknown and all the potential that’s rumbling under the surface. Could he be the greatest? Could this be our year? As they say, it’s the hope that kills you - and hope is there at this time of year in bucketloads with Mayo football supporters, which is often to their detriment.

But we already know that McDonald has committed to moving to Australia to play with AFL club St. Kilda later this year. St Kilda’s gain is Mayo’s loss. After making such an impact at underage and now senior level, the lament of Gaelic football fans for what could be is even stronger. Pat Spillane has even urged the people of Mayo to think twice and pay to keep him in Ireland. He said "Surely to God there are enough wealthy Mayo people that could come together and give him a package." The GoFundMe page is pending.

McDonald is the type of player that GAA coaches drool over, sponsors dream about, event promoters beg for and fans clamour after. But all of this comes with pressure and hype can be a toxic friend to have. Media coverage needs to leave room for the teenager to just be human. How many times do people have to call him things like 'young prince of Mayo football’ before that pressure becomes unbearable? It might just be in our nature to seek to make people into heroes, but we often destroy them in the process.

At the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, American gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from competitions because she felt she had "the weight of the world" on her shoulders at times. Having won four gold medals in her Olympic debut at Rio 2016, the pressure on the greatest gymnast of all time was immense and eventually harmful to her well-being and performance.

So how can McDonald stem the media hype and ensure he doesn’t end up chewed up and spit out because he couldn’t deliver what was expected of him? I’m not sure if the footballer himself is the one who can reduce the hysteria that he’s currently engulfed in.

We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences

From RTÉ Radio 1's Ray D'Arcy Show in 2021, Sport Ireland psychologist Dr Olivia Hurley on Simone Biles' decision to withdraw from competitions to focus on her mental health

Supporters arguably play the largest role in media pressure because all the reporting – press conferences, journalism, news sites, social media – is created for them. The often-outrageously high expectations placed on players by supporters is created in the media sphere and spread into conversations in pubs, Whats App groups and chats in the stands before throw-in.

At Mayo's National Football League game away to Kerry in March, there were several supporter’s banners relating to Kobe. One read ‘Kobe 3:7 Sam’s Coming, Lord Hear Us’ and another one aimed at the AFL warned ‘AFL – Hands off Kobe, Breed Your Own’. All of this feeds into the high demands now being placed on one young lad.

While all of this hype has the potential to negatively impact McDonald's performances on the pitch, the mass media can also be used to cultivate or bring out the best in him. Perhaps he can use it as a tool to positively motivate and influence his behavior. Pressure is for tyres and all that.

Positive or negative in its orientation, hype always misrepresents people. It wounds them with outsized expectations and doesn’t approach humans as humans. So the main thing is, let Kobe be Kobe, whether that means he becomes one of the greats or brings us the most disappointing moment in GAA history since The Sunday Game got a temporary new theme tune.

The GAA are lucky to have McDonald – for however long he plays the game. In the space of a few weeks, he has effortlessly pulled in media coverage, excited fans and boosted the overall value of Gaelic football, simply by being himself. Will Kobe exceed the hype and meet the sky-high expectations that have been placed on him? We’ll have to wait a few more years to find out.

Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates

Click here to read article