For some, Mayo's failure to win an All-Ireland football title for decades was proof of a curse dating all the way back to the early 1950s.

It was in Ballina where, almost 100 years after Biden's ancestors had fled the devastating Irish potato famine, a supposed curse was placed on the Mayo Gaelic football team.

The story - or myth - goes, that following their last win in 1951 the Mayo team's boisterous celebrations on an open-back lorry interrupted a funeral in the village of Foxford.

The presiding priest is said to have laid a curse that Mayo would not win an All-Ireland title while any member of that team was alive.

And despite reaching the final eleven times in the years to follow, they failed to win it.

In April 2023, the last member of the Mayo 1951 panel, Dr Mick Loftus, passed away.