Green and Red

Green and Red has moved

2008-01-03T10:30:00.000Z

Willie Joe doesn't live here anymore: Green and Red has moved to a new site at http://mayogaablog.com, where a revamped look and feel to the blog is now available for your delectation. Don’t forget to update any bookmarks you may have created for this site. And, of course, Keep the Faith!

"Non-event" FBD action starts on Sunday

2008-01-02T23:15:00.000Z

Almost six months after our 2007 championship exit, Mayo's footballers finally take the field in something resembling a competitive fixture this coming Sunday when they take on NUIG in the Connacht FBD League at Ballinrobe. The FBD, like the O'Byrne and McKenna Cups (and, to a lesser extent, the McGrath Cup) in the other provinces, serves as a kind of pre-season before the NFL gets going at the start of February. It's a nothing tournament - even we wouldn't get excited about winning it.

So Johnno is spot on when he describes it as a "non-event", though he does so due to the fact that so many players will be unavailable, given that the third level institutions have first call on county panellists. Johnno has apparently been left with around twenty waifs and strays for the opening match with NUIG on Sunday so it's anyone's guess who will line out where in Ballinrobe. Here's Mike Finnerty's tuppence worth. And Sean Rice's.

Finnerty says that both James Gill and Pat Kelly will feature in the FBD matches this month (after NUIG, we play Sligo IT and Roscommon), which, if true, is good news. While he obviously possesses bags of talent, Gill has delivered very little at senior level to date and so his departure from the inter-county scene last year was little surprise. It would be nice to see him prove all the doubters wrong in his second coming. Paddy Kelly has been in flying form at club level for Dublin's St Vincent's (as has Brian Maloney) on their way to the All-Ireland club semis and so his recall is of little surprise.

Other names - new ones this time - mentioned by Finnerty as being in the frame are Achill's Colm Cafferkey and Donal Corrigan, Knockmore's John Brogan, Charlestown's Tony Mulligan, Westport's goalie Tom Higgins and Shrule-Glencorrib's David 'Roundy' Geraghty. I expect the last lad named there is on his own special weights programme.

Sadly, I won't be able to make it to Ballinrobe for Sunday's "non-event" - the lure of Parnell Park on Saturday night for the Dubs against the Goat Suckers has proved too strong - but it's great to see action of some sort returning after almost half a year's absence. And, with plenty of action on the menu over the coming weeks and months, it should also make it a bit easier to keep the site humming.

In with the new

2008-01-02T12:58:00.000Z

Well, 2008 is here and the holidays are over and work is rearing its ugly head once more and all those resolutions which sounded so good with all that beer in the bloodstream the other night are now already starting to look somewhat, er, challenging. Welcome back, real life, in other words.

But, it IS a new year and, in the spirit of fecking out all that old stuff and replacing it with something more in tune with the shiny new year, it's time to unveil what has hitherto been my little secret project. (Mine and Gerry's, aka Tommy Joe, that is. None of what I'm about to reveal would have been possible without his technical wizardry).

Yes, folks, Green and Red 2.0 is about to be launched, with the blog moving to a new domain (http://mayogaablog.com), with a different look and feel but also containing all that old bile you've read and loved over the course of 2007. It's still only in beta, mind, and the builders haven't stopped dumping their shite around the place but, work permitting, I'm hoping to be out of the old place and completely moved in over there in a few days.

The main advantage of the move is that I wanted to have separate pages for results, fixtures and the like and I also wanted to have readily-accessible archive pages, which (warning: New Year's Resolution about to approach) I could then backfill back to the year dot. Blogger doesn't allow me to do this and so we have to part. It's nothing to do with you, Bloggie love, it's me. No really, it is.

Out with the old

2007-12-31T15:16:00.000Z

The old year is dying rapidly on us, with delusional hopes about what 2008 might bring already taking wing furiously. We might win Connacht again! Beating the living shite out of Galway in the process! We might, once again, make our improbable way to the final! We might meet Kerry again! And they might ... you know, they might, the hoors, as they'll be aiming for the three-in-a-row. Okay, that's enough delusion for now.

With the New Year comes the return of inter-county action (unless you happen to be from Cork, in which case the only action you're apparently going to see will happen on the picket line). The first shots in sort-of anger have already been fired, with Monaghan (about whom many have high hopes for the coming year) losing their opening McKenna Cup fixture by a point to Queens up at Clones yesterday. That'll teach them to jump the gun. Next weekend sees the start of the O'Byrne Cup with de Dubs tackling the Goat Suckers at Parnell Park on Saturday evening. Micko v the Dubs: that might be worth a look, I reckon.

No word yet on the FBD league but it's got to be getting underway soon, as they need to finish it before the league starts in a month's time. Oooh! I'm almost giddy with the excitement of it all.

On that note, all the best for the New Year. Here's to silverware. Here's to delusion. Here's to another year of following the Green and Red.

Happy Christmas and all that

2007-12-23T22:23:00.000Z

It's nearly Christmas Eve, I'm nearly drunk and I'm nearly going to switch the laptop off and get more than nearly bladdered shortly. Some very nice red wine (thanks, Gerry!) is already coursing through my veins and not even Martin Breheny's assessment in yesterday's Indo of where he reckons we've ended the year in the pecking order (12th, down from 4th last year) can spoil the moment. Santie's on his way in a little over 24 hours and the little people asleep upstairs are more than a bit interested in what'll be in his bag.

It's Christmas, in other words, and so time to sign off for a few days. However, plans are already afoot for a revamp of the site early in the New Year (new look, new domain, that sort of thing) so keep an eye out for what's in store.

Meanwhile, have a great Christmas and New Year and I hope that the experience of reading my various rants here have been at least partly as enjoyable as has been my creation of them.

Keep the faith!

Last-minute stocking fillers

2007-12-20T14:05:00.000Z

Attention, ladies! If you're stuck for ideas for the GAA-loving, book reading man in your life, there are a number of suitable titles from which to choose. All the more so if you'd planned to get him The Book but have only now discovered that he went out and bought it himself, the bollix.

There's a large crop of GAA books out this year. I must confess that I haven't read those by Sean Kelly, Jack O'Connor, Oisin McConville or the new biography of Micko though, from the reviews I've seen, any of them shouldn't get flung back in your face. I have read, and enjoyed for the most part, Roland Tormey's Summertime Blues, a nostalgic account of what it felt like to follow Dublin on their way to their last All-Ireland in 1995.

That was the last long, hot Summer in these parts and it was also the final one that I spent in London (where the Summer that year was even longer and hotter than over here) and, having missed all of that year's championship (as well as most of the previous seven), the stuff about Jayo scoring the goal in his stockinged feet and the controversy about Charlie Redmond's sending-off in the final were stories I'd only heard about vaguely in the past. The story is mainly recounted, a la Nick Hornby, from the author's perspective as a member of the blue horde on the Hill but it's also interspersed with interviews with a few of the players. Personally, I'd have preferred if he'd stuck with his own story as the bits told through the players' eyes was the kind of stuff you could have read in any newspaper article.

The other odd thing was that, for all his talk about yearning to see the Dubs win Sam again, he has very little to say about what he felt like and what he did when they finally did go and win it. Did he run down O'Connell Street buck naked? Did he go on the piss for three whole weeks? (Either could happen to WJ, dear reader, were Mayo ever to triumph again). It would have been nice to know what he thought of seeing his team reach the summit and what the view looked like from there.

The other book I'd point you towards is Michael Foley's excellent Kings of September. This was, I thought, a bit like reading The Day of the Jackal, in that you know the ending but it doesn't spoil the story. (De Gaulle doesn't get shot in Michael Foley's book either). Seeing as the denouement results in defeat for Kerry and their hopes of making history smashed to smithereens, it made, all told, for rather enjoyable reading. The film version is, I see, on TG4 on Christmas Day and I'm already looking forward to putting my feet up beside the fire (sorry, Bronwen!) with a glass or two and waiting for that magic moment - which is almost as good as that bit in Mary Poppins where she first appears in the sky holding her brolly - when Seamus Darby has his date with destiny. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Clash of loyalties moves another step closer

2007-12-17T15:06:00.000Z

With St. Vincent's victory yesterday in the Leinster club final - their first provincial title in 23 years - the possible clash of loyalties to which I first alluded last month has moved another step closer. De Vinnies now face defending All-Ireland champions Crossmaglen Rangers (or will do, once the XMG lads have finished having their fun with Tir Chonaill Gaels in their quarter-final over in Ruislip at the end of January) while Mayo's Ballina Stephenites are up against Cork's Nemo Rangers in the other semi-final. They could both lose. They could both win. One might win and the other might not. In other words, there are a number of permutations that could arise, only one of which could leave me with a problem about who I shout for in the final on Paddy's Day.

Carbon footprint

2007-12-13T15:06:00.000Z

I'm just back from a rapid trip to Mayo, having gone down to stock up on some proper firewood (ash, whitethorn and the like) and, yes, a few bags of turf while I was at it. Coming back with the car stuffed to the gills with fuel and, bearing in mind all the emissions I must have generated on the 282.5 miles round-trip (down last night, back this morning), I feel like I have a carbon footprint the size of a yeti. At this rate, I'll have Bronwen Maher and her tree-hugging chums on my case. In my defence, the wood was all thinnings that had to be cut anyway and, honestly Guard, I do my bit of composting, recycling and tomato growing and the like. But . . . I know, I know, the few sods are what clinches it. I hope Santie has some carbon credits in his bag for me.

I went down via Athlone last night, with the sort-of motorway now stretching all the way to Kilbeggan and, from the little I could see of the earthworks further on, it looks as if it'll be motorway all the way to the other side of Athlone soon enough. That will mean that Knockroghery will be the first town you hit on the way to Mayo coming from Dublin - no doubt Brendan Shine will want to commemorate this little nugget with a verse or two.

Coming back this morning, I decided to take the alternative N5 route, which was a bad idea as it was littered with roadworks. Nobody might have shouted stop on the John Healy Road, but they sure did around the airport, in Tulsk, in Ballinalack and in various other places too. And what is it with these medieval roads in Roscommon? (And, indeed, medieval drivers - fuck me, if you get stuck behind someone with an RN reg, you've had it). It's not just their county team that's in need of an overhaul, I can tell you.

The Off The Ball lads on NewsTalk made for good company on the way down in the dark last night (the podcast of the interview they had on last night's programme with David Feherty is worth a listen) but when that got a bit dull, I switched to the CD and the excellent Amy McDonald, whose tuneful offerings were, I found, best enjoyed with the sound turned waaaaaaaaaaaaay up. I usually do night-time cross-country treks with the wife and childers (and, sadly, no turf) on board and so don't normally have this kind of latitude in terms of volume or, come to think of it, artist. Suffice to say that my little Dublings wouldn't have slept soundly given the volume at which last night's musical selection was playing.

Now, where are those shaggin' firelighters?

What happens when Westport and Castlebar Garda stations call each other?

2007-12-12T17:07:00.000Z

Are either of these lads on the county board, by any chance?

Another award for Ronan + Elvery's

2007-12-11T20:51:00.000Z

Ronan McGarritty's rollercoaster year has reached another significant milestone: he's just been awarded (jointly, along with Cora) the Connacht GAA Writers' Personality of the Month for November. Does this mean that these lads announce a Personality of the Month every month? There's a thought - maybe I should do the same. Well done (again), Ronan. I bet you'll get a cracking present from Santie as well.

Mayo News also reports that Elvery"s have agreed to stay on board as official sponsors of the county team for another five years. I guess that's good news, providing, of course, that the county board (them's the lads that don't like anything to do with money, especially if it's going to the players) drove a hard bargain with Elvery's. After all, they're going to feature on pictures with the Sam Maguire, aren't they?

By the way - talking about the county board, I see from the same article that County Chairman James Waldron seems to have offered an olive branch of sorts to the players over the grants issue. Better late than never, I suppose, but where was he last week when that "unanimous" motion got passed?

Time to get real

2007-12-10T22:34:00.000Z

The players' grants issue is continuing to generate plenty of debate: there's John Maughan reminiscing about what things were like in the good old days when he had a full head of hair, there's PJ McGrath saying that refs should be ahead of the players in the queue for payments, there's An Spailpin fulminating about the GPA's motives and drawing apocalyptic comparisons with Welsh rugby, there's Sean Rice huffing and puffing about the GAA being on "the road to ruin" and, in the other corner, there's Colm O'Rourke making the point that payments to managers - the widespread practice within the GAA that still dares not speak its name - will continue to cost far more than the grants to players will and that, in terms of getting some financial recompense, the players have come to the table very, very late.

Anyone who has read any of my previous posts on this issue will know that I'm in firmly on the Colm O'Rourke side of the debate. While PJ McGrath is technically correct when he makes the rather facetious point that there would be no games without the ref (when, in fact, the ref in Gaelic football isn't always where you expect him to be: where was he, for example, when he was needed last May in Salthill?), it's the players who produce those moments of magic that we all treasure and who keep us coming back each year in anticipation of witnessing more of the same.

All players put in significant effort but it's obvious that it's the elite performers - those who reach inter-county standard - who sacrifice most, in terms of the ongoing commitment they make and the way in which many of them effectively put their work careers on hold for the duration of the time they spend at inter-county level. This is especially the case in the modern era: one time being a county player might have saved you from the boat whereas now, where there's plenty of work but most of it comes with fairly relentless pressure to perform, county players often have to sacrifice opportunities to get ahead in their careers just to ensure that they have the requisite time to devote to wearing the county jersey.

So being an inter-county player involves making hefty sacrifices, often for many years. But by doing so, they create all the action (call it the "product" if you like) that people pay good money to see, which many of the most prominent companies in Ireland pay significant sums to get their names associated with and the TV rights to which the GAA is increasingly able to monetise. Let's be clear: it is the inter-county players who create virtually all of the value that enables the GAA to rake in this money.

Before the GPA came on the scene, inter-county players were treated, by and large, very poorly and many of the advances in player welfare can be attributed to the poking and promptings of Dessie Farrell and his compadres. Likewise, the players' grants issue - the genesis of which was a Government initiative for those involved in top-class sport in general - would never have come to fruition without the GPA. What did the GAA do in the hundred years and more before the GPA came along to improve the lot of players? That's right: they did chuff all and they'd have continued to treat the players in the same despicable manner had not the GPA forced them to change their tune.

Like Colm O'Rourke, I'd have some sympathy with the concerns people have about the drift away from the community ethos within the GAA but, like the Meathman, I'd be loathe to saddle the players' grants issue with all of the blame for what is just another example of how Ireland has changed in recent times. Homepsun tales about Missus Mac baking her rock buns for the team and Josie washing out the jerseys are all fine and dandy but they're not in any way relevant to the debate about extremely modest grants being provided to inter-county players. Rule 11 remains intact and the GPA have stated publicly that they support its retention. Even if they didn't, there are more than enough backwoodsmen in positions of power within the GAA to ensure that the status quo remains intact for many years to come. Look at how long it took to get a perfectly reasonable and sensible proposal such as opening up Croke Park to get ratified: just how long do you think it would take to get a two-thirds majority for the scrapping of Rule 11?

In any event, all this John Hinde ass and cart stuff about how great things worked in the old days is a bunch of horseshit: looking to the past to provide answers for the future is rarely a good option. It has echoes of the bone-headed attempts by successive Irish Governments up to the Sixties to promote agriculture as the engine of growth within the Irish economy. All that succeeded in doing, as Tom Garvin has so rightly pointed out, was to delay by decades the eventual arrival of prosperity in Ireland.

The amazing thing, when you think about it, is how much the community ethos within the GAA has - in this post-Celtic Tiger Ireland - remained intact, in much the same way that it's somewhat surprising that Church attendances are still as high as they are after all that's come out over the past fifteen years. Community involvement in the GAA has survived in the face of the huge changes that have place within the country over the past twenty years, including the significant drift towards a more commercial outlook in all aspects of the GAA itself, from sponsorship to the gleaming new Croke Park. These paltry grants to players are just one more facet of this. They do not represent nor can they seriously be portrayed as Armageddon for the GAA.

And they don't mean we're on the cusp of an age of professional gaelic football (or hurling) either. For fuck's sake, where is the money going to come from to sustain two professional codes on an island of just under six million people? Unlike the Premiership, the GAA will not earn megabucks from selling the rights to its games all over the world and so, with limited enough income from gate receipts and sponsorship, there's clearly not going to be a massive pot of money to sustain a professional GAA. It's simply too small in scale and with the increasingly unworkable and unfair championship structures in both hurling and football, it's not as if the GAA has got a wonderfully dependable product to pimp.

In this context, the comparisons with rugby might seem to be more apt but any perceived likeness is, IMHO, more apparent than real. The organisation of rugby, no more than soccer, is a very different kettle of fish compared to gaelic football and hurling. Like soccer, it has both a club and an international dimension and it has a major money-spinning European competition keeping it going in this part of the world. I'm not convinced that the misfortunes currently facing rugby in Wales or elsewhere can easily be transferred to the GAA, where professionalism on the level seen in rugby simply can't, given the simple arithmetic, happen. The extremely rigid rules about players transferring allegiance from one county to another also militate against such a development. As Tommy Conlon points out, this rule - which has been in place for over 120 years - effectively means that players are chained to their roots ensuring that, unlike in almost all other sports, the very best players aren't always allowed to rise to the top. That, however, is one for another day.

For now, with Saturday's Central Council vote behind us, the issue has been resolved from the point of view of the GAA. Those poor, holier-than-thou souls on county boards up and down the country can rest happily that they won't have to dirty their hands dishing out the filthy lucre to the players (they can continue to concentrate instead on paying their managers) and can convince themselves that they've fought the good fight to preserve all that is good about the GAA. Well done, lads: not for the first time, you've done the country some service.

Meanwhile, the players will continue to bust their asses in preparation for the new campaign and I doubt very much that, in doing so, they'll give all that much thought to the modest amount of dough they'll get at the back end of the year. Like every other year, it's the silverware, the medals and the chance to make history for their county of birth that'll be uppermost in their minds. And in ours too, I reckon, once this storm in a teacup finally abates.

"Oi! You voted unanimously for WHAT?"

2007-12-07T20:59:00.000Z

The Mayo senior football and hurling panels have wasted no time in reacting to their county board's "unanimous" decision to oppose the awarding of grants to inter-county players (see previous post). Earlier this evening, the two panels issued a joint statement expressing their disappointment with the county board's position on the issue and stating that they "stand firm" on their support for the grants.

In their statement, the two panels even use that phrase so beloved by the Shinners during the Norn Iron Peace Process, i.e. "parity of esteem", and there's little doubt but that they're as "pussed off" as Gerry Adams famously declared himself to be during one of the many tortuous twists and turns in those now happily-concluded negotiations. The Northern Issue may be settled but it would appear that the players' grants one is far from over.

I'm still scratching my head as to why Mayo has become the eye in this particular storm, although given the county board's penchant for making the FAI look competent, perhaps it's not all that surprising. From a supporter's standpoint, I'd be worried about the impact all this will have on preparations for next year's campaign. It's not as if we don't have enough to be concerned about as it is.

Johnno's position on all this is worth watching. Having recently expressed his relief that a players' strike had been averted, he's unlikely to view this latest development favourably. Unless, of course, he decides to don his political hat on this one and calls for a vote of no confidence against Shamie Brennan.

We don't like players' grants, apparently

2007-12-07T10:09:00.000Z

The Mayo GAA politburo have apparently - so says RTE so it must be true, right? - voted unanimously against the Pat's Ass solution to the players' grants issue. I'm not sure why we've emerged as the hotbed of dissent on this one, although we're far from alone on it, as there was a biggish protest gathering (what is it about Ireland and protest meetings in the depth of winter? It's like a male alternative to bingo or something) in the wee North earlier in the week. The GPA's Dessie Farrell - ever the diplomat - described the Toome session as the ravings of "a small rump of malcontents" but he then got a right old earful from the Ulster Council for his trouble.

I know others feel differently and have, as is their right, strongly-held views on this one but I just fail to see why, in the early years of the 21st century, giving a few lousy quid to guys who bust their arses to represent their county should be seen as an Armageddon situation for the GAA. An utterly fucked-up championship structure is, IMHO, a far greater danger to the ongoing well-being of the organisation, while the anti-grants movement reminds me just a little of that scene from Father Ted.

What's another year?

2007-12-06T14:28:00.000Z

Echoing David Brady's recent pronouncement that the All-Ireland is not a realistic target for us next year, County Secretary Sean Feeney says, in his annual report to the county convention, that supporters will need "patience" in 2008, as the team rebuilding process continues. Nothing new there, then.

BTW, belated congrats to Ronan McGarritty for winning the Club Player of the Year award, which he was presented with at the bash in the TF last Friday night. I think it's fair to say that 2007 won't be a year he'll forget in a hurry: it's an incredible achievement for him to have battled back from serious illness early in the year to play a huge role in Ballina's successful Connacht club campaign.

Two months and counting

2007-12-02T11:59:00.000Z

It's exactly two months to the date until the competitive inter-county action, in the form of the 2008 NFL, gets underway again. For the purposes of making this point, I'm ignoring the FBD League, which is only a warm-up job with many of the lads playing for whichever third-level institution they're diligently attending.

So it's only sixty-two days before the team trots out under the lights up in Derry and, what with Christmas and all that in between (Q: What will we not feel till Christmas? A: It, i.e. "we won't feel it till Christmas". Ah yes, the old ones are the best, aren't they?), we'll be back in the thick of it before you could say "ahforfuckssakerefyahfuckinbollixyah" or some other such cheery match-related ditty.

TV rights + Mayo club footballer of the year

2007-11-30T13:36:00.000Z

I see that TV3 have landed one of the packages of live championship matches for 2008, comprising at least 10 live and exclusive matches over the next three years. This means that TV3 will broadcast two provincial finals in 2008, thus breaking RTE's age-old hegemony in this area.

This has got to be good news. Monopolies are, in general, bad for the ordinary punter while competition, by and large, delivers a superior outcome all round. The record of Irish monopolies is particularly poor, that of Irish public sector ones is, well, shite. RTE's live TV coverage of gaelic games has always been, at best, fairly complacent, pedestrian and lazy. While they've faced limited competition from the BBC in recent years in relation to the Ulster championship, this coverage has been totally focused through the prism of Norn Iron and the lads could have been talking about tiddlywinks for all the relevance that it has had to the wider GAA scene. As such, the Beeb's coverage never made any attempt to tackle Monstrose's championship offering head-on. TV3's will and so this first serious attempt to muscle in on RTE's erstwhile monopoly patch should be the root up the hole that RTE need to up their game significantly.

Elsewhere, Hogan Stand is reporting that Ronan McGarritty has been shortlisted for the award of Mayo club footballer of the year. This is a punter-driven poll, run by the Mayo News and the others on the shortlist are David Brady, Kenny Golden, John Brogan and David Tiernan. Vote early and vote often, as the old Sinn Fein mantra used to go.

Pat's ass

2007-11-29T14:35:00.000Z

So there'll be no all-night sessions at the Labour Court, no grim-faced, downbeat assessments provided to the media by a bearded Brudder Farrell, no Ingrid Miley reports for RTE News, no placard-bearing players huddled around burning braziers outside Croke Park. What did I tell you? None of the participants in this comedy wanted to go the full distance on it and so today's announcement that the players' grants issue has been sorted (or will be once the GAA and the GPA vote on it) comes as little surprise.

Oh and, by the way, this has nothing whatsoever to do with "pay for play". No sirree - what's on offer is an Annual Team Performance Scheme (ATPS) and an Annual Support Scheme (ASS). With a little rejigging, one could easily end up with a nicely apposite two-part acronym for this particular peace deal, i.e. Pat's ass. I can imagine that one catching on. Picture the scene: a player (who shall remain nameless) pulls up for training in his new boy-racer motor. One of his teammates stops to admire it and asks him how much he gave for it. Our friend tells him and then adds "I got it on the Pat's ass".

Brady's last year, "probably"

2007-11-28T10:25:00.000Z

David Brady has announced his retirement a few times over the past few years and, in the wake of Ballina's Connacht club title success on Sunday, he's sort of done it again by intimating that the victory was all the sweeter as "it's probably my last one".

That still leaves plenty of room for confusion as to when exactly he plans to pull on his cardie and slippers. Is this year (i.e. 2007) his last? Or will he call it a day once Ballina's club campaign is over (i.e. 17th March 2008 at the latest?) Or is he still going to make himself available for the county next year? Probably, I'd say. DB isn't a first fifteen man anymore but he's still someone that would be good to have in the squad and who could still have a part to play over the course of 2008, preferably not just to come on when we're two or three goals down either.

Incidentally, there's been quite a funny bout of handbags at dawn on the Mayofans.com message board over Brady's performance for Ballina on Sunday, where it has been alleged that he was a "disgrace" with all his "divin and pretendin to be injured". Quite right - we're the nice guys of Gaelic football aren't we? Pure as the driven snow, always playing the game as it should be played and bugger the consequences. Jesus wept: what would the reaction be if a team from Mayo actually engaged in a bit of rough stuff itself?

A looming case of divided loyalties?

2007-11-26T21:32:00.000Z

Yesterday's club results brought one step closer a potential situation where I'm torn between supporting two different clubs in the All-Ireland final. One of them - Ballina (reason for supporting: representatives of county of birth) - has already taken the provincial crown in Connacht and now faces the Munster champions, most likely Nemo Rangers, in the All-Ireland semi-final in February.

The other - St Vincent's (reason for supporting: local club where I'm domiciled here in the capital, for whom my little Dubettes are already expressing vociferous support) - are in the Leinster final, where they'll face either Moorefield or Tyrellspass and will, I reckon, fancy their chances of landing a first Leinster title in aeons.

If the Vins do the business in Leinster, they'll face defending All-Ireland champions Crossmaglen Rangers in the All-Ireland semi-final. XMG (as, I was once told, was the term used by the Occupying Hordes up north for the army base they had there) would be favourites to make it back to the final but the Marino lads could well topple them. And the Stephenites will also fancy their chances of a return to Croke Park on Paddy's Day and a tilt at a second national title in four years.

There's still a few major hurdles to be surmounted before I'm faced with this particular dilemma but it's now beginning to look like a realistic scenario and so I feel it's only right to lay before the world the potential personal agonising I might have to face over which cause to support on March 17th next.

Silverware for Ballina and Cornacon

2007-11-25T23:31:00.000Z

Both Ballina and Cornacon lifted cups today, the former the Connacht senior club title - deposing the holders St Brigid's of Roscommon - while the latter claimed the ladies All-Ireland senior club title, hammering Cork's Inch Rovers.

Ladies first, as they say - Cornacon had it all their own way in their All-Ireland final against Inch Rovers at Banagher, winning by 2-14 to 1-6. RTE's match report is here. The peerless Cora Staunton - the Ronaldinho of ladies Gaelic football - racked up 1-11 of that winning total, as Cornacon made up for last year's All-Ireland final defeat. The club is also the backbone of the Mayo ladies team so today's All-Ireland win would, no doubt, have dulled the pain from September's All-Ireland final loss to Cork.

Ballina's Connacht final clash with St Brigid's was live on TG4 and I caught most of it, though not the two early first half goal by Stepenites, which helped them into a four-point lead at the break. The second half looked fairly robust at times, with plenty of mistimed tackles, shoulders landing square in the chest and the odd few belts being thrown. From my vantage point on the couch, it appeared to be Brigid's doing most of the scelping. However, it was Ballina who went a man down early in the second half, at a stage when Brigid's were only a point behind but this seemed to provoke Ballina back to life and they raced five points clear before being reeled back in to just two at the finish. Brigid's hit the woodwork in injury time - when a goal would surely have landed them the title - but Ballina managed to hold on for, literally, a hard-fought win. A full report on the game, also from RTE, is available here.

Like the Champions League, the club championships now go into a hibernation phase, with the action resuming in February. I'm not sure who Ballina will meet in the semis but Crossmaglen are already through from Ulster, Nemo Rangers look like they'll be joining the party from Munster and my local club here in the metropolis, St Vincent's (who hammered Portlaoise 3-13 to 1-8 today in the Leinster semi-final: go on ya good things!), are starting to look the part in Leinster. That's four heavyweight clubs so the All-Ireland series early next year could be worth watching out for.

Rarer than Popes

2007-11-23T21:38:00.000Z

It would be remiss not to mention this week's appointment of Monaghan's Paraic Duffy as the new Director General of the GAA. Although not as rare as Halley's Comet, such appointments don't happen just any old day - the new man will, when he takes oifig next February, be only the fourth DG the organisation has had since 1929. Mother of God: we've had more popes since then.

Paraic Duffy is obviously a good choice as DG and his recent experience, in particular his current post as Player Welfare Manager, means he is ideally placed to offer progressive leadership to the organisation on issues such as the players' grants controversy. In his post-appointment press conference yesterday, Duffy stated clearly that it was time "to move on to a totally different relationship with our players". He's not wrong there and, by the sounds of it, he could be the man to ensure that this happens.

Injury stories start to reappear

2007-11-22T16:04:00.000Z

Remember our injury crisis from the early part of this year? You might recall that goalie Kenneth O'Malley was one casualty, when he dislocated his thumb in the league match against the Dubs in early April. Well, he's crocked again - so says this report in Hogan Stand - this time after coming off second-best in a collision with a trainee Guard while playing for UL against the Garda College. You'd think the Guards would wait till after their passing-out parade before dishing out the rough stuff but this lad must have been keen to get out of the Templemore classroom and put some theory into practice. It looks like he was taking notice in his beat-up-the-suspects class as O'Malley had to leave the match by ambulance after the altercation, though the report reassures us that he's making a "steady recovery".

Elsewhere, Hogan Stand is also reporting that Conor Mortimor is denying rumours about him transferring to Dublin club Oliver Plunketts. I should bloody well think so - if Mort switches to anyone up here it should be to our own St Vincent's, where Pat Kelly and Brian Maloney would no doubt make him welcome. Not too sure about Mossie, though . . .

Conflict of interest?

2007-11-21T14:52:00.000Z

I see that Pat O'Shea has been re-appointed as Kerry jefe for another 12 months, like. Well done, Pat, keep up the good work and all that. The hunger for All-Ireland success must be only wogeous down there in the Kingdom at this stage, given that it's now two whole months (TWO WHOLE MONTHS!!! FUCK ME! HOW WILL WE SURVIVE THE NEXT TEN??) since a Kerryman hoisted the Sam aloft in Croke Park. There's definitely a job of work to be done down there and no better man to do it. But ...

I dunno about the rest of you but I can't help thinking that this appointment has a whiff of something, well, odd about it. O'Shea's day job is, apparently, that of Coaching and Games Manager with the Munster Council, which I suppose means that his brief is to develop playing skills and the like amongst the footballing fraternity in all six Munster counties. Meanwhile he's also moonlighting as Kerry bainisteoir and, as such, his goal is to ensure that Kerry wallop the bejaysus out of everyone else they come across in Munster. Which they have done successfully a few times under his watch, notably the 17-point trimming handed out to Waterford in this year's Munster semi-final and, indeed, the 10-point victory over Cork in the All-Ireland. Is it just me or is there the scent of a teentsy-weentsy conflict of interest involved in this particular bout of double-jobbing?

Summer dreams

2007-11-19T10:01:00.000Z

It's Monday, it's wet and it's cold - a triad of misery, in other words. It reminds me of that passage in Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds about that bloke who does everything in threes. After a series of threesomes (of sorts), he ends up slashing his wrists three times and then scrawls a message on the wall with his own blood saying "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye".

November mornings can be shite, can't they? It almost makes one wistful for Summer. Ah yes, those lazy, hazy, warm days with a long championship campaign stretching out ahead, the melodious, mellifluous voice of Michael O Muircheartaigh wafting through the air bringing news of a fierce championship encounter at a packed provincial venue somewhere, the aromatic scent of cut grass and then . . . and then this happens. Followed by this. And then you realise that it wasn't Michael O Muircheartaigh you were listening to, it was that tool Brian Carthy. Maybe November days aren't all that bad after all.

Careful with that axe, Eugene

2007-11-14T14:35:00.000Z

No, I'm not going launch into a treatise on obscure Pink Floyd numbers but instead direct you towards an incisive (as ever) piece in today's Indo from Eugene McGee on the GAA, GPA and P4P (that's pay for play to you lot). Eugene's analysis is pretty much on the button, IMHO. Contrast, if you will, what he has to say with this bit of provincially-minded piffle. See what I mean?

Ballina win, Mayomen rescue Vincent's in club action

2007-11-12T15:26:00.001Z

The provincial club championships are now well underway with plenty of action yesterday. Two fixtures of note (well, they're the two that I'm going to note) were those involving Ballina Stephenites and my local club here in Dublin, St Vincent's.

Ballina made it through to the Connacht final but their 1-8 to 1-4 win over Sligo champions Tourlestrane sounds like it was a laboured enough affair, whereas reigning Connacht champions St Brigid's of Roscommon were in sparkling form as they saw off Killererin by 4-10 to 1-11. Goals win games, goes the old cliché, and Brigid's banged in two more than they needed to see off the Galway champions. It'll be difficult to see Ballina stopping them. It'll also be difficult for colour-blind individuals (of which I am one, dear brethren) to gauge what the hell is going on, as both of them sport the red and green. Getting teams to wear kit that allows poor saps like me to instantly tell them apart hasn't - well, not since colour TV became widespread - been much of a priority for the GAA in recent years (Kerry v Mayo in their first choice strips, Cork v Mayo likewise. Hello? Anyone at home?) but, with this one, they'll have to do something. Expect to see one of the clubs being forced to wear the local U14s kit in the final when, at the last minute, the lights start to come on.

The essential amateurishness at the core of the GAA was also nicely illustrated yesterday when two of the Leinster matches finished in draws but extra-time was only played in one of them - the Moorefield/Dromard clash - because the ref in the St Vincent's/Seneschalstown match wasn't aware that extra-time would have to be played in the event of a draw. The other match ended in a draw after extra-time anyway so it all worked out grand in the end, didn't it?

Vinnie's had a tough match with the Meath champions - no surprises there. Diarmuid Connolly and Mossie weren't up to much (are they ever?) and it took their two Mayo lads - corner-forward Brian Maloney and half-back Pat Kelly - to help dig out the draw. It was Kelly, who knocked over a delicious long-range effort right at the end who saved their ass and he had a cracker by all accounts, scoring three points from play. Mayo could do with a few more options in the half-back line and Kelly, one of the forgotten men in Mayo footballing circles, could well prove to be one of them.

Pleasure amidst the pain

2007-11-12T00:48:00.000Z

It’s over twenty years since an off-hand remark made to me by a Kerryman put me squarely in my place as to the ambitions I should have in following Mayo’s footballers. The year was 1985 and, although well beaten by Dublin in that year’s semi-final replay, Mayo had performed better on the national stage than at any time since the Fifties and we were undoubtedly back as a force to be reckoned with in the championship. It would not be long, I opined, before Sam would be making his fourth trek to the Yew County. The Kerryman wasn’t slow in disabusing me of such notions. “Look it” he said, with the arrogant insouciance that comes from knowing that almost every year the Rose of Tralee festival heralds the imminent arrival of Sam Maguire on Platform 1 in Killarney, “there’ll always be at least one team good enough to beat Mayo in any given year”.

That has been the case every year since 1951 and Keith Duggan’s marvellous House of Pain: Through the Rooms of Mayo Football captures superbly the many false dawns, near misses and shattering disappointments that the county and its loyal followers have endured since then. In one sense, I hate it when Mayo supporters are referred to as “long-suffering” because, down through the years, we’ve had many good days to enjoy. That draw with Dublin in '85, for starters. The six-point trimming of Kerry in ’96. The defeat of All-Ireland champions Tyrone in 2004. And, of course, the Daddy of the lot – downing the Dubs last year. We’ve had great days – and, indeed, nights – out but we just haven’t done enough to close the deal.

Keith Duggan tells the story of this “magnificent idea” through the voices of those who know it best – the men who have pulled on the famous jersey to do battle for the county over the past 50 years. He has assembled an impressive cast – which stretches back all the way to Paddy Prendergast and ends with David Brady, containing on the way cameos from the likes of Leo Morahan, JP Kean, Martin Carney, Jimmy Maughan, Peter Ford, Kevin McStay, Anthony Finnerty, John Maughan, Liam McHale, John Casey and, of course, John O’Mahony.

Through their voices, Duggan gently weaves his story of a half-century of disappointments, focusing in particular on the five All-Ireland finals that we’ve lost over the last 18 years. 1989 was a final which, for Cork, Duggan says “losing would have been unthinkable” while for Mayo “winning was all but unimaginable”. Back then, we didn’t have the tag of perpetual losers hanging around our necks and it was a final we could, and should, have won. I recall so clearly standing on the old Canal End that day, seeing the Red and Green on All-Ireland day for the very first time and feeling almost like being there was enough. It was a great match, we didn’t disgrace ourselves and we’d be back.

Anthony Finnerty labelled the aftermath “the homecoming without the cup” as Mayo partied for days as if we had won it. John O’Mahony desperately tried to keep a lid on events, knowing that it would be difficult for everyone to come back down to earth. The following year, the championship campaign lasted all of seventy minutes and reality bit in hard enough then.

1996 is, of course, where all the regrets reach their crescendo. Duggan tells of John Maughan musing that the outcome of that year’s final “haunts” him still and that he knows “there are plenty of people in this county who think that I have blown All-Irelands for Mayo”. Duggan recounts the “unbearable” pain that the loss inflicted on Liam McHale, whose sending off after the mass brawl six minutes into the replay was a pivotal moment in turning the tie Meath’s way. But the most chilling reflection came from Charlestown’s John Casey, who, by his own admission, played poorly the first day against Meath but who, when subbed with only three minutes to go and Mayo still two points up, was hugged fiercely by Tommy O’Malley who said to him “Case, we are All-Ireland champions”.

What Mayo person that was there that day can forget those moments? My memory is of inhabiting for at least ten solid minutes a serene bubble in the Lower Hogan where I had the certain knowledge that we were going to win the All-Ireland. As the six-point lead with 15 minutes to go dribbled away, that certainty was draining away rapidly but it was still intact until Colm Coyle’s bouncing bomb did its worst.

The three since then can easily be conflated into one gruesome triptych, slashed through with green and gold. Duggan describes Mayo’s return to the final in 1997 as being similar to how “a dog lost in a snowdrift will sense its way home”. He tells of how John Casey sought out Maurice Fitzgerald after the game to enquire how Billy O’Shea – who’d suffered a bad leg break during the match – was faring. Fitzgerald assured him that he was fine. “No offence” Casey said to Fitzgerald “but I wish it had been your fucking leg”. 2004 gets only a cursory mention but the 2006 disaster is told through the eyes of David Brady who, when he took the field with Mayo ten points down after only eleven minutes, says he felt he “was being sent in there to look for survivors”.

It’s easy to use words like “tragedy” when talking about how a football match went but Duggan demonstrates beautifully why such terms should be used cautiously in this context. His understated and gentle evocation of the brief, brilliant life and the bizarre, sudden and untimely death of Ted Webb from Ballyhaunis demonstrates that the loss to Mayo was but a fraction of that suffered by those around him. Garda John Morley’s footballing days were behind him when he died at the hands of the IRA in Loughlynn but, through the voice of his widow Frances, Duggan tells of her memories of her late husband and how "the old head would be down for a few days" after he's played on a losing Mayo team. Mayo were crushed by fourteen points in the Connacht final by Roscommon a few days after his murder but, as Duggan notes, although this meant the county had now gone eleven years without a Connacht title, “this one did not seem to matter very much”.

This is a wonderful book, one that every true Mayo supporter will – despite the fact that the outcome of all those past losses won’t magically change as you turn the page – enjoy, at least in part. Many of the memories are indeed painful but we have plenty to be proud of too and, as Duggan says, the next time – and there will be one, don’t worry – we’re back in there, the supporters will be there too. He reckons we’ll do it one day. I think he’s right and, when we do, I hope he writes another book about it. I’ve already got the title for him – House of Fun.

GPA brudders vote for strike

2007-11-09T14:26:00.000Z

The GPA announced today that its members had voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action involving upcoming inter-county games. With the NFL not due to start until the first week in February next year, the strike action - if it goes ahead at all - will impact on the traditional provincial pre-season softening-up tournaments. What? No 2008 FBD League? How will we survive at all at all?

This issue is cloaked in a number of layers of gombeenism - what do you get when you cross the worst of the Fianna Fail party with the worst of the GAA for Chrissakes? - with one set of gombeens (that's the lot on the Government side) wanting to give the dough to the players but not wanting to embarrass the other lot - that's the crowd on the GeeeeAaaaah (as Eugene McGee tends to refer to them) side - by making it appear as if it is "pay for play" money. Of course it isn't, Your Honour, it's a tax credit for the bulk purchase of Wintergreen or its an infrastructure grant for shinpads or a contribution towards the attendance at a verbals awareness seminar or . . . It's not for nothing that RTE's Sean O'Rourke put it to former GeeeeAaaaah President Sean Kelly on lunchtime radio today that the way in which the proposed payments were being characterised smacked of "shamateurism". Too right, Sean. It's not only contraception that requires an Irish solution to an Irish problem.

The whole issue of the amateur status is a thorny one for the GAA but it's one that has to be faced at some point. Managers have been paid in one way or another for years (not all of them but a good portion of them) and for a long time players in different counties have been looked after in ways that don't accord to the pure virginal whiter-than-white notion of amateurism. Let's be clear: the players are the ones who are attracting record crowds to GAA venues and, in the 21st century, it's unrealistic to expect them to continue to bust their guts to do so for no reward.

It's not as if the proposal is for inter-county players being given lavish public sector-esque salaries (with jobs for life, guaranteed benchmarking payments and defined benefit pensions). The development will not lead to GAA versions of David Beckham poncing around providing the entertainment. We're unlikely to see any inter-county players turning up at McHale Park or O'Moore Park or even Croke Park in their Ferraris. What's on offer is only a small token in recognition of the enormous commitment and sacrifice that inter-county players make in the modern era.

Will the strike happen? Well, if the GPA really wanted to put pressure on the GAA they could have taken a leaf out of their brudders in the transport sector. Now there's the lads who know a thing or two about striking. A 95% vote in favour of a strike almost three months before the real (i.e. NFL) action starts is hardly a hang-tough opening gambit and smacks more of Aer Lingus pilots than it does de Dubbelin Bus drivers. Expect a messy compromise before the strike notice expires but don't - whatever you do - mention the dreaded words "pay for play".

Mayoman takes over in Sligo - well, there's a surprise

2007-11-07T15:43:00.000Z

Crossmolina's Tommy Jordan has been appointed as the new bainisteoir of Connacht champions Sligo in succession to Tommy Breheny. The new Tommy has good pedigree, having guided the Deel Rovers to their All-Ireland club success in 2001. And he is, of course, a Mayoman which for some time has appeared to be the sine qua non for aspiring county jefes this side of the Shannon. With Peter Ford's departure from Galway and his replacement by Tribesman native Liam Sammon, it seemed that this particular trend might have peaked but the Sligo appointment restores to three the number of Connacht counties managed by Mayomen.

Brady aims a little too low for 2008

2007-11-07T12:19:00.000Z

We won't win the All-Ireland next year, according to county legend David Brady. He's probably right and, after 56 years waiting, it's not is if one more year will hurt us. However, I think he undersells a little what our ambition for 2008 should be. According to DB, this would be "a good performance in a Connacht final". If he means by that a winning performance in a Connacht final, then I agree with him. However, I don't think - given the nice, old-fashioned feel to the '08 draw plus the fact that both the Sligo (sorry, London) game and the final (sorry, Sligo) are due to be played at McHale Park - that gallant losers in a Connacht final should be the height of our ambitions for next year. As ever, a Connacht title has to be the baseline aim. Anything else would be a bonus, while ultimate victory would, of course, be nirvana. But, as The Man says, don't expect that to happen.

Got it!

2007-11-06T20:32:00.000Z

I got my hands on Keith Duggan's book this morning but this was just before setting out on a 260-mile round trip to Limerick, which I've only just completed inside the last hour. I'm positively salivating at the prospect of getting stuck into it - An Spailpín's review has whetted an already voracious appetite still further - which could mean that the Champions League footie and (Heaven forbid!) Prison Break will have to take a back seat this week.

Keith Duggan's House of Pain

2007-11-05T10:42:00.000Z

At last! A book about the sorrowful mysteries of Mayo's recent footballing history, one with a wholly appropriate title too. Keith Duggan is, IMHO, by some distance the best writer there is right now on gaelic football (far better than that much-hyped, overbearing buffoon, Tom Humphries). Over the years Keith has shown that he understands perfectly what it means to be a Mayo supporter and has written numerous memorable pieces about us. I recall with particular fondness the one where he compared us and our plight to that of the Native Americans and also his rallying call after the 2004 final (which the Irish Times reprinted after the 2006 walloping) where he warned fans from other counties that we didn't need their sympathy and would be back beating many of them again soon. Amidst all the other wise-after-the-event pieces ripping us to shreds, Keith's thoughtful take on our defeat was just what we needed.

He just gets the whole Mayo thing and so I can think of nobody better placed to write a book about Mayo's unrequited pursuit of Sam. Which he's only gone and done. The House of Pain: Through the Rooms of Mayo Football is now on sale, published by Mainstream Publishing. I haven't read it yet, I haven't even bought it. In fact, I've only in the past hour discovered that it existed. But I will. Buy it. Read it. And review it here. Only now I've work to do but I'll probably nip into town later to pick up a copy. In the meantime, here's an extract concerning the 2006 final.

Details of league fixtures

2007-10-30T21:42:00.000Z

As promised, here are the details of our 2008 league fixtures. The full fixture list is now also available on the GAA's website.

Our campaign is as follows:

Round 1 (2nd February): away v Derry, this will be a Saturday night match under the lights at Celtic Park, throw-in 7 pm.
Round 2 (17th February): home v Donegal, 2.30 pm throw-in.
Round 3 (1st March): away v Laois - another Saturday nighter, throw-in 7pm.
Round 4 (16th March): home v Kerry, 2.30 pm throw-in.
Round 5 (30th March): away v Kildare, 2.30 pm throw-in.
Round 6 (6th April): home v Galway, 2.30 pm throw-in.
Round 7 (13th April): away v Tyrone, 2.30 pm throw-in.

A few interesting clashes to look forward to, I think. Being Dublin-based, I'm already eyeing the away matches with Laois and Kildare as bankers to get to, also the home one against Kerry, as it's on the day before Paddy's Day. But the opener away to Derry? I'm not sure I could face that long haul up and down again, just for a bloody league game but, then again, three months from now I might feel differently.

Meanwhile, Hogan Stand is reporting that the GAA have also published their "Master Plan" for next year's football championship. If they have, its not yet on their own website but that would be too much like hard work I suppose. All the dates for the 2008 qualifiers are listed (now why should that interest us?) plus the make-up of the All-Ireland series, which confirms that its the Connacht v Munster champions in the semis (or whoever beats them in the quarters) this year.

The end is the beginning

2007-10-30T09:56:00.000Z

I'm still trying to find the full fixture list for next year's NFL but according to this morning's Indo, we 're set to start our Division 1 campaign up in Celtic Park against Derry. At least directions to the ground shouldn't prove to be a problem. Once the GAA gets its arse into gear and publishes the full fixtures list I'll post the relevant details here.

2008 NFL fixtures released

2007-10-29T23:46:00.000Z

. . . but I can't find the sodding details anywhere. I'm just back from Mayo and I popped out to get some curried chips (as one does), when I heard on the radio (NewsTalk to be precise) that the fixtures for next year's league have been announced. Well, the GAA's PR Department hasn't exactly broken sweat in terms of getting the info out to the wider world: a quick perusal of the usual websites has just drawn a blank. No doubt they've given the details to the papers so all should be revealed in the morning. What I can say is that the action gets underway on Sunday 2nd February - that's only 96 days away folks!

Into the dark

2007-10-26T21:38:00.000+01:00

The clocks go back tomorrow night and, in doing so, the last vestiges of evening daylight go with them. Soon the grass won't need cutting anymore and the long march to the shortest day of the year becomes more akin to a headlong dash, with each day that little bit shorter.

With all this darkness, there'll be bugger all in the way of football action to talk about, although Croke Park is being lit up tomorrow night (fittingly, for the night that's in it) for the interprovincial finals and then Ballina will attract some attention next month in the Connacht club championship. But the inter-county season is now well and truly over for the year and will remain in the deep freeze till January, when the FBD League finally gives us something to chew on once more.

That's still over two months away so, no more than the lawn, this blog won't need the same level of maintenance as it has done so far this year (though, admittedly, things have tailed off significantly since August). If time permits, I might try to fill the gap with some Winter-sitting-around-the-fire type of reminiscences about all those All-Irelands that slipped through our fingers since 1989. Sorta like the Five Sorrowful Mysteries, only more painful. And only if the mood on these long dark nights takes me . . .

Wait goes on for Connacht

2007-10-21T21:59:00.000+01:00

There was no joy for Connacht up in Ballybofey last night when they beaten 1-15 to 2-9 by Ulster in the Railway Cup semi-final (match report here). 2-2 to 0-2 up after just seven minutes (one of those goals coming from Andy Moran), a goal up at half-time, they lost in the end by the same margin. Oh well, that's what you get for fielding too many Sheepstealers and the like.

On the positive side, it looks like Andy had a good game last night, contributing 1-1 to Connacht's total. Keith Higgins, lining out at left-half back - his new position on the Mayo team? - got a point as well. I wonder how Ronan got on? It's good to see him getting some game time and, with Ballina taking their place in the Connacht club championship, he might get a few more hard games under his belt before the inter-county action starts up again.

But, for poor old Connacht, the wait goes on. Already 38 (not 28) years without interprovincial success, it'll be at least another one before they win it. That's if it's not canned in the meantime, along with the minor and U21 grades.

To hell or to Connacht (again)

2007-10-19T20:36:00.000+01:00

I've only in the last few minutes cottoned onto the fact that Our Man in the Oireachtas has, as well as his burdensome political and footballing duties within the county, responsibility for the fortunes of the Connacht interprovincial side. In this role, he has announced his panel for tomorrow evening's semi-final up in Ballybofey against Ulster. Only three Mayo lads - Keith Higgins, Ronan McGarritty and Andy Moran - are included in the 26-strong panel (full details here), compared to seven places for Galway, six each for Roscommon and Sligo and four for Leitrim.

Maybe Johnno is doing the routine of the teacher (he was a teacher in a previous life, after all) giving his own offspring a harder time than the other lads in the class just to show that there's no favouritism. Or maybe our lads aren't too bothered about the quest to end Connacht's 28-year wait for Railway Cup honours. I dunno but it just seems a bit odd that our representation is lower than that of the other four counties. Still, the best of luck to them - it's an incredible statistic that Connacht have failed to win the interprovincial title since 1969 and if Johnno manages to engineer the slaying of that particular dragon, it might prove a good omen for other dragon-slaying duties closer to home in 2008. (See: fresh shoots of delusional thinking starting to appear already!)

The football All-Stars were also announced tonight (details here), with Kerry taking the majority of the fifteen places. However, the Kingdom got only six places while beaten semi-finalists Dublin were ridiculously over-rewarded with four spots. Cluxton and Cahill probably deserved theirs but Alan Brogan and Ciaran Whelan - who were both posted missing when it really counted against Kerry - certainly didn't. All-Ireland finalists Cork - who only got Graham Canty on the team (how the fuck can Whelan have got the nod ahead of Nicholas Murphy?) - can consider themselves hard done by, as can Monaghan who only got Tommie Freeman on the side.

While Derry's two awards - Kevin McCloy at full-back and Paddy Bradley at full-forward - may be welcome (especially the mercurial Bradley, whose talents we saw in full bloom back in July), they have to be seen in the context of the poor treatment handed out to Cork and Monaghan, not to mention Connacht champions Sligo, who failed to get anyone on the team.

I'm almost certain that this extremely odd and ill-considered All-Star side is the first one that doesn't have a single representative from Connacht. Now, regardless of Johnno's own motivational skills, if that little nugget doesn't provide sufficient incentive to the lads up in Ballybofey tomorrow night, I don't know what will.

Johnno looking ahead

2007-10-18T21:28:00.000+01:00

The Deputy has spoken about the draw for next year's championship. It's what you'd expect - bigging Sligo, saying how tough the match will be but also conceding that it'll be better than this year, in that the match will be on in June in Castlebar. He also gives a bit of info about what he's up to with the panel and what the plans are for the coming months of darkness.

Here we go again?

2007-10-17T12:29:00.000+01:00

We all know about the disagreements that took place between Johnno and the County Board during his First Coming as bainisteoir, which ultimately led to his First Going. Let's hope then that today's story in the Indo - which trumpets a looming "Mayo rift" between The Deputy and county secretary Sean Feeney - is just one of those closed season attempts to generate some controversy where none exists. It sounds like it is but it goes without saying that the last thing we need now is a Second Going.

It's Sligo in June

2007-10-14T20:53:00.000+01:00

The draws for next year's provincial championships were made, live on de telly like, this evening and we've got a far kinder one than we did in dish ear's campaign. In 2008 we're straight into the semis where we'll play the winners of the Sligo v London preliminary round. This means - unless the Exiles can pull off a shock of the kind that plucky little Luxembourg managed yesterday in Belarus - we'll be playing Sligo in McHale Park sometime in June. That sure sounds a hell of a lot more enticing than taking on Galway in poxy old Pearse Stadium in May, with the added bonus that - Bertie's current travails notwithstanding - there's little danger of there being an election on a few days later either.

The other half of the draw sees the Herrin Chokers opening against the Sheepstealers, with the winner of that one facing Leitrim (or New York if . . . well, nothing).

Details of the the full draw are available here. Roll on 2008!

Tommy Breheny's exit from Sligo

2007-10-11T15:27:00.000+01:00

For the second year in a row, the reigning Connacht champions have parted company with their bainisteoir. This time, however, there's no dark mutterings about anyone being "butchered and slaughtered" with Sligo's Tommy Breheny proffering the more prosaic excuse in the Times of work and family commitments for his decision to quit while he's ahead. (Mind you, there wasn't much choice involved in Mickey Moran's departure this time last year, as I recall). As is de rigeur in Connacht, a number of Mayoman - Liam McHale, John Casey and David Brady (isn't he still a Mayo player?) - have been fingered, according to the same report in the Times, for a spot of exile activity on the Sligo bench. The smart money, however, appears to be on Donegal's Charlie Mulgrew, who recently finished up a creditable spell as Fermanagh boss.

Ronan and the possible demise of minor and U21s

2007-10-10T22:51:00.000+01:00

This ever-advancing darkness isn't, I find, conducive to thinking about stuff relating to Gaelic football, less still to writing about it. Hence the lack of activity here, which is likely to remain the case till things crank up again early in the New Year. But there are the odd few nuggets, two to be precise, knocking around which deserve a mention. Just in case the headline above causes any confusion, I'm referring to two separate stories and am not suggesting that Ronan (McGarritty, that is) has had any part in the plans to chop the minor and U21 championships. Not that I know of anyway.

Okay, Ronan first. There was an interview with him in yesterday's Times (sub req'd) to coincide with the launch of this year's Railway Cup competition (sorry, the M Donnelly Interprovincials), which covered his recent cancer scare and where he spoke briefly about the county side. 'Bright' and 'right' was how he summed up where we're at - we have, he reckons, the players and the management, all we're missing I suppose is the Sam. Were it only that simple. It will, however, be good to have Ronan back next year: his absence really cost us dish ear and it would be just fantastic to see him turn in the kind of performance he had against Galway in McHale Park in 2006 against the same opposition at the same venue next year. That would be both bright and right, I reckon.

The Times also reports today that the GAA's task force on burnout has come up with the proposal that the current minor and U21 grades be scrapped for an experimental two-year period in favour of a new U19 level. In one sense, this isn't a bad idea as an U19 level could produce a very watchable championship but I'm not convinced that inter-county minor and U21 is the problem as regards burnout.

For the majority of counties, both campaigns are short and condensed into a few weeks (the Connacht championship doesn't take over two months to complete, unlike its senior equivalent) and another difference from senior is that you tend to get a good spread of counties coming through to the All-Ireland series. This latter reason is also a fairly strong argument against scrapping the two existing underage levels: All-Ireland football titles aren't all that well spread out at the minute and it's likely there would be a further contraction were we to move from three to two grades. Somehow I doubt if this proposal will find favour with the GAA's nomenklatura.

Adding insult to injury

2007-10-05T16:25:00.000+01:00

Poor old Billy Morgan. Not only does he have to suffer the indignity, once again, of seeing his charges getting their holes well and truly kicked by Kerry - this time in front of the entire nation in the All-Ireland final - but now the Croke Park People's Court have hit him with a 24-week touchline ban. And all, according to Sean Moran in today's Irish Times (sub required), for a bit of verbals on the sideline with linesman Martin Duffy. Morgan apparently pointed out that Cork jerseys were being pulled with impunity and, when Duffy responded to this statement (though we're not told in what terms), Morgan said he then retorted that "it was a pity that he couldn't spot Cork jerseys being pulled in Killarney either". Morgan then conceded that he got "quite angry" and said that "another exchange" ensued. We're not told what the content of this one was but one can only assume that it included a few items that Billy might want to draw the parish priest's attention to when next in the confessional.

However, the fact that the linesman was one Martin Duffy is more than a little relevant to Billy's apparent sideline explosion. Duffy was the ref who didn't see Derek Kavanagh getting yanked back by the jersey in the closing stages of this year's Munster final and his decision then not to award the Rebels a penalty (Sir Alex refers to such incidents as "a stonewall penalty decision") at that juncture effectively gifted the Munster title to the Kingdom.

Now, I know, Billy has a bit of previous when it comes to getting a mite OTT on the sideline but, then again, don't we all from time to time? Considering (a) the individual involved and his track record earlier in the campaign and (b) the fact that Cork were getting clocked while all this was going on, the People's Court could, IMHO, have gone a tad easier on a man who has, after all, given a lifetime's service to the GAA.

Our own Kerry

2007-09-30T23:12:00.000+01:00

It's like having our very own Kerry, only this time inside the county boundaries. In fact, today's county championship success by Ballina Stephenites - where they beat Charlestown by 3-6 to 0-13 - was their 36th county title, which is one more Moclair cup victory than Kerry have Sam Maguires. And, of course, now they get to have a shot at a national title, where they'll be aiming to repeat their All-Ireland heroics of 2005.

A decent run by the Stephenites could well shorten the yawning closed season for inter-county action that lies ahead and the fact that they also sport the Green and Red, as well as the fact that they have a number of the county panel within their ranks, make them a passable proxy for the county team over the next few months.

No All-Star nominations for us this year

2007-09-28T10:23:00.000+01:00

Well, it's hardly a surprise is it? We underperformed badly in the championship this year and All-Star nominations are rarely forthcoming for a good league run. Realistically, we didn't have a single player that was close to a nomination this year (David Heaney and Andy Moran were probably our best performers in 2007) and this contrasts greatly with how we fared last year.

The full list is available here. Kerry - predictably - dominate the list with ten nominations and they're sure to do likewise when the final fifteen are announced before Christmas. It's good to see Sligo getting two nominees and the nomination of Louth's Paddy Keenan is also welcome. Galway's Nicky Joyce and Derry's Paddy Bradley - two forwards who inflicted plenty of damage on us in the championship - are also on the list, although neither will be fancied to make it onto the team itself.

Death of Mayo legend Eamon Mongey

2007-09-25T14:42:00.000+01:00

It was sad to hear the news that Eamon Mongey, one of the key members of Mayo's All-Ireland senior football triumphs in 1950 and 1951, has died. He was one of the real leaders of that remarkable team and away from the football field his career encompassed a lifetime of public service, as well as decades as a popular sports columnist and the obtaining of a doctorate in law. More on Eamon and his life and times can be seen in this article in the Mayo News. Eamon died on Sunday morning in Dublin, aged 82. May he rest in peace.

Yet another one

2007-09-24T15:15:00.000+01:00

There’s this wonderful moment in David Lean’s 1965 classic film Doctor Zhivago when Ralph Richardson, playing Omar Sharif’s father-in-law, gives a side-splitting Home Counties interpretation of his Russian bourgeois character. As one of the local lads bursts through the door of the Siberian dacha to deliver the news about the Tsar’s demise, Richardson throws his eyes up to Heaven and, in splendid retired colonel fashion, mutters “Not another purge!”

For some reason, that line kept coming back to me at Croker yesterday as yet another All-Ireland final loss for Mayo began to unfold before our already defeat-laden eyes. Although we weren't favourites for the title, the Mayo girls have - unlike their males counterparts - a very good track record at All-Ireland level and so we had reasonable hopes of seeing some silverware coming in our direction. The Mayo supporters were also in good form before the off, as this video clip of the pre-match parade shows.

But it wasn't to be: Mayo were swept aside by a very determined Cork side who were hell-bent on clinching three All-Ireland football titles in a row. Our girls were aiming to inflict a different three-in-a-row on Cork – the loss of three All-Ireland finals in as many weeks – but the Rebelettes were having none of it. They led from the off, kept our attack under wraps until the last minute (when we got two goals that brought a sheen of respectability to the final score), dominated midfield and passed the ball around in a very slick and efficient manner.

Our girls simply weren’t at the races yesterday, though their cause wasn’t helped by a dreadful refereeing performance, in particular the award of a penalty to Cork just before the break for an incident which replays showed was never a foul. Cork goaled from that to lead by six at the break but the real killer blow came just after the restart when a well-worked second Cork goal put nine points between the teams. There was no way back from there.

And so it was, once again, our lot to traipse out of Croke Park having witnessed yet another All-Ireland final defeat for the county. However, at least the girls have won a few in their time and a good number of yesterday’s starting lineup already hold All-Ireland medals. Still, it would be nice – just the once, like – to be the ones celebrating at the end. There’s always next year, I suppose.

Kerry’s success explained . . . well, sort of

2007-09-20T19:06:00.000+01:00

Sean Moran had a good piece in yesterday’s Irish Times (I know, yesterday’s paper equals today’s fish ‘n chips wrapper or, at least, was until the health ‘n safety lads got on the case) where he discusses the various reasons why Kerry have enjoyed enduring success at All-Ireland level. He makes the interesting point that it’s not, as was the case with Dublin’s Heffo era, down to the promptings of an exceptional manager – Kerry have won five All-Irelands in the past 11 years with three different bainisteoirs. Nor is it that, as happened with Kerry themselves in the Seventies and Eighties, the same group of driven individuals have remained there year after year – 39 different players have started for the county in these five All-Irelands.

Moran also pooh-paws the notion that the new championship structure has much relevance to Kerry’s renewed domination at All-Ireland level, pointing to the fact that only one (only one – hah! What we poor sods wouldn’t do for only one Sam Maguire) title was won via the backdoor (Mayo fans don’t need any reminders as to which one that was), whereas a front-door Kerry were beaten by back-door Tyrone in 2005.

In the final analysis, Moran comes up with three reasons as to why Kerry have been - and are once again - very much the dominant force in championship football: players, coaches and tradition. Clearly, Kerry produce more exceptional footballers on an incredibly consistent basis compared to every other county and it does appear as if the notion of “playin forr de jursey, like” has had the conveyor-belt effect of spawning generation after generation of gifted footballers. Coaching is obviously relevant too, as it was back in Micko's time.

Success, of the ongoing and continual variety, is obviously critical in keeping the assembly line of emerging talent in place, otherwise the pride resulting from pulling on the fabled jursey would be diminished. It’s here where I think Moran’s analysis came up a little short because an enormous factor in Kerry’s ongoing success has got to be the easy run they get every year into the business end of the championship.

It was bad in the old days - in 1997, after their first round victory over somebody like Waterford or Tipp (I can’t for now confirm who it was), Kerry beat, Clare, Cavan and Mayo to win the Sam – but it’s arguably worse now. Dish ear, Kerry had just to negotiate their way past Waterford to clinch their place in the last twelve and, had they then lost their subsequent match (the Munster final against Cork), they’d only have had the inconvenience of dispatching the likes of Louth to make it to the All-Ireland series. Under the new structure, Kerry are effectively guaranteed a place in the All-Ireland series and it’s little surprise that they’re the only county to reach the quarter-finals every year since 2001. (A related question is why Cork have failed to do so but that’s one for another day).

Under the old structure, Kerry only had to worry about three games every year – the Munster final against Cork, then the All-Ireland semi and final. They were able to prepare themselves with this in mind every year and, in the Mick O’Dwyer era, this became a kind of fine art. The old structure did, however, have its dangers, as Tadhg Murphy’s 1983 thunderbolt proved but, by and large, it served Kerry well and gave them a far easier run at the All-Ireland than their major rivals enjoyed.

Under the new system, the threat of the thunderbolt is gone. Last year proved that it’s of absolutely no advantage to Cork to beat Kerry in Munster. Indeed, last year showed just how warped the structure is when Cork took the field in the quarter-final to play for the right to meet in the semi the team they’d just beaten in Munster. It takes a strange form of genius to come up with a championship structure like that.

The only place to get Kerry now is in the quarters and even that’s difficult. Either Kerry will arrive at this stage as Munster champions, in which case they’ll face a team that has lost already and so would be hotly fancied to lose again (although Monaghan went a long way this year towards helping to disprove that one) or else they’ll be, like last year, on the rebound from a Munster defeat to Cork and so hell bent on redeeming their reputation. Either way, they’re still the team to avoid.

It all comes back to the issue of the championship structure which just sucks. Sporting competitions should be about everyone starting from the same position and facing the same number of hurdles between them and ultimate success. Imagine, for example, if Real Madrid were allowed, every single year, to skip the Champions League group stages. How often would they win it? On that basis, there is not, perhaps, any great mystery about Kerry’s enduring domination at All-Ireland level.

Ritual suicide, Cork-style

2007-09-16T20:47:00.000+01:00

If it's ritual self-immolation you're into, guv'nor, then Yukio Mishima is the chap for you. However, earlier today at Croke Park in what was supposed to be an All-Ireland final, Cork's footballers ran the controversial (and, needless to say, dead) Japanese author/playwright a close second with a display of suicidal defending that simply beggared belief. They gave away three of the worst goals you're ever likely to see conceded on Gaelic football's biggest stage and, in doing so, ensured that Kerry would canter unchallenged to their second All-Ireland in a row and their 35th in all.

But, what of Mayo last year, I hear you howl? Wasn't that rock bottom in terms of competitiveness in an All-Ireland final? Yes it was but what happened to us last year (and, indeed, in 2004) was what occurs when a middling team that finds itself almost by mistake in a final comes up against the real deal. We had Heaney, they had Donaghy. But at least we didn't have a goalie that twice came charging out like a madman, neither time coming close to getting the ball and leaving his line undefended. (By the way, where was he for the second - after Donaghy robbed Spillane - out walking the frigging dog?) We didn't have to endure the sight of Donaghy lashing the ball into a gaping empty goal (he at least had to beat Clarke to score last year). We were crushed like the innocents to the slaughter that we were, today Cork did all the damage to themselves.

Goals win games, goes the old chestnut. Kerry's first, from the Carrot-headed Assassin, midway through the first half, made a Kerry victory - with Cork's forwards visibly labouring every time they managed to get past the halfway line - very likely. Their comical second just after the restart made it a racing certainty that Cork would take a hammering, one every bit as bad as the one we endured twelve months ago. Their third, equally scalding from an ABK point of view, was, well, unnecessary and ever so slightly gratuitous.

Pity the poor Cork supporters - that's two All-Ireland finals they've lost on successive Sundays, following last weekend's camogie final defeat. (It's also the second All-Ireland title in a week for the Herrin Chokers, with their minors winning in truly gutsy fashion today in a match where - unlike their U21 hurling counterparts last weekend - they really had to work to dig out the win). But let's not pity them too much - after all, we'll be looking to inflict a third weekend of misery on them next weekend when we square up to them in the ladies final.

Pity every other county, such as ourselves, who harbour half-baked notions of All-Ireland success. Kerry have already, in this decade, won as many All-Irelands as they did in the Seventies and, if they win the next two (which they could, the hoors) then the decade will prove as successful as the feted (or should that be fetid?) Eighties. If this happens it would also be another four-in-a-row but, as I've already mentioned in a comment in response to the previous post (can't be arsed to link it, it's too late in the evening), the really chilling fact is that, but for Tyrone in 2005, Kerry would today have already completed their four-in-a-row.

But also, finally, pity the poor Kerrymen. But for Canavan, Mulligan and the lads two years ago they would now be celebrating a four-in-a-row. That must hurt, right? I mean REALLY hurt. And that's not all. The poor bastards now have to wait a whole year - yes, twelve long mournful months - before they get the chance to relive the experience next September of rushing out of Croker before the Sam Maguire is presented to them. It must be tough to be a Kerry supporter, even on days like today.

ABK

2007-09-15T22:00:00.000+01:00

I've had very little time (and even less inclination) to write anything about tomorrow's final but a few brief words are in order, I suppose. Words like Up Cork, Come On The Rebels, that sort of thing. I hope they'll do it, not least cos I tipped them for Sam way back before the Summer we didn't have but, in truth, no such self-important kind of reasoning is required. It's Kerry they're playing for feck's sake and everyone outside of Kerry will (or at least should) be rooting for the opposition.

Kerry do not, of course, need another All-Ireland title to flaunt around the place but, of course, they've already plenty of reasons lined up as to why their "hunger" for victory is as strong as ever dish ear. You don't need me to repeat them here. The bottom line is that Kerry want to win it every year, they want it so bad every year that they'd like to play the All-Ireland twice every year. Kerry, every year, Kerry, every year, Kerrrrrrrraaaggghhhhhh! Come On The Rebels!

The Maltese connection

2007-09-11T12:19:00.000+01:00

I'm currently in Malta, unfortunately only for work reasons as it's very pleasantly hot here - like the hottest day you'd get in high Summer at home - and I'm only here for two days so I'm not going to get too much opportunity to enjoy the weather. But, hey, it's sunny and warm and it's not raining, which is a result in itself.

All very interesting you might say but what has all this got to do with football and the like? Well, in my case, it does because the last time I was here was in August 2005 (when it was seriously fucking hot, I might add). I flew out early on the morning of the Sunday on which Mayo were playing Kerry in the All-Ireland quarter-final, feeling a little pissed off as (a) I didn't want to miss the match and (b) it was screamingly obvious to me that I was the only poor sap on the plane (an Air Malta one, that was before the Mad Mick Express started up on the route causing the Maltese flag carrier to beat a hasty retreat) for work reasons but work was work and so off I had to go.

There's a dearth of Irish pubs in this odd little cultural mix of an island in the Med (where everyone speaks flawless English but widda da funny accent and where the local lingo and place-names sound more than a little vaguely of Arabic origin), a state of affairs that I would normally feel adds to its desirability but which, just this once, I would have happily embraced in order to see the action from Croker. Instead, I had to do with ringing on my mobile this Dublin number I have (I have it so long I can't recall where I got it) that provides a direct feed to RTE Radio 1 and so, as I wandered around Valletta for the afternoon, in the baking Med afternoon heat, I kept ringing in to see how the lads were doing.

Beforehand, I got the news that the Herrin Chokers had bombed against Cork but that was of little interest to me as I wondered if we were going to have a serious cut at avenging the humiliating loss we'd suffered to Kerry the previous September. I remember thinking in advance that there was no way we'd win this one, which, in retrospect, might (although correct) be termed a bit odd given that (a) delusional hopes of victory have never been slow to hit me when we're in the final and (b) as Monaghan showed this year, if you want to ambush Kerry then the quarters were when you really want to do it. Maybe I was just being realistic - we'd lost the Connacht final a few weeks previously to a poor Galway side and then had performed alarmingly badly in the subsequent qualifier clash with Cavan. And it was Kerry and it was also, as events transpired, John Maughan's final throw of the dice.

Valletta is an interesting place, with a honeycomb of tightly-knit streets on this finger of land that juts out into the Med and which is ringed by these fuck-off fortified walls and battlements. The old city has lots of nice little squares and churches and I meandered along down towards the sea, checking in every few minutes to see how we were doing. I reached the battlements by half-time and was then cursing myself for not being there to witness what sounded like a stirring first-half performance, one where we'd lived with the champions and were going in level (it was level, wasn't it?)

My walk then took on an uphill gradient and, with the relentless sun beating down on me, the going became tougher. Back home I discovered it was getting tougher too, as Michael O Muircheartaigh's melodious radio commentary streamed from my mobile telling me that his countymen had taken a decisive lead. Five, six, seven points to the good, all of a sudden it was all over. I never saw the last ten minutes when the legend of Austie was born but the match was over by then, all Austie did was to restore a respectable veneer to the losing scoreline.

The only sound now ricocheting around my head was that of Fuck, Fuck, Fuck and the epiphany hit me that I needed a beer, then another one and then the best part of a bottle of Maltese red wine with some truly forgettable food. But at least the sun was still shining and while we'd lost, we hadn't, like the previous year, been hammered by Kerry (although we wouldn't have long to wait for that to happen again). Falling into bed at the hotel some time later that evening, however, yours truly felt well hammered.

So that's the Maltese connection. No matches to worry about missing this time (Stan's latest fine mess doesn't count, I reckon) and less chance of a hangover tomorrow morning. I'm here for work, after all.

By the way, I never mentioned my trip to Croker last Sunday with my Dubettes, mainly because I'd no time to post yesterday. They were resplendently turned out in their jerseys and all ready to sing their Come on Yew Boyz in Blew for the U21 Dubs when the Herrin Chokers hit said Boys in Blew with three hammer blows in the opening fifteen minutes. A valiant fightback by the Dubs was then terminated when Galway rattled in their fourth goal before the break. Not even Tumescent Tom, perched behind his laptop up in the press box in the Hogan, could clutch too many comforting straws from that performance.

Strangely, the Dubettes didn't seem too put out. Maybe it was that godawful pink candyfloss that they'd been salivating about all week beforehand or else it was the cornettos that followed it down the hatch. Whatever it was, before half-time in the camogie final - when their adopted Cork seemed (correctly as it turned out) also to be heading for defeat - they both decided they'd had enough and were back at home bouncing on the trampoline in the garden by the time the Yella Bellies completed their first All-Ireland camogie success for all of 33 years. It was a day of high emotion at Croker but, in our case, more a day for a high intake of E numbers.

Managerial merry go-round in the West now over

2007-09-06T21:11:00.000+01:00

Galway yesterday announced that, after nearly a decade under foreign (i.e. Mayo) domination, their new manager will be a bona fide Herrin Choker. And not any old Herrin Choker either: they've given the job to Liam Sammon, a man with both a distinguished playing career for the county - one All-Ireland medal (1966) and three losing final appearances (1971, 1973 and 1974), the latter of which was against Heffo's Army where he missed a penalty. The new man has also a strong track record in coaching, where apparently he has a particular interest in the skills of the game. Well, that'll make a difference from Ford training them to belt the bejaysus out of anyone in a red and green jersey!

With that vacancy filled, Tommy Breheny still at the helm in Sligo, John Maughan's decision to stay with the Sheepstealers for another year and our own county's move to break with tradition by having a management team that stays in place for more than one year, it looks as if the managerial merry go-round west of the Shannon is over for this year. (I'm not sure what's the story with Leitrim - is Dessie Dolan still there?) Roll on the FBD League!

It's ladies' night and the feeling's right

2007-09-01T22:38:00.000+01:00

It looks like it might be time to dust down and reuse that old "What do you call a Mayoman with an All-Ireland medal?" joke as the ladies are, once again, back in the final, where they'll face reigning champions Cork in Croker later this month. Tonight up in Breffni Park, they overcame Tyrone by 2-13 to 2-8 in the semis to set up their first final appearance since 2003. Cora was, once more, our star turn, contributing 1-8 to the winning total.

I now have a bit of a dilemma to resolve. I previously gave the girls' All-Ireland appearances a wide berth, not wanting to put a male loser's hex on them but I'd already promised my Dubettes (whom I'll be taking to Croker next weekend for the camogie final, where they'll also get to shout for De Boyz En Blew in the U21 hurling decider) that we'd go to the final if Mayo made it that far. A promise made must be kept, I guess . . .

Nothing but the same old story

2007-08-26T23:56:00.000+01:00

The weekend’s not yet over and I’m already back at work and so with very little time to talk about today’s events at Croker where Kerry (yawn) qualified for their gazillionth All-Ireland final, overcoming the Dubs by two points.

Much-hyped it may have been but today’s semi-final was an ugly, ill-tempered affair, badly refereed by the incompetent John Bannon and largely devoid of any good football. Dublin were desperately disappointing, none more so than Ciaran Whelan who, despite his 6’4’’ frame managed to keep himself hidden for virtually the entire 70 minutes. Other key men, notably Conal Keaney and the Brogan boys, also failed to spark in the manner expected and overall Dublin played more poorly today than at any time previously in this year’s Championship.

Kerry, by contrast, were far better than in the quarter-final (no surprise there, then). While they had showed plenty of snarling aggression in that ugly opening 35 minutes (most of it embodied in corner-back Marc O Se who, amazingly, managed to avoid getting carded in the first half), in fairness most of it was a reaction to a number of late hits and verbals taunts meted out by De Boyz en Blew.

Whatever good football was played today was played by the Kerrymen. They opened and closed impressively in both halves and this was enough to give them victory on the day. In both halves, they ceded authority to the Dubs after blistering openings but while Dublin were able to overhaul them in the first 35 minutes, the 1-3 that Kerry bashed in early in the second half proved too much of a mountain to climb.

The Dubs did manage to reduce the deficit to a single point but Kerry then kicked for home, widening the gap to three before the Dubs reduced it to the minimum again but, tellingly, it was Kerry who got the final point to seal a two-point win. That close call against Monaghan in the quarters obviously stood to them today.

So too did their bench, where, once again, the two O’Sullivans came on and did damage against a tiring Dublin backline. The paucity of options on the bench available to the Dubs was shown by Pillar’s decision, following Kerry’s second half blitzkrieg, to send Ray Cosgrove into the fray. I ask you – Ray’s last good season for Dublin was in 2002 and he proceeded to prove the point that he had nothing to offer the game’s proceedings.

There’s little else to say about today’s match. Dublin underperformed once again on the big day, Kerry yet again had the greater hunger for success. There’s not all that much mystery, or, indeed, on today’s evidence, magic about how the big issues in Gaelic football are settled. That’s unlikely to change next month, where although the final offers some novelty in terms of line-up, the script is unlikely to prove original.

Up the Dubs!

2007-08-25T23:19:00.000+01:00

All work and no play makes WJ a dull boy. Certainly one with no time to devote to putting down a few sentences about what goes on at the weekend. Not even. Two word. Ones, like. What a week but, hey, it’s over and The Match is on tomorrow so here’s a few quick thoughts about it.

Quick and short, I suppose it should be – after all, there’s no point in adding to all those acres of Dub porn that’s being peddled at us this weekend. Amidst it all, the King of Dub Porn himself, Tom will no doubt be positively tumescent with anticipation for the big day and the excitement of seeing his beloved Dubs getting . . . the bejaysus hammered out of them once again by the Kerrymen?

As a card-carrying Bogger, there’s a part of me that always want to see the Dubs getting it in the neck. As a kid, I revelled in Kerry securing the upper hand in the Seventies tussle between them and took cruel, visceral delight in how the Kingdom comprehensively thrashed the Dubs in ’78 and again the following year. Even in the Eighties, by which time I was living in Dublin, I was still glad enough to see Kerry maintain their dominance, mainly because by then I’d had my own first-hand experience of what the crowing, cocky Dubs supporters can be like.

A bit of that is still there, I have to admit, whenever the “national” media is in full flow, extolling the virtues of what has been for over a decade a very ordinary county side. But - despite all that and the other things that rankle, such as the squatter’s rights granted over Hill 16 to the blue horde, the at times sheer stupidity of their supporters who never bloody turn up on time, the fact that rarely if ever do they have to stir from Croker (and when they do, spend all the next day giving out shite to Joe Duffy about it) and, yes, Tom Bloody Humphries - I still want them to win tomorrow. Why? Because it’s Kerry they’re playing – my enemy’s enemy time again – and, of course, because my own three little Dubs will also be shouting vociferously for De Boyz En Blew.

Will they do it? I really haven’t a clue, unlike Liam Hayes on Newstalk yesterday evening, who confidently predicted that the Dubs would win by seven or eight points. That fairly set Bomber Liston huffing and puffing but he, of course, wouldn’t hear of a Kerry defeat and was adamant that Pat O’Shea would have all manner of nefarious Plans B, C, and D (a bit like the Cat in the Hat with all those other little scrawny moggies hidden under his chapeau) ready for deployment.

Dublin are certainly the most consistent side this Summer and they have already exceeded what I thought they’d do (I said that they’d crash to the first half-decent side they met – Derry were that side but the Dubs beat them handily). They’ve also got a very settled lineup, albeit one that still has ten survivors from the last time they faced Kerry, back in 2004 when the Kingdom won pulling up. But the changes made since the Meath game, notably with Bernard Brogan (there’s a name to make the Kerrymen sit up and take notice) and Mark Vaughan coming in, have given the team a better balance and their midfield of Whelan and Ryan is performing better than ever.

It’s noteworthy that both sides have roughly the same kind of positives and negatives. Both have good attacks, decent midfields and pretty woeful defences. Kerry’s attack has the capacity to be more lethal, I think, but their defence looks more porous than Dublin’s, with Tom O’Sullivan painfully uncomfortable at full-back. If Dublin tear into that flaky backline from the off and build up a bit of a lead, it might be their day.

The big fear I’d have for them is that Kerry always up their game for the semi and, as we’ve twice found out to our cost, they up it again for the final. The quarter-final is the perfect time to ambush them: Munster is no good any more, as Cork discovered last year. Instead, the blow has to be a knockout one and Monaghan (in more ways than one) damn near delivered it a few weeks back. But the Kerry that will take the field tomorrow will be at least 100% better tuned than they were against Monaghan and so the Dubs will need to be in a position to up their game accordingly too.

And, of course, Kerry will be aching to put on a show for the Hill and knock those cocky Jacks down a peg or three, like their forefathers did before them. And if they’re looking for any further incentive, they’ll want to book their place in the first all-Munster face-off for Sam. As ever, Kerry won’t be lacking in reasons for why they want to win.

I have a horrible feeling that Kerry will be well up for it, that the Dubs will jam in second gear, that the Hill will go all quiet just when the team need their “support” and that Kerry will ease home by four or five. Then again, maybe Kerry are as poor as Liam Hayes claimed they were yesterday evening and, if so, the Dubs could be celebrating their first championship win over Kerry in exactly thirty years. But I still reckon Dubs fans should make it their business to purchase a copy of The Sun today, as included with it is a free DVD of that classic 1977 semi-final win. Just in case . . .

Excuse me waiter, this Meath performance is Corked

2007-08-20T14:23:00.000+01:00

I’ve been staying for the last few days in a jolly nice hotel in the Mid-West (Look up: it’s a whinge about Aer Lingus!) with the wife and chisellers but now comes payback, in terms of a week’s hard slog so I’ve little or no time to talk about yesterday’s match. I also have to come clean, lads (as they are wont to say frequently in these here parts), and admit that quality family time yesterday afternoon did not encompass live football action on the telly (llamas, yes, The Sunday Game Live, no – there’s no point trying to elaborate on this one so I won’t bother) but did get to jiyn Pett later on for the highlights on the Sunday Game.

Didn’t I say ages ago that Cork were looking good for Sam dish ear? (I did, I'm sure, but I can't find the damn link at the minute to prove the point). I know, I know, I abandoned them and went over to the Royals for yesterday’s match but it was a well-beaten path and, with James Masters crocked and Cork’s generally poor form in the two matches since the Munster final, you have to acknowledge that it did look the more likely outcome. However, the loss of Anthony Moyles – who has been outstanding all year – hurt Meath arguably far more than did the loss of Masters did to Cork. Moyles has been one of the main engines behind Meath’s revival and they didn’t look the same team without him. I don’t think it was a coincidence that, in his absence, Cork were able to run unchallenged through Meath yesterday.

1-16 is a good score in any game but to rack up a total like that in an All-Ireland semi-final without your star forward was a bit special. In the left-footed maestro’s absence, the other forwards – in particular, Donnacha O’Connor – stepped up to the mark perfectly, to the extent that it didn’t look as if the side missed him at all. The question now for Billy Morgan is whether or not his team has a better balance without Masters which, for a bainisteoir, must be the kind of problem you want to have going into an All-Ireland final.

Cork abandoned the me-too long ball game yesterday and reverted to what they’re good at, which is their fast moving, hard running style. As they’ve done all Summer, Murphy and Kavanagh completely bossed midfield and so Cork had all the possession they needed to run up a winning score, whereas Meath were attempting to survive on the proverbial scraps. Although Meath stuck with them fairly well in the first half, ultimately they were blown away by Cork’s relentless waves of attack. Cork’s goal, when it came, was a bit fortuitous - as Kevin MacMahon’s shot was deflected by Caoimhin King beyond Brendan Murphy and into the net – but it ended the match as a contest with only ten minutes of the second half played. In the end, Meath got completely beaten out the gate.

The main talking point last night (apart from the result) was how well Cork had out-Meathed Meath in the thuggery stakes, in particular the way in which Noel O’Leary poleaxed poor old Graham Geraghty. Now, as Sean Moran in today’s Irish Times points out, GG himself has evaded sanction all Summer – and, indeed, long before that - for landing sly belts (except, notably, when they occurred on the training ground) so it would be ironic were O’Leary to miss the All-Ireland for flooring the same gentleman. He should, of course, but, this being GAA-style discipline, there’s no question of this happening.

And so, we’re down to three – Cork, Kerry and Dublin. Jesus wept: why am I bloody bothering to write about this? As chance would have it, work is calling, nay, bellowing, so, for you Kerry v Dublin junkies, all I can do is refer you to this cogent as ever contribution from my fellow countyman, which, for De Boyz en Blew, makes for some chilling reading.

And then there were four . . .

2007-08-15T21:53:00.000+01:00

We're down to the last four in the hunt for Sam and I'm down to perhaps my last little bit of time to bash something out about Sunday's first semi-final, due to work pressures and travelling over and back across the country pressures and what-not. (I'm writing this holed up in a hotel room in Limerick. Here's a good Limerick one I heard today: The Mayor of Limerick is asked about the county's chances of lifting this year's hurling All-Ireland and he says he's not sure how it will go but reckons that Limerick will have good stab at it.) Okay, where was I?

The semi-final line-up isn't all that odd, I suppose, given that three of the quartet made it to this stage last year, while our place (yes, OUR place!) is taken this year by the resurgent Royals. It's even less odd when you factor in that Kerry and Cork have chuff all to do any year to get to the quarter-final stage, though Kerry have been made to work a little bit harder than usual this time around to reach the penultimate round. So too have the Dubs, though once they got past Meath they found the going much easier.

Although Meath are the new fresh-faced kids on the block this year, they're clear favourites with the bookies to beat Cork (or at least I'm nearly sure they are but I can't link to Paddy Power because they've installed a Nanny-knows-best blocking filter on their bloody in-house broadband service here at the hotel. I am over 18, guys, FFS). Cork certainly appear to have gone off the boil over the course of the Summer and it's now difficult to rate them as serious All-Ireland contenders (which probably means they'll paste Meath on Sunday). James Masters is a huge loss to them and while the young lad Goulding is a good replacement, Masters is the top scoring player to date in the whole championship so Cork will definitely miss him on Sunday.

With their strong backline and their formidable midfield, Cork should be difficult to beat but it's going forward where they've had their problems and unless they figure out some kind of coherent attacking plan, they're going to struggle. Cork don't seem to have figured out any kind of coherent tactics on this front, in particular how they play Michael Cussen and, more specifically, what kind of ball they put into him. With Donaghy - last year's original target man - being kept scoreless by Monaghan last Sunday, perhaps it's time for everyone to forget about creating Donaghy clones and Cork would, I think, do well to do so. Their best game - as exemplified in the Munster final - is a running one and while this kind of approach is difficult to execute in the wide open spaces at Croker, it's a tactic they need to employ more than they've done in the last two matches.

As I said the other week, Meath have, in the recent past, had the hex on Cork and with their good qualifier run topped off by that excellent quarter-final win over Tyrone, they'll go into Sunday's semi-final brimming with confidence. However, they have their own worries in attack because although Bray, Farrell, Byrne and Geraghty got some great scores the last day against Tyrone, they kicked some howlers too and they can't afford as large a wide account the next day against Cork.

I think this one could be very close but Meath's greater momentum might be enough to get them over the wire. If so, they'll be in the happy position of being able to sit back and smirk at the Dubs for a whole week before seeing whether or not they'll get to have a third round with their great rivals in September. I'm not sure it'll all work out like that but this is one for another day.

Those lovely ladies

2007-08-13T15:41:00.000+01:00

It's remiss of me, I know, not to have said much to date about our ladies' (no, that's nor Our Lady's and it has nothing to do with the impending Knock Novena either) senior championship campaign. Unlike the lads, the girls have been beating before and behind them all Summer long and already they've claimed the scalps of Galway, Kerry, Dublin, Waterford and Monaghan. They beat the latter in monsoon conditions in Mullingar (how's this for a headline? "Mayo mná triumph in Mullingar monsoon". Not bad, eh?) on Saturday evening to reach the All-Ireland semi-final. An appearance in Croker on the fourth Sunday in September for the final itself is now starting to come into view. I'm not sure who they'll be playing in the semis - it could be Tyrone who walloped spots off Armagh in the other quarter-final played in Mullingar on Saturday evening.

Cora Staunton is having, even by her exalted standards, one hell of a season. 2-13 against Galway, 1-10 against Waterford, 0-9 against both Kerry and the Dubs and 1-9 the last night against Monaghan. Johnno, take note!

It’s Kerry v Dublin . . . but only just!

2007-08-12T22:58:00.000+01:00

It’s the match that the so-called national media has been dreaming about all year. Like they were last year when only Mayo stood in the way of its consummation. Instead, we screwed the Dubs and then, for our pains, got well and truly screwed ourselves by the Kerrymen.

But that was then and now is now . . . and so, now, let the presses roll with all those acres of newsprint about days long ago when the players sported hair that was far too long and shorts that were the wrong side of skimpy and Micheal O Hehir’s foghorn-like tones ruled the airwaves. Yes, folks, its Kerry v Dublin time again.

But it very nearly wasn’t because both the Leinster and Munster champions faced – and eventually faced down – tough Ulster opposition this weekend at Croke Park, in doing so keeping the Northern province without representation at the penultimate stage for the second year in a row. The West, by the way, is absent from this particular party for the second time in three years.

While they both skirted with danger, it was the Kerrymen who came closest to hitting the ditch, as Monaghan looked to have their number for most of the seventy minutes today, only to falter at the death. The Dubs could – and, perhaps, should - have won comfortably yesterday but a dose of the wobbles in the last ten minutes cut their margin of victory to three points, with Derry missing a late goal chance that could have earned them a draw.

Having seen our lads being comprehensively hammered by Derry, I had hopes that the Oak Leaf lads might be capable of springing a surprise, even if they would have to do so amidst a steaming cauldron of blue. That was the big fear for Derry: having played in front of small crowds all year and having virtually no recent big-match experience in front of a capacity crowd at Croker - their 2004 semi-final was against Kerry, in a less than half full HQ – the big fear was that they would freeze. Or poo themselves. Or both.

This being a major cultural event in the city, I took my three little Dubs out for a reccie a few minutes before throw-in to let them see the colour and practice their Come on Yew Boyz En Blew in the open air (well, I let the windows down in the car). And what cultural delights we got to witness too, such as the imbibing of cider on the kerbside and the happy sight of thousands of blue-clad Summer-only supporters streaming - late again! - into their beloved Hill.

Back at base, we all settled down on the couch to watch the battle unfold and a good battle it was too. Both sides had decent forwards and dodgy enough rearguards so this factor, as well as the wide open spaces at Croker, made for plenty of chances at either end. Liam O’Malley would, no doubt, have been happy to see Paddy Bradley skinning somebody else and the Derryman’s point-taking was superb all day. For Dublin, the Brogan brothers (from play) and the peroxide Mark Vaughan, deadly all afternoon from frees, were doing the most damage. Conal Keaney, their best forward all Summer, was getting precious little change out of the excellent Kevin McCloy.

The Dubs took a two-point lead into the break and it was noteworthy that all of Derry’s eight points had come from play in that opening 35 minutes. It was also significant, and highly unusual, that Dublin were managing to stay in front without having to rely on goals. That they managed to win by three points without finding the net was, to quote that noted Dublin sage Joe Duffy, extraordinary.

It’s certainly the case that the Dubs look for, and hence rely on, goals to keep them afloat more than any other major county does. So often, Dublin forwards receive possession twenty or thirty yards out and, instead of taking the handy point, will put the head down and make bull-headed for the opposition’s goal. Sometimes it works but more often than not it doesn’t and so easy points go abegging.

I have a theory that this is all to do with the Hill, 90% of whom are probably Man United fans and whose knowledge of the niceties of Gaelic football is a little bit sketchy. Three quick points in succession will never rock their boat up on the Hill but, if De Boyz En Blew score a goal, all hell breaks loose. The team quacks probably have some bullshit psychology about feeding off the positive energy from the Hill so, to satisfy the beast, the lads go for goals when they should really be going for points.

Well, that theory worked well up till yesterday, when the Dubs racked up 18 points and didn’t need a goal to see them home. It didn’t stop them trying to get a few, mind, but they did nail plenty of good points from well out. What really caught the eye, however, was Mark Vaughan’s free-taking. Say what you want about him with his bleached blond hair and his white boots but his old-fashioned, off-the-ground place-kicking was absolutely flawless as he whacked over point after point. At least three were Fifties and one early one must have been nearly sixty yards out.

For ages, Pillar tolerated Mossie Quinn’s deplorable shooting (okay from within twenty yards but your proverbial grannie was better than him further out) and, if my memory serves me correctly, we had plenty of reason to thank Mossie’s wayward deadball shooting in last year’s semi. It was a problem crying, nay, screaming out to be sorted, something that only happened in the replay against Meath. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dublin’s oft-cited failure to close out games hasn’t been much of an issue since then.

Derry ran out of puff early enough in the second half, especially after Stephen Cluxton’s two point-blank saves when Derry goals looked a certainty. Their failure to convert those chances and continued good point-scoring at the other end – even Jayo managed to knock one over from well out – put the Dubs well clear and heading for home.

It’s difficult to know what to make of the last ten minutes, which Derry virtually owned and during which they reeled the Dubs back in from seven to three points. Pillar seemed to be reverting to type at that stage – how many changes can you make in a minute? – and, suddenly, Derry were ripping through them with ease. They needed a goal and although Bradley did get to pull the trigger, Henry deflected his shot away to safety and with it went Derry’s remaining hopes of success. The Dubs were worth their three points margin of victory, I thought.

Not so Kerry, who, for the second match in a row could and should have lost. Once again, a poor refereeing decision helped them home, when Meath ref David Coldrick (is that fella trying to write his life story while reffing? He seems to spend all day writing notes in his book) failed to penalise Darragh O Se for a wildly dangerous kick in the midst of a tussle for a loose ball around the centre of the field. Instead, play was allowed to continue and seconds later Tomas O Se fisted over the winning point.

It was a victory Kerry didn’t deserve and a match Monaghan were desperately unlucky to lose. As I’d hoped they would, Monaghan tore into the champions from the off and showed scant regard for the general well-being of their illustrious opponents. The quarter-finals is the perfect stage at which to ambush Kerry – they’re still not in top gear and this year they had an unusually long lay-off after their jammy Munster final success. They were vulnerable and Monaghan proved this over the course of a flinty first half performance.

They would probably have been disappointed to go in level at the break, as they should have built better on Tommy Freeman’s excellently-taken penalty goal, but they continued to take the game to Kerry in the second 35 minutes. With less than 15 minutes to go, they were three points up and Kerry were looking in trouble. The high ball into Donaghy wasn’t working and the insecure Kerry backline was continuing to leak scores.

Declan O’Sullivan’s well-taken goal thirteen minutes from the end – which brought Kerry level - looked like the hammer blow from which Monaghan wouldn’t recover but they just dusted themselves down and proceeded to tack on two more points inside the next five minutes. But that was it: Kerry had brought on Bryan Sheehan (what other county could afford to have a player like Sheehan kicking his heels on the bench for an hour?) and he put over two crucial points from play before the cruel denouement of O Se’s winning score.

Maybe it was just as well Monaghan lost today rather than getting a draw as they would almost certainly have taken a comprehensive beating in the replay. They gave absolutely everything today and it would have been difficult for them to go out and do the same again in a replay, especially since the element of surprise would also have been missing. I’d say the Dubs were happy enough too with this outcome: they wouldn’t have been overjoyed to see Kerry get another game under their belts before the semi.

I know Big Fat Tom would have been a bit pissed off if he’d lost another chance to flog that book of his but Monaghan, even more so than in 1985, were hard done by today. Twice this year, Kerry have ridden their luck but, significantly perhaps, they’ve used up the full reserve to reach only the semi-final and they’ll have two more hard matches to win if they’re to retain Sam. I’m not sure that their luck will or, more importantly deserves to, hold all the way to September. Up the Dubs! (Yes, you did read that last sentence correctly).

Super Mac on the silver screen

2007-08-10T14:38:00.000+01:00

He can't be thinking of retiring anytime soon after this little cameo, can he?

Cork and Meath set up semi-final showdown

2007-08-05T22:47:00.001+01:00

So it’s Cork and Meath that have emerged from the Connacht/Ulster half of the All-Ireland series, with both qualifiers dumping out provincial champions to reach the penultimate stage. In doing so, they get to reactivate a significant rivalry of Gaelic football’s recent past, one that gave us two All-Ireland finals in the Eighties and another two at either end of the Nineties. This time the battle will be for a place in the final rather than for Sam itself, but, make no mistake, whoever emerges victorious from this scrap will be strong contenders in the final.

Poor old Sligo never showed up yesterday, which was a pity because their support certainly did. This being the holiday weekend and all that, I was on my way into town on de One-Tew-Tree with the wife and chisellers in the early afternoon and a good 80% of the colour around Croker was of the black and white variety. Sadly, once they got inside the ground, they had little to cheer about.

Sligo needed a good start if they were to have any chance but they left at home their Connacht championship form which had seen off Roscommon and Galway in style and, once John Miskella goaled for the Rebels, the game was up. A rally of sorts seemed to be on the point of bubbling up in the second half but Sligo really needed a goal at that stage to get back into it and that was never going to happen. In the end, Cork won with ease without playing at all well and Sligo’s championship campaign fizzled out far more tamely than their cracking Connacht form suggested it would.

Tame is not a word you could use to describe the day’s second quarter-final, between Ulster champions Tyrone and Colm Coyle’s born-again Meath. I was licking my chops in anticipation of this one from the moment the draw was made last Sunday and I wasn’t disappointed with the action. It was a cracking match and I was delighted that Meath – as I said they would – made nonsense of the ridiculous odds they were being quoted at to win this one (5/2, to be precise). This was always a match likely to produce an upset, with Tyrone lacking a few key players and Meath clearly a side on the up.

In the end, the surprise was that Meath didn’t win by more as Tyrone found themselves completely outplayed at Croker for the first time since we ambushed them at the same stage back in 2004. (They were down a few of their main men that day too). The goals from Canavan and Mulligan kept them in the game but their inability to keep a steady supply of points up meant that, faced with Meath’s free-scoring forward line, they were always going to struggle to make a match of it.

While it was the young guns such as Bray, Farrell, O’Rourke and Byrne that caught the eye in the first half, it was the two ould fellas, Geraghty and Fay, who shone in the second. Fay was almost able to repel on his own Tyrone’s offensive efforts in the second half and Geraghty struck the game’s decisive score when, put through with only John Devine to beat, he nonchalantly lifted the ball over the keeper’s head and watched it sail gently into the net. That ended, at a stroke, Tyrone’s comeback and put Meath back on the road towards what could be their first All-Ireland final since 2001.

I suppose they’ll now be favourites to beat Cork, given that their respective form appears to be heading in opposite directions. I’ve been disappointed with Cork since the Munster final and, if they play with the same leaden style as they’ve now done in their last two outings, Meath could well paste them. I read before yesterday’s match that, in this new post-2000 All-Ireland structure, Cork have yet to lose a quarter-final and that record still holds today but it’s also the case that they have yet to win a semi-final in this brave new world. (Okay, all three losses were to Kerry). More relevant, perhaps, is the fact that that old rivalry with Meath isn’t one that has always gone their way: over the course of those four finals they contested in the Eighties and Nineties (1987, 1988, 1990 and 1999), the Royals came out on top on three occasions. They could well do so on Sunday week as well.

One of the biggest cheers raised yesterday for Meath’s victory will surely have come from Cork’s near neighbours. Those cute Kerry hoors will now, with their Northern nemesis slain, be confidently anticipating their first back-to-back All-Irelands in over twenty years. They might well be right to do so but they still have a few hurdles to get over first and if it is Meath that lines up against them next month, they’ll certainly face a much tougher seventy minutes than we gave them last September.

Pierce Hanley's off to Australia

2007-07-31T18:32:00.000+01:00

The bad news doesn't end, by the looks of it, with our being knocked out of the championship: the Mayo News has reported that recent senior debutant Pierce Hanley has all but agreed to take up a two-year professional contract to play Aussie rules. This is seriously bad news: the young Ballaghman has already provided evidence at senior level - in the recent qualifier matches against both Cavan and Derry - of his precocious talent and he's one of the crop of youngsters around whom Johnno will, no doubt, have been planning to build his new senior team for next year.

We can ill afford to lose someone with Pierce's array of talent and our hopes of building a team that is able to compete once again at national level will be diminished by his departure from the inter-county scene. It's not hard to see why the opportunity to play football on a professional basis would be an attraction for a player like Pierce - that RTE programme about the O hAilpin brothers, with Sean Og working full-time and training in the evenings down in Cork while the two lads lived it up as professional athletes over in Oz, showed clearly why this would be the case - and it would be churlish not to wish the lad the best for what is likely to be the adventure of a lifetime for him. You can't help thinking, though, that it would have been better (for the county, if not for Pierce) had those Aussie scouts stuck to watching the likes of Kerry and Tyrone instead.

Interesting quarter-final draw

2007-07-30T09:41:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening's draw for the All-Ireland football quarter-finals threw out a few interesting matches. I don't know what it is with these draws but, up until now, they have had a habit of producing all the wrong kinds of pairings so, on that basis, yesterday evening I was fully expecting to see the likes of Tyrone v Derry and Dublin v Meath. Thankfully, it didn't happen: instead we got four cross-provincial matches, with two Ulster/Leinster clashes (Tyrone v Meath and Derry v Dublin), an Ulster/Munster pairing (Monaghan v Kerry) and a Connacht/Munster one (Sligo v Cork).

That last one is likely to be the curtain-raiser in next Saturday's double-header at Croker, where Tyrone and Meath are also on the bill. De Dubs get their own day out for the match with Derry the following Saturday, which means that Kerry and Monaghan will get the chance to fill Croker on their own the day after. Well, the Monaghan crowd will, along with the fifty or so punters that'll show up from the Kingdom.

It's an intriguing quarter-final draw. The strength of the four teams coming through the qualifiers, and the way they've been paired, means that all four provincial champions are vulnerable. It's unlikely that they'll all lose but I'd be surprised if at least two of them don't come crashing down.

Sligo are, obviously, the most likely lads to lose. Beating Galway was, as the cliché goes, their All-Ireland and the month they've had to savour that historic win won't have done anything to aid their preparations for next Saturday at Croke Park. Sligo have beaten New York, Roscommon and Galway this Summer but Cork will be a big step up for them and, much as I'd like to see them do it, it's difficult to go for anything but a decisive Cork win in this one. Since the new structure was introduced in 2001, Mayo are the only Connacht champions to have progressed past the quarter-finals (Galway's All-Ireland win in '01 was, of course, via the back door) and I don't expect to see Sligo altering that record.

Tyrone and Meath should be a fascinating encounter and it is, arguably, the tie of the round. Tyrone seem to be building a head of steam again and, if the likes of Stephen O'Neill and Brian Dooher are available, you'd have to fancy them as genuine All-Ireland contenders. However, Meath will will really put it up to them and will, after their qualifier travels, relish being back again playing in front of what's likely to be a full house at Croker. Meath are a better side now than they were when they faced the Dubs back in June and, while they're probably a bit too raw to go all the way this year, if they get a good start on Saturday Tyrone could have their work cut out to get past them.

Derry will also put it up to the Dubs the following weekend, as the counties face off in the championship for the first time since the All-Ireland semi-final back in 1994 when the Oak Leaf lads won by a point on their way to their first All-Ireland title. The hype machine will make de Dubs huge favourites to win but Derry will present them with tougher opposition than anything they've faced to date and previous years have shown that the first half-decent side to get their hands on the Dubs (that was us last year) has a great chance of beating them. That said, the Dubs have had the benefit this year of two hard games against Meath and they do look a better side than twelve months ago. They'll need to be at the top of their game, with Derry - following wins over Armagh, ourselves and Laois - now on a roll and all de pressure and de media attention on de Dubs. It all might prove too much for them, the poor dears.

Monaghan are on something of a roll too and, while there's never really a good time to face Kerry, a quarter-final meeting is probably as good a time as any. The Farneymen have made great strides this year and their demolition of Derry in the Ulster semi-final now looks even more impressive, given the latter's good form since then in the qualifiers. Monaghan almost caught Tyrone in the Ulster final and then walloped the bejaysus out of Donegal on Saturday night (League, howarya? None of the four NFL semi-finalists, ourselves included, made it into the hat for the All-Ireland quarter-finals, which has to be a record of some sorts) so they'll come to Croker with their confidence high and their recent form impressive. Kerry, meanwhile, have been indolent since their fortunate Munster final win over Cork but, Kerry being Kerry, you can expect the cute hoors to move up a gear or two when they get to Croker. Kerry should prevail in this first championship meeting between the counties since 1985 (when it took two matches to separate them, in the same year that we also took the Dubs to a replay) but, before they do, they'll know they've been in a contest.

Semi-final lineup? Cork v Meath and Derry v Kerry. You heard it here first!

Metamorphosis

2007-07-24T16:14:00.001+01:00

Back from a relaxing few days in the west (where there was mercifully little in the way of rain, I'm happy to report), it's time to sort out the immediate future for this blog. As I mentioned the other day, now that the lads have made their exit from this year's Championship, that well and truly buggers things up in terms of raw material on which to report. (How bad things have got so quickly is evidenced by this piece in the Mayo News about an article written by Joe Brolly where he reportedly said that Conoreen is "no good" as a player. Please: is this all we're left to talk about? We all know Brolly is a bollocks - an occasionally insightful and sometimes witty bollocks but a bollocks, nonetheless, and what else, pray tell, does one expect a bollocks to come out with but a pile of, well, bollocks? I rest my case.)

It's definitely time to move on. In my case, prior to putting the blog into dry dock for the winter around early October, it's time for a little bit of metamorphosis. Not the kind that befell poor old Gregor Samsa in Kafka's acclaimed short story of the same title, I hasten to add, though such a fate might be just the job for our friend Mr Brolly. Instead, what I have in mind is to use this forum (as I've been doing to some degree up to now) to discuss the rest of the championship, now that (sniff!) we're out of the running.

So too, of course, are Galway, following their defeat to a resurgent Meath at the weekend and Cork have joined the Royals in the last eight, though a plucky Louth side really made them work for the win. This coming weekend, the quarter-final lineup will be completed (for what it's worth, my money's on Derry and Donegal to make it through) and on Sunday we'll have the draw itself. In other words, the real business of the championship is at last about to get underway.

Homeward bound

2007-07-19T11:57:00.000+01:00

We're fleeing the metropolis en famille later on this evening, heading for the west to the place which - even though I haven't lived there on an ongoing basis for getting on towards thirty years at this stage - I still mentally call home. The three little Dubs in the back travel best at night so we won't leave here till after eight, by which time the M50 should be clear enough and the road to the west similarly uncluttered.

One drawback of night driving - and, despite the still-long evenings, it will be dark by the time we get there - is that we won't get to see those two natural landmarks that, when they first appear, tell you that you're back on home soil. Just after passing the county border between Ballinlough and Ballyhaunis, the road rises and, when you reach the brow of the hill, the squat, imposing bulk of Nephin comes into view for the first time. Soon afterwards, away to the left, you can also see the cone-shaped Reek sticking its head out of the far horizon. Once I clock both of these lads, I know I'm not far from home but it'll be dark by the time we get that far tonight so I'll have to resort to the mental hard drive to conjure up the required images.

I'm looking forward to spending a few days in Mayo, giving me the chance to thumb through the sports pages in the Western (I know, I can always see what they're saying online but it's a different tactile experience to read the print version) and, over a few beers, to chat about how Johnno might reconstruct the team for 2008, starting at full-back. And to think about what I do with this blog over the coming six months, now that - a bit like the Russians turning off the gas - my raw material has completely dried up on me. The championship rumbles on, I know, but it's just not the same, is it?

If you're up to reading about it . . .

2007-07-17T22:25:00.000+01:00

There's plenty, as you might expect, about the Derry defeat in the Mayo News. There's Mike Finnerty's match report, which obviously makes for an uncomfortable read. There's Daniel Carey's report on Johnno's after-match comments, most of which you'll probably have seen already as they were contained in yesterday's match report in the Indo. There's a head-scratching "where the f**k do we go from here?" piece by Jimmy Lyons (surely not Aghamore's Jimmy Lyons, he who lined out for the county a quarter of a century ago?), which won't, I fear, help to lighten your mood. Neither, I reckon, will Kevin McStay's column, in which the Ballina man discusses the fundamental nature of the rebuilding process that Johnno must now undertake. Nor will The Voice of Experience himself, Sean Rice, who also - you've guessed it - talks about how it's time to start all over again. No, none of that did it for me either. But do you know what I think will? A nice cool glass (or two) of Pinot Grigio, that's what. Slainte, hombres.

How did it come to this?

2007-07-16T11:23:00.000+01:00

It’s only the middle of July and already our 2007 championship season is over. It’s been our worst Summer’s football in years and it’s the first time since the new format was put in place in 2001 that we’ve found ourselves idle so early in the year. Think about it this way: today is exactly a year on from the date of last year’s Connacht final. After that narrow win over Galway, we were to have four big days out in Croker in 2006. In other words, our season was just getting revved up this time last year, whereas this year it’s already over.

There’s no Croker for us this year, our only visits to HQ in 2007 will remain those two we had at the fag-end of the league campaign in April. It’s the first time in four years that we’ve failed to reach the All-Ireland series and it’s also the first time we’ve taken such a pasting in the qualifiers. In short, it’s been a year to forget.

So how did it come to this? Seen in the cold light of defeat, the warning signs were there for some time. While the early part of the league was encouraging, the way in which the tinkering with team selection started after the league semi-final with Galway showed that Johnno and his colleagues were in no way sure about what kind of side they wanted to field for the championship. The changes since then have been dizzying, with the result that the team that started in Celtic Park bore only a faint resemblance to that which lined out against Donegal in the league final.

Experimentation with team selection was a definite requirement after Johnno took over, especially in light of last year’s disastrous All-Ireland. But why did it take till late April to start this process? Up till then, changes were largely made out of necessity, due to the severe injury list we’d built up. Two big decisions – Kilcullen at full-back and BJ at centre-back – appeared to be set in stone right through the league but Kilcullen was jettisoned following the semi-final with Galway and BJ’s career as centre-back ended in the confusion in Salthill.

Instead of using the league to try out different players, this year we’ve used the championship and, in particular, the two qualifier games to blood the next generation. Seen in this light, it’s not too difficult to see why we took the hammering we did from Derry. There’s a time and a place for team building and it’s not the month of July.

There are a few factors which I think are relevant in terms of explaining how we came to this pass. The first is, obviously, the residual after-effects of last year’s All-Ireland final. How many of the players – in particular those who had been involved in the 2004 thrashing by Kerry as well – were really up for another long, hard campaign? Not too many of them, I fear.

You need to be up for the fight to stay in the championship and at Celtic Park on Saturday, it was brutally clear that we weren’t. I remember turning to The Brother after Derry got their first goal and saying that this was the moment of truth: we’d soon find out if they had anything in the tank. As became painfully clear over the following twenty minutes or so, we didn’t. It’s hardly a coincidence that our best performers against Derry were the U21s that had just come in. It’s also obvious that these guys will, as early as next year, form the backbone of Johnno’s new Mayo team.

The second relevant factor is the league and how it threw our championship preparations out of kilter. This happened in two ways. I think we became obsessed (I know I did) about the need to finish in the top four and so secure our place in the new Division 1 in 2008. Because of this, league points became more important than building a championship team and, while we avoided dropping down to Division 2, we’ve paid a very high price for our top tier league status. Are Dublin or even Cork any the worse off for having failed to make the league grade? I think not.

The other thing is that, once we’d secured our league status, winning the damn thing became the priority. Think back to the league semi-final with Galway: they didn’t give a rat’s arse about that game and spent most of the seventy minutes toying with us. In large part, our win over them there contributed to our downfall in Salthill. Then, having got to the final, we went and lost it, picking up in the process more catcalls about what chokers we were and how the Croke Park hoodoo had struck again. This was the last thing we needed just as our championship preparations were supposed to be getting into top gear.

Which leads us, inevitably, to the month of May and all that happened then. The sun was shining - remember that? There was an election on too and it can’t be denied that Johnno’s election campaign cost us dearly. It certainly helps to explain why we emerged so ill-prepared and incapable for battle at Salthill. Just at the time when we needed his genius, Johnno was – understandably – using his grey matter primarily in pursuit of the third seat in Mayo for Fine Gael. Running for election is a 24 x 7 commitment and with Johnno giving his all to the election campaign, football was bound to suffer.

You could even argue that the way we approached the league was part of a fiendish political master plan, in that a league title won would have helped deliver the votes. I’m not so sure: the Galway match took place just four days before polling day and so the best way to secure football-minded votes would obviously have been to beat Galway in Salthill. I think the answer is a far simpler one: Johnno’s mind was focused on politics rather than on football during those crucial weeks prior to the clash with Galway.

Whatever the reasons are for our failure to mount a serious championship campaign this year, one thing is sure and that’s that we cannot change the outcome now. We need instead to look forward and so the last thing we need is another witch-hunt by the County Board. While I think, for the reasons outlined above, that Johnno has some questions to answer about the campaign, I also believe that he, along with his management team, is the man who is best placed to engineer another resurgence in our footballing fortunes.

Speaking to the Indo today, Johnno makes the blindingly obvious point that the team is in transition but he also says that the next few years will be a time of great opportunity for players to step forward and show what they’re made of. We're fortunate in that we have an extremely talented bunch of young players coming through - ten of last year's All-Ireland winning U21s are already on the senior panel - and Johnno's task will be to find the right blend of youth and experience for 2008.

Next year we’ll be under no pressure in the league and we can spend all Spring experimenting to our heart’s content. We won’t (unless lightning strikes twice) be faced with the prospect of playing Galway in May and, with the Tribesmen now in obvious decline and the Rossies all over the shop, our main opponents in Connacht next year could well be Leitrim and the new provincial champions Sligo. With Johnno fully focused on the job, we’d have to fancy our chances of front-door entry to the All-Ireland series next year. So while we can only watch from the sidelines as this year's championship plays out, we shouldn't be too downhearted. We’ll be back, more than likely next year, with big days out in Croker to look forward to again. And, who knows, unlike this year, we might even get a real Summer too.

Derry 2-13 Mayo 1-6: end of the road following Bogside battering

2007-07-14T22:50:00.000+01:00

After 296 miles behind the wheel today, it certainly felt like the end of the road. Over six hours driving, soaked to the skin twice in the first half and then, just when it looked like we were starting to get the measure of the home team early in the second, it all went totally pear-shaped. We ended up, once again, getting beaten out the gate and this time we couldn’t even blame the referee. Well, at least the Derry crowd were nice, hospitable people and I finally got to lay eyes for the first time on the Walled City, at last getting the chance to proclaim that I had stood in all 32 counties of Ireland.

That’s about as good a boast any Mayoman in the vicinity of Celtic Park could have made at around five o’clock this afternoon, as we surveyed the wreckage of yet another championship hammering. Ever since the draw was made last Sunday, we knew this was going to be a tough assignment and, while we had real doubts as to whether or not we would make it through to tomorrow evening’s draw for the third round, I don’t think we had any real fears that we’d take the kind of hiding that we eventually did.

The odd thing was that, although we played poorly for much of the seventy minutes, for a good deal of the game it looked as if we might just do it. We started the match like the weather – horribly. The ball was thrown in, the heavens promptly opened and Derry immediately took control in the treacherous conditions. By the time the rain had eased, we were already four points down, Paddy Bradley was – as we’d feared would happen - skinning Liam O’Malley and Derry were winning all the ball that was flying round – and there was plenty of it, as it was proving impossible for anyone to get a clear catch – in the middle.

Then, all of a shot, we were back in it. A mistake by the Derry keeper gifted a soft goal to Barry Moran and this was followed soon afterwards by a Conor Mortimor free. So, despite having been comprehensively outplayed in the opening twenty minutes, we were level. Barry Moran went on to score two more points after that, one of which

That’s how it looked to be shaping up for the first ten or fifteen minutes of the second half, during which time we virtually controlled midfield and drove forward repeatedly. Aidan should really have been a second goal but although Derry went in two points in front, we were happy enough at the break to be still in with a shout. If the lads could up their performance in the second half, went the line of thinking, we might just shade it.Kilcoyne had replaced an injured-looking Alan Dillon at the break and he looked really up for it, kicking a nice early point and generally making a nuisance of himself. A Pierce Hanley point then pulled us level and the stage looked set for the lads to ease ahead and kick for home.

And then, almost completely without warning, the roof fell in on us. We’d kicked a few bad wides, Barry Moran narrowly missed another goal chance and then Killer went off injured and his departure seemed to unbalance the side completely. Enda Muldoon began to win ball at midfield and our profligacy in front of the posts was thrown into sharp relief when Derry raced up the other end and got a goal which, like our own one in the first half, had as much to do with defensive shortcomings as it had to forward invention. And so, all of a sudden, we were a goal down with twenty minutes to play. Of itself, this shouldn’t have been terminal but their stranglehold around the middle became more pronounced and the main beneficiary was Paddy Bradley who, as he’d done in the first half, proceeded to rip Liam O’Malley to pieces.

The next ten minutes was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Everything Derry tried came off, everything we attempted fell flat on its face. Super Mac came on but it was too late to make any difference. Derry ended up scoring points for fun as we lost all sense of purpose and the first of our supporters began to bolt for the exit.

Then, to cap it all off, Derry began flinging the ball around from one to the other and, with Celtic Park ringing to the repeated cries of olé, olé olé, the ball was worked over to Muldoon who lobbed Clarke for Derry’s second green flag. That really was the end of the road for our 2007 championship hopes.

We can have no complaints about the result. It was a match we could have won but when Derry put it up to us in the second half, it became all too clear all too quickly that we had no response in us. Maybe the scar tissue from last September was a factor but that kind of analysis is for another day. The simple fact was that this afternoon we were well beaten by a side that showed a far greater desire to win than we possessed. It now means that, for the first time since 2003, we’ve failed to make it to the All-Ireland series and that there’ll be no big days out for us in Croker this year. In other words, it’s the end of the road for us . . . for this year.

Northern exposure tomorrow?

2007-07-13T15:12:00.000+01:00

Because of the wonderful scheduling arising from the current championship structure, here we are, for the second time in just seven days (following a seven-week layoff - what's all this crack about sevens?), on the eve of another shit-or-bust championship clash. While last Saturday's match never really evoked any kind of "oh jaysus, this could be it till the FBD in January" trepidation in advance, tomorrow's trek northwards certainly does. And if the Cavan match felt a little too much like a souped-up league encounter, tomorrow's tussle with the Oak Leaf lads will almost certainly be a proper blood and thunder championship tie. One that we could very easily lose and so kiss goodbye to our involvement in the 2007 championship.

I know that the bookies have us as favourites and that Setanta also tip us to win but that's no guarantee of success. RTE plump for Derry and I'd expect some of the print media to do likewise tomorrow. If we are favourites, we're only marginally so and solely because of our 2007 championship form and our good league campaign earlier this year. The odds don't factor in the significant alterations made to the team since the Salthill meltdown nor, apparently, do they seem to recognise that we cannot, in the third largest county in the country, apparently find a full-back that's six feet tall and can play a bit. They certainly don't account for the three soft goals we gave away to Cavan and the fact that we could easily have conceded three more. Neither do they take into consideration that Derry - unlike Cavan - are playing at home and that their side is packed with a hell of a lot more talent than the Breffni men had. In short, I'm worried about tomorrow. Very worried, truth be told.

I can only presume that Johnno has some fiendish plan for dealing with Paddy Bradley that somehow doesn't involve Liam O'Malley and that, likewise, we have over the past week developed some kind of effective ploy to counteract a policy of aerial bombardment. The Cavan match illustrated with perfect clarity the extent to which we're currently exposed at the back and my big fear is that if we haven't come up with some kind of strategy to deal with this problem, tomorrow is going to lead to a bad case of Northern exposure.

The big positive from last week, of course, was the high score we ran up so that, regardless of the amount of damage being wreaked at the back, we were able to make up for it at the other end. (Faint echoes may be picked up here of John Morrison's risible Brazil comment from last year). However, last Saturday our 2006 All-Stars were given the freedom of McHale Park by the Cavan backs and I for one don't expect the Derry backline - who limited Armagh to just nine points last weekend - to be quite so accommodating. We know that Alan and, in particular, Conor don't shine when subjected to close marking so tomorrow will be a big test not only for them but also for the other forwards to do the business. For example, if Andy Moran gets a point-blank-range opportunity in Celtic Park, he'll need to bury it. It also means that big performances are, once again, needed from Pierce Hanley and Barry Moran.

The refashioned attack does appear to be more potent than the previous configuration but if they're to do damage, they'll need to get the ball. As I said yesterday, it's great to have Pat Harte back at midfield because we'll need a bigger effort around the middle tomorrow. In fact, we need to be far, far tighter around the middle third tomorrow. The amount of time and space that we gave the Cavan lads to win the ball, have a good think about what to do with it and then pass to an unmarked teammate was just eye-popping, the very antithesis of a swarm welcome. I know we pride ourselves on the grand, open brand of football we like to play but if we play like this against Derry tomorrow, we're just asking for a hiding.

In a sense, tomorrow is a defining moment for us. If we turn up and play in the same lackadaisical manner as we did last weekend, then that's our championship season over. However, if we do step on the gas and provide our first truly satisfying performance of the year, we stand a great chance of getting a result, one that would, in turn, open the door for us to a return to the All-Ireland series. It's not in our own hands, of course, as Derry are a damn good side and will be difficult to beat at home so we could play really well and still get edged out. This is the all-or-nothing way it is with the knockout format: tomorrow could be the end or it could be our calling card to say we're back in business. Twenty four hours out from the action, I have to confess I haven't a clue which one it'll be be but I'll be making the round-trip of almost 300 miles from Dublin tomorrow to find out.

Two changes for Derry clash

2007-07-12T23:15:00.000+01:00

The team for Saturday's second round qualifier clash with Derry was named this evening according to Mayofans.com (citing Mid-West Radio) and GAAboard.com, although RTE has nothing to say about it as yet. Hell, who needs the imprimatur of the national media? Here's the team:

D Clarke; T Cunniffe, L O'Malley, T Howley; D Heaney, D Kilcullen, T Mortimer; P Harte, D Brady; BJ Padden, P Hanley, A Dillon; T Mortimer, B Moran, A Moran.

In short, Aidan Higgins loses his place to Tom Cunniffe, who impressed last Saturday against Cavan when he came on for Higgins in the second half. Pat Harte returns from suspension to take his place alongside clubmate David Brady in midfield, with David Heaney switching to wing-back, where he displaces Peadar Gardiner. For the first time in aeons, we've named the same forward line for two matches running. That's where 1-19 gets you, I guess.

Aidan Higgins can't really have any complaints about losing out to young Tom Cunniffe, who played a blinder when he came on against Cavan, bringing stability and some real tigerish aggression into what had been a fairly frighteningly loose full-back line up till then. He definitely deserves his chance to line out in the position from the start against Derry.

Liam O'Malley couldn't have had any complaints were he to have found himself warming his posterior on the bench at Celtic Park as well. I know he's a good footballer and, in particular, is a fine corner-back but a full-back he sure isn't and I cannot for the life of me understand why, after the sorry way in which he was taken apart against Cavan, that he's lining out again at no. 3 at Celtic Park. And marking Paddy Bradley, to boot. We're just asking to get our holes kicked, I fear.

Peadar Gardiner has been edging ever closer to getting dropped for some time now and his kamikaze display against Cavan appears to have been the last straw. David Heaney did well when switched back there the last day and you'd have to say that young Kilcullen now has two formidable amigos flanking him in the half-backs. This could be part of Johnno's plan to protect the shop further back as the Derry lads will quickly think twice about trying to run through that half-back line. However, in the same way that Cavan did, they'll still be able to bypass this particular Maginot Line by simply hoofing Hail Mary balls over them into the square.

On the credit side, it's great to see Pat Harte back in the starting team again. We missed his energy and strong runs through the middle the last day and these skills should dovetail nicely with the more sedentary talents of the Elder Brady in that area. Given that leakages at the back are likely to remain a problem, it would also be useful if Pat could weigh in with a few of those trademark booming long-range points of his. No more than the last day, I reckon we'll need all the scores we can get in Celtic Park if we're to make it into the hat for the third round of the qualifiers on Sunday evening.

Derry airs

2007-07-12T09:52:00.000+01:00

No team for the Derry game to report on yet - I'd thought that it would have been named last night, what with the match being played on Saturday, but I suppose we can expect to see it later on this evening. The Indo had the story yesterday about Pierce Hanley's knock and the likely unavailability of Super Mac but that was old news. There don't seem to be any other fresh injury concerns and so the main taking point will obviously be what kind of defensive lineup is selected. There's little point speculating further at this stage on that particular issue.

Bereft of team news, I was casting my mind idly back earlier this morning on previous clashes with the Oak Leaf lads. We haven't, of course, ever played them in the Championship before (and we've never played a Championship match in Ulster before, I bet) and we haven't clashed in the league much in the 21st century either. I have, howver, two very clear memories of being at matches against Derry - one extremely sweet, the other less so - which I thought were worth sharing.

The sweet one first. This was all the way back in 1983 when Mayo's U21s (with Johnno at the helm - a good omen or what?) squared up to Derry in the All-Ireland final. Myself and The Brother had followed that precociously talented side through Connacht - where we beat the bejaysus out of Sligo and Roscommon - and down to Ennis where, despite having Padraig Brogan unfairly sent off, we sent the Kerrymen packing in the semi-final. Then it was onto the final in Carrick-on-Shannon against Derry, where we were in control for most of the 60 minutes, until Derry hit us with a sucker punch of a goal to force a replay.

This took place up in Irvinestown in Fermanagh and a crowd of us went up on a bus to it. Going to the North was a very different experience back then - there was a proper border post (manned by the British Army) to get through and then, a few miles on, a UDR (remember them?) checkpoint. Eventually, we made it to the ground to see another tight contest between two evenly-matched teams. Derry got a goal early in the second half, at which point it was starting to look grim, but that was just what our lads needed to get them going. Almost 24 years on, the only one of our flurry of scores that I can remember was Sean Maher's bullet of a shot that was still rising when it hit the net but I do remember that we owned the final 15 or so minutes and won comfortably enough in the end. For some odd reason, I can also recall the headline in one of the dailies (though I can't remember which paper it was) the following day, which said "Late Mayo spurt decisive". It sure was.

That team represented, to a large extent, a Golden Era for us and formed the backbone of the senior team that was to propel us back onto the big stage later in the Eighties. The likes of Gabriel Irwin, Peter Ford, John Maughan, John Finn, Sean Maher, Padraig Brogan and Kevin McStay were all destined to become household names in the colours over the remainder of the decade but, for me, the real star of that team was the no.10 Ger Geraghty who was one of the classiest footballers I've ever seen. Sadly, the times being what they were, he emigrated (to the US, I think) soon afterwards and so never got to display his sublime skills for the Mayo seniors at Croke Park.

The second memory is a more recent one, this time from 1996 when we faced Derry in a league semi-final at Croke Park. I had only just - about a week or two previously - returned to live in Ireland following an eight-year absence and I remember in my final few weeks in London plotting about my chances of seeing the lads in action again soon after returning home. (This was, remember, before the era of cheap flights when you couldn't just hop on a plane home for any old reason, such as going to a match.) Mayo had wintered in the twilight zone of what was then (and will, once again, next year be) Division 3 of the league but, under John Maughan's tutelage, a resurgence had begun. I remember diligently seeking out all the match reports - the local library stocked the Irish papers (no widespread availability of the Internet then either - emigration was an altogether different experience in those days) and so I was able to keep myself well versed on how things were going. Shortly before I un-emigrated, Maughan's men ambushed Meath in the quarter-final to set up the semi-final clash at Croke Park with Derry.

I don't have any clear details on this match stored in my mental hard drive but I do recall we were badly beaten - I think it was by eight points - and that it pissed out of the heavens all day. It was my first time being in the new Cusack Stand at Croker (that was the only bit that had been rebuilt at that stage) and while it did look impressive, the rain and the hammering we were taking from Derry took the gloss off the experience. Leaving Croker that day, I didn't think we'd be back there later in the year but, of course, not only did we get there, we took Kerry to pieces in the semi-final (that still has to rank as my favourite Mayo match of all time, surpassing even last year's win over the Dubs) and we came, literally, to within the bounce of a ball from capturing the Sam.

Memories, memories. Come on Johnno, time to name the team!

Johnno on the Cavan game

2007-07-10T23:51:00.000+01:00

The Deputy seems to be fairly upbeat, perhaps too much so, about the Cavan game. In Hogan Stand, he's quoted as saying that there were "plenty of positives" to be taken from the game and mentions in particular the performance of Barry Moran at full-forward. Barry was a success, alright, and his goal came at just the right moment, as Cavan's second goal just beforehand had put them into a two-point lead and things were momentarily starting to look a bit dodgy. Barry's goal righted the ship and set us on the way to the win.

Speaking of Barry Moran, there's an interview with him in the Mayo News, where he talks about how different it is to be lining out at full-forward compared to his normal midfield position. He also reminds us that he's only just back from injury following that horrible dislocated ankle he suffered in the All-Ireland U21 semi-final defeat to Laois back in April.

Also in the Mayo News, there's more from Johnno, this time looking forward to the Derry game next Saturday. Johnno is such a great man for managing expectations, isn't he? He does a good job in talking up the Derry lads and saying how difficult it will be for us to get a result there. That third seat in Mayo was difficult too, wasn't it?

As expected, he confirms that Mac is unlikely to be back in time for Saturday and, while he mentions that Pierce Hanley is recovering from a knock, it doesn't sounds too serious.

Paddy Power have us at 8/11 to win on Saturday, with Derry on offer at 6/4. Fairly miserly odds, you'd have to agree. I suppose the fact that we were the beaten All-Ireland finalists last year is a contributory factor in setting these odds but so too, you'd think, would be our comical defending last Saturday evening.

That's it - we may, I suppose, have an announcement about the team tomorrow evening. There's plenty to ponder on there, not least the issue of who is going to be named as full-back . . .

Afternoon throw-in against Derry

2007-07-09T17:06:00.000+01:00

We're to be spared another Saturday evening throw-in next weekend. The fixtures for the second round of the qualifiers have now been released - details here - and our clash with Derry has been fixed for Celtic Park with a 3.30 pm throw-in time. That should make the travelling, in particular the homeward leg, a bit easier to complete. Then again, if we win we won't feel the journey regardless of how long it takes whereas, if we lose, every mile will seem like an eternity.

Video clips from Cavan match now uploaded

2007-07-09T00:31:00.000+01:00

I've just finished uploading to the YouTube Channel a whole raft of shaky, gritty, of-the-moment video clips from the match against Cavan on Saturday evening. There are seventeen clips in all and included in them are most of our scores, including Pierce Hanley's first two points in the colours, Barry Moran's goal and Mort's superb long-range point from play right at the end, as well as Cavan's penalty goal.

I was concentrating mainly on capturing just the Mayo scores from the match and so haven't posted any evidence of our Keystone Kops style of defending. Anyone who was at the match won't, however, need any further evidence about our shortcomings in this sector. Nor, indeed, once they get their hands on the full tape of the game, will Messrs Bradley, Muldoon and friends . . .

It's Derry, away

2007-07-08T17:41:00.000+01:00

The draw's just been made for the second round of the qualifiers and we've been paired away with Derry, who beat Armagh by a point today. This is, needless to say, a tough draw for us. That's to say nothing about having to traipse all the way up there next weekend for it.

While the qualifier draw was our big news of the day, it would be churlish in the extreme not to mention Sligo's great win over Galway in today's Connacht final. I have to come clean and admit that I didn't give them much hope in advance (nor, indeed, did I think they'd beat Ros in the semi) and that, yes, I did say that our clash with Galway in Salthill was the real Connacht final. I'm delighted to be proved wrong - Sligo are long overdue a provincial title (I still remember being at the drawn and replayed Connacht final of 1975 when they last won it, beating us) and they well deserve their day in the sun.

Mayo 1-19, Cavan 3-7: win still leaves questions unanswered

2007-07-07T22:08:00.000+01:00

The qualifiers are an oddity, aren’t they? It’s still the championship – in the pure distilled sense, given that one slip and you’re gone – but it doesn’t really feel as if it is. Maybe it’s to do with playing the matches on a Saturday evening – what’s wrong with 3.30pm on a Sunday, by the way? – and the fact that the attendances are well down on what you’d normally expect. Maybe it’s simply that, having failed so dismally in our sole Connacht championship outing back in May, we don’t truly believe there should be a second chance for us this year. I don’t know what it is but it certainly makes for a different championship experience.

McHale Park was far from jammers this evening. I’d say that the crowd was certainly no bigger than the 15,000 or so that were at the league clash with the Dubs back at the beginning of April. Cavan brought a small enough support, but that wasn’t hugely surprising given their expectations about the game. I thought we’d muster more support but clearly the faithful need a bit more time to come around.

This evening’s performance won’t have convinced too many doubters, it must be said. We won – which, in a knockout tournament is a big plus – and, in doing so, we racked up a very respectable scoreline. The young lads who were pitched in did, by and large, well and they can expect to be named in the starting fifteen next Saturday. But we were so bloody loose all over the field, it simply wasn’t amusing and our full-back line – with the honourable exception of the excellent Trevor Howley – was torn to pieces. Further adjustments to the team have to be made, and fast, or else next Saturday (unless we get another soft draw) our championship season will be over.

First, the positives. Pierce Hanley did very well on his debut and showed why he’s been spoken about in such exalted terms. He’s a strong lad, well able to put it about and capable of bursting forward with intent. He can score too – he got two excellent points from play, one in each half - and he’s able to create chances for those around him. He’s a definite addition to the team.

Barry Moran did okay as well, especially in the second half when more decent ball started to come into him. His handling wasn’t always that assured and he got knocked off the ball more than perhaps he should have but he laid off a few neat balls to create scores and he did get the goal at a crucial time to cancel out Cavan’s second green flag. He also did enough to keep his place.

David Kilcullen was alright at centre-back, where Trevor Mort put in a strong display beside him. He didn’t do a whole load wrong over the seventy minutes and was busy throughout, always ready to receive possession, generally sound defensively.

Trevor Howley played a stormer but he needed to as his colleagues in the full-back line were all over the shop. The repeated interceptions, tackles and clearances that he made (as well as those made by young Cunniffe when he came on for Aidan Higgins in the second half) helped to prevent things from getting too uncomfortable at the back in the second half.

Both Conor Mort and Alan Dillon used the space the lax Cavan backs gave them to wreak predictable havoc. Mort ended up with seven points, four of which were from play, while Dillon chipped in with five, two of them from placed balls. While it’s true that better opposition than Cavan would have more severely rationed the time and space the two lads were given, it’s also true that they made hay while the sun shone and ensured that the winning margin was healthy enough, despite the horrendous leakages at the back.

Which leads us neatly onto the negatives. Liam O’Malley had another nightmare performance to place alongside his Salthill one and was run ragged by the Cavan attack. He was continually beaten to the ball, forever being caught out of position and directly responsible for two of the Cavan goals.

Aidan Higgins in the corner wasn’t a whole load better though, for whatever reason, Johnno chose to replace Higgins and leave O’Malley in place, despite the fact that Cavan, aware that we were all at sea there, kept raining high ball into the area. Cavan’s ineptitude in attack was what saved us – any half-decent team would have punished our shortcomings in that sector far more severely but even still, bad and all as they were, they still got three goals against us.

Peadar Gardiner was very poor too and gave further proof that his place on the starting fifteen is under serious threat. Two late, mistimed tackles led to a booking followed by a ticking, which prompted Johnno to haul him out of the action before the half-time whistle has sounded. Gardiner’s departure did allow Ronan McGarritty to make a welcome return to midfield – with Heaney switching to wing-back – and while Ronan looked rusty enough at times, he did do quite a lot of good work and, once he recovers full fitness, he’ll be back as a real force in midfield for us.

We’ll need him back there too because Brady and Heaney didn’t exactly work their cojones off in that sector. For long periods of the game, we were very loose and lackadaisical around the middle and I though we gave Cavan far, far too much time and space on the ball. We didn’t close them down quick enough, we lacked aggression in the tackle and we didn’t seem to play with the kind of intensity that we know will be required if we’re going to be able to live with the top sides later in the year.

Cavan were limited enough opponents and would have resigned themselves to their fate far sooner had they not smelled blood in our backline. Once they got the taste for it, they were happy to return for more and the three goals they ended up scoring made the contest look a lot closer than it really should have been. We were never really in any danger – despite the yawning fault lines at the back – of losing this evening but this was mainly because of Cavan’s obvious shortcomings.

So we’re back in the hat tomorrow evening, with another championship tie facing us this day week. Regardless of who we draw (please let it be Meath in Navan, please, please, please), we need to find a full-back, and quick. David Brady gets my vote – Pat Harte will return from suspension the next day and so DB could easily shift back – failing which we may need to recall James Kilcullen to the position.

Overall then, this wasn’t the kind of compelling performance I had in mind when I discussed our prospects ahead of the game. However, unlike Cavan (not to mention Roscommon, Longford, Down and Leitrim), we’re still standing and now we must wait to see who’ll we get paired against tomorrow evening.

PS: I got plenty of video clips of Mayo’s scores this evening and will endeavour to post as many of them as possible to the YouTube Channel tomorrow evening, once I get back to base after this short but, on balance, enjoyable trip to the West.

The championship season starts here

2007-07-06T22:02:00.000+01:00

This is it. No more second chances, one more loss and that’s it till the FBD League next January. After the ridiculously long layoff following the defeat in Salthill, we now potentially face an equally mad period of intensive activity . . . but only if we manage to win each tie we face.

If we get through tomorrow, then we’re in the hat on Sunday and back in action the next Saturday. If we win again, we’re back into the hat the night after that and then, depending on which of the losing provincial finalists we draw, we’re playing either the following weekend or the one after. Win again and then it’s a fortnight's break before the quarter-finals, the business end of the championship.

We’ve got at least this far in each of the past three seasons but it’s going to be a hell of a battle – what with the likes of Armagh, Donegal, Meath and Cork possibly barring our way – to make it through to the All-Ireland series this time round. But at least we now know what we have to do to get there – win, win and win again.

We should win – perhaps with some ease – against Cavan tomorrow. Paddy Power certainly thinks we will: we’re on offer at 1/7 and the three previews published to date, on RTE.ie, Hogan Stand and Setanta, all tip us to do it. Cavan in McHale Park: of course we should do it but only if we have learned the lessons we needed to after the trimming we got in Salthill back in May.

Much has been made of the sweeping changes to the team for tomorrow night. A little too much, to my mind. Some changes were inevitable and the injuries suffered by Keith and Super Mac, as well as Enda Devenney’s illness and Kenneth O’Malley’s lack of fitness following a recent injury (not to mention Pat Harte’s suspension) meant that there was always going to have to be a number of changes, no matter what team was being selected.

What was eye-catching, of course, was Johnno’s decision to turf the two Ballagh kids into such pivotal positions and, for good measure, his decision to gamble with Barry Moran at full-forward (that’s assuming he plays there, I’ve heard plenty of opinions to the contrary). But even here, what other choice did he have? Stick with Jimmy Nallen, Chucky and Ger Brady? The simple fact was that changes had to be made and all three central positions were effectively unoccupied (it's the same at full-back – Liam O’Malley is no long-term solution there) so Johnno needed some fresh talent to fill them.

Sure, it’s a gamble but it’s the right match in which to take such a risk. And it’s not totally radical – if he really wanted to wield the knife, the likes of Peadar Gardiner, Alan Dillon and one or two others could have found themselves warming their posteriors on the bench tomorrow evening. What we got was a combination of changes that were enforced and changes that plainly had to be made. The outcome does, I agree, look radical but I don't think that was the motivation behind the changes.

As I said the other day, it’s impossible to know how the new formation will perform but at least we don’t have too long to find out. What we’d all like to see, of course, would be a really compelling performance, one that would announce in no uncertain terms that we’re back in business, that the Summer – despite all the shite weather – has only just begun. I'm certainly looking forward to jumping in the car for the drive West tomorrow and to seeing the lads in action at McHale Park later on in the evening. We've been so thoroughly written off by all and sundry at this stage that it would be just great if we were to provide some compelling evidence tomorrow that we still have a part to play in this year's championship.

Johnno's Ballagh gamble

2007-07-05T08:13:00.000+01:00

So it was a case, after all, of sweeping changes from Salthill. Some of the omissions from that match were enforced, like Keith Higgins, Pat Harte and, perhaps, Enda Devenney but the others - Kenneth O'Malley, James Nallen, Ger Brady and skipper Kevin O'Neill - weren't. There are seven changes in all, though three of those coming in - Aidan Higgins, Trevor Howley and David Brady - all played a part in Salthill (as did Super Mac whose hamstring injury rules him out for Saturday) and all three are fairly hardened competitors, as is David Clarke who displaces Kenneth O'Malley between the sticks.

However, the main talking points will undoubtedly be the parachuting of Barry Moran, a la Donaghy and Cussen, into full-forward (a position in which he played in the second half of last year's All-Ireland) and the championship debuts handed to the two Ballaghaderreen greenhorns, David Kilcullen and Pierce Hanley, in the pivotal centre-back and centre-forward positions respectively. Johnno is obviously going with his gut instinct here, as he'll know the Ballagh lads well.

Here's the team in full: D Clarke; A Higgins, L O'Malley, T Howley; P Gardiner (Capt), D Kilcullen, Trevor Mortimer; D Heaney, D Brady; BJ Padden, P Hanley, A Dillon; C Mortimer, B Moran, A Moran.

It's a radical remix, make no mistake, but I suppose when you look back at the display against Galway, significant changes had to be made. It's hard to know how this new formation will perform - we'll have to wait till 7pm on Saturday evening to find out, I guess.

That's it - we're still on hols dodging the deluge of rain. Well, at least the forecast for Saturday appears to be okay.

Holiday postcard (2)

2007-07-04T23:34:00.000+01:00

I have a few on me at the minute, Your Honour, but Mayofans.com are reporting that this is the team for Saturday evening, which represents a fairly sweeping number of changes from Salthill. For a number of reasons, it's information worth sleeping on.

Holiday postcard (1)

2007-07-04T09:48:00.000+01:00

It's only gorgeous here but the only problem is that, seeing as we haven't left the jurisdiction, it's still bucketing down. Nothing for it but to head for the swimming pool - we may as well get properly wet.

Right, to business. Today's Indo carries a brief story which says that Campbell and Austie are fit but that Devenney, David Kilcullen and Super Mac are all doubtful. In the Mayo News, meanwhile, Johnno confirms that Mac won't be fit for Sunday. In the same paper, there's also an interesting report on the Big Wind final of 1948 against Cavan which, as the report says, shows that our All-Ireland final heartbreaks didn't start with Colm Coyle in 1996. In his weekly column, Kevin McStay mentions all the rumours emanating from Cavan about players buggering off to the States and morale being on the floor but he then cautions that pre-match rumours carry as much weight as performances in challenge matches. That's a fairly apposite comparison, methinks.

That's it. Gotta dash, swimming pool is calling. Wish you were here and all that.

A short break

2007-07-03T09:31:00.000+01:00

We (that’s me and the wife, not the royal plural) have decided that, what with the chisellers off school and all that, it’s time for the lot of us to have a few days away together, to recharge the batteries and what not. Okay, okay, I recognise that, after weeks of inactivity, these are the final few days leading up to our second championship outing of the Summer and that, no doubt, there will be the odd few morsels of news about the team that will need to be conveyed to the wider world.

In this context, I can reveal that I have a two-pronged strategy for dealing with the critical information need that will exist over the coming few days. One prong comprises my laptop and the availability of the wonderful Bitbuzz Wi-Fi service in the hideaway to which we’ll all be skedalling in a few hours time. The second is my adoption of a more staccato-like writing style, sort of like Ernest Hemingway (of whom it was said that his writing was like an iceberg, in that he only put in a fraction of what he wanted to convey, leaving the reader to do the rest) but without the bulls. Or maybe like Big Tom (no, not THAT Big Tom, THIS one). With his. Two word. Sentences, yeah.

Adios, compadres. There’s a. Car to. Pack, like.

Graham Geraghty's political credentials

2007-07-02T14:20:00.000+01:00

You have to hand it to him, you really do. Graham Geraghty first showed his adroit political sensibilities Down Under in 1999 and has always been known as a man who is far from afraid to, ahem, fight his corner. Up till now, these confrontations have tended to be with the opposition - as, for example, Dublin's David Henry could testify from their encounter a few weeks back - but reports today suggest that his penchant for such manly romping extends to the internecine variety as well. A fully-fledged Alpha Male, one that's well capable of putting it about both verbally and physically: you can see now why the Blueshirts wanted him on board. It's such a pity those unenlightened electors in Meath West only saw fit to bestow 1,284 first preference votes on him: can you could just imagine what he'd have done to John O'Donoghue in the Dail had the new Ceann Comhairle had that toddler fit with him instead of with Mayo's own Michael Ring?

Ref's howler swings Munster title away from Cork

2007-07-02T09:58:00.000+01:00

Kevin McStay got it spot on a few weeks back when discussing refereeing standards in his Mayo News column. What he said you needed to watch for were the big decisions because the better refs tended to get those big calls right. On that basis, Mr M Duffy from Sligo is not one of the game's better refs as he got a big decision late on in yesterday's Munster football final horribly wrong.

An enthralling battle between Kerry and Cork at Fitzgerald stadium was all-square with just a couple of minutes left when a slick Cork move resulted in midfielder Derek Kavanagh being put through clear on goal. As he shaped to bury the ball in the net, Tomas O Se yanked his jersey from behind, unbalancing the Corkman who blasted his shot wide. It was as clear a penalty as you could ever hope to see but Mr Duffy (who had earlier on overruled his umpires and disallowed a Cork point, simply because Kerry goalie Diarmuid Murphy had a blue hissy fit when the white flag went up) saw nothing wrong. Kerry promptly went up the other end and scored two stonking long-range points - the first from Kieran Donaghy, the second from sub Sean O'Sullivan - to seal their first Munster title at this famous old ground since 1986. While the ref didn't win it for Kerry - they did that themselves with those two superbly-taken points - had he got that crucial decision at the other end just beforehand right, Cork would almost certainly have been a goal up with seconds to go. They wouldn't have lost it from there.

Still, Billy Morgan won't be too unhappy as his side matched the All-Ireland champions pretty well throughout the field and showed that they're likely to be a force to be reckoned with in the All-Ireland series. Fifteen minutes into the second half, when they trailed by six points, it looked as if Cork were going to take a beating but the inspired Donncha O'Connor scored a superb goal to haul them back into contention and with time running out it looked more likely that the visitors would prevail. They would have too, had our Sligo friend been up with the action a bit better.

Kerry looked solid enough yesterday, given that it's only the start of July. They've often looked in wretched form at this time of year (two examples - 2004 and 2006 - will suffice to prove this point) whereas yesterday they looked well up to speed and as hungry for success as ever. It's in the forwards that they look most impressive - Donaghy is obviously back in form, Declan O' Sullivan was everywhere, Mike Frank did bugger all from play but kicked some superb dead balls and the Gooch sonambulated through the first half before opening up to devastating effect in the second. His goal demonstrated pure economy of movement as he fielded the ball, swivelled and buried it. The Carrot-Headed Assassin clearly hasn't gone away, you know.

Who else was there? Oh yes, that gimp Galvin, who - true to form - was involved in a right old belting match with Cork's Noel O'Leary (who, in fariness, should have been red-carded for kicking Galvin in the first half but then maybe there's a secret dispensation within the rules for kicking Galvin, seeing as everyone outside Kerry would happily spend a few hours every day at such a pursuit) and whom Pat O'Shea wisely called ashore in the second half when it was becoming clear that he was unlikely to stay on the field much longer.

While Kerry look good in the forwards, midfield wasn't hectic - that lumbering hulk Quirke didn't do a whole deal and Darragh O Se was under severe pressure to cope with the excellent Derek Kavanagh and Nicholas Murphy. When Michael Cussen switched out there in the second half, he ensured that Cork continued to win more than their fair share of ball round the middle. Kerry also look weakish at centre-back and full-back, with Aidan O'Mahony and Tom O'Sullivan struggling somewhat to fill the illustrious shoes of Seamus Moynihan and Mike McCarthy. I think if Tyrone rip into those Kerry backs the way you'd expect them to, the 2003 and 2005 champions could well be celebrating the continuation of this geometric series in 2007.

The other problem for Kerry is the one relating to Winner's Curse, which sees them now kicking their heels for six whole weeks before the All-Ireland quarter-finals. Cork, in contrast, are back in action in three weeks time and the narrow defeat they suffered yesterday shouldn't cause too much psychological damage to them. We haven't seen the last of the Leesiders this year, I reckon.

Elsewhere yesterday, Laois came from four points down at half-time to see off Wexford in the Leinster football semi-final at Croker. Here too, a hotly-disputed refereeing decision turned the tide. Once Wexford's centre-back David Murphy went on a second yellow with twenty minutes to go, Laois began to take command but they made hard work of it, shooting 18 wides in total (and they say Mayo can't shoot straight!) in a match they eventually won by a goal. Laois got murdered by the Dubs in the Leinster semi-final last year and, on yesterday's performance, they'll do well to avoid a similar fate this year.

And so to the mighty Mayo ladies, who continue to upstage their male counterparts. Yesterday at Salthill, we had no election-distracted manager, no early defensive collapse and no headless-chicken approach in attack. Instead, another gutsy performance for the Green and Red as the girls pulled off a one-point win after extra time over defending champions Galway in the Connacht decider. They now go forward to the new mini-league All-Ireland series, where, once again, they'll be serious contenders for outright victory.

There's no word as yet on the chaps but with only six days to go now till we face the Cavan Bucks, we should be getting some news within the next few days on the team that'll line out at McHale Park on Saturday evening.

What's the likelihood that Kerry will lose tomorrow?

2007-06-30T22:18:00.000+01:00

9/4, according to Paddy Power who quote Kerry at 1/2 to prevail over 70 minutes in tomorrow's Munster football final at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney. Those are mad odds, IMHO, but another way of looking at it, of course, is that it represents a superb opportunity to fill one's boots with betting slips backing the Leesiders.

I dunno about you (or youse as they are wont to say in these parts, on Dublin's Northside) but I think Cork have, at the very least, a good 50:50 chance of winning tomorrow. They've had two outings so far compared to Kerry's sole appearance and, while they weren't put to the pin of their collar in either, their matches with Limerick and Tipp constituted tougher tests compared to Kerry's stroll in the park against a lamentably poor Waterford side. (By the way, folks, that was the Munster Football Championship - what an annual farce it is. The sooner they put some half-decent hurdles between Cork and Kerry and the All-Ireland series, the better but don't bet on that one happening anytime soon).

I think there are a few reasons why Cork could win tomorrow. First, they have Graham Canty back in the side at full-back and, if there's anyone (apart from David Brady, that is) who can put manners on Donaghy, then it's Graham Canty. His absence through injury in last year's All-Ireland semi-final was the main reason that Cork didn't win - it forced Derek Kavanagh back to deal with Donaghy, fatally weakening the Cork midfield. With Canty back, Donaghy - himself just back from injury and looking out of sorts - should be well shackled, while Kavanagh should, alongside Nicholas Murphy, do well in midfield.

Indeed, the whole spine of the Cork side looks strong and Cork's own Donaghy clone - the monstrous Michael Cussen - could give Kerry's new no.3, Tom O'Sullivan, a tough time. What Cussen does with the ball he gets will be crucial and the likes of U21 star Fintan Goold will have to see to it that all the responsibility for getting scores doesn't rest with James Masters.

This is the first real test for new Kerry manager Pat O'Shea, who has the tough job of trying to steer Kerry to become the first county to win back-to-back All-Irelands since Cork did so back in 1990. Defeat tomorrow wouldn't be a complete disaster for Kerry but it would, in O'Shea's home town, still be a big blow to the new man at the helm in the Kingdom.

Kerry haven't won a Munster final in Killarney since 1986 and if Cork produce the kind of performance I think they're capable of, they could well ensure that this record is extended for another year at least. Cork by two or three, methinks.

Elsewhere, an injury-plagued Laois take on Wexford in the Leinster football semi-final at Croker. Laois have a veritable slew of injuries and this provides Wexford with a genuine chance of reaching their first provincial football decider in over fifty years. Wexford showed Louth a fairly clean pair of heels in the last round, while Laois stuggled for long periods to overcome a game Longford outfit. If Wexford demonstrate the same level of accuracy in their point-taking tomorrow, a shock win for the Model County could be on the cards. However, the weight of history cannot be ignored and so, injuries or not, I think Laois will sneak through to face the Dubs in the provincial decider.

Finally, the Mayo ladies face Galway in the Connacht final at Pearse Stadium tomorrow. I hope they have better luck than their male counterparts had back in May at the same unlovely venue.

Friday's round-up

2007-06-29T10:03:00.000+01:00

Not a lot to report today, so I may as well start with the somewhat less than newsworthy fact that I spent the bulk of the day yesterday behind the wheel, undertaking a Dublin-Limerick-Dublin round trip. Oh, that lovely N7 - someone should write a song about it.

Hogan Stand is reporting that Ronan McGarritty could get called upon to play against Cavan but the quote from Johnno seems to come from the same interview we spoke about the other day. All Johnno says is that "we'll have to see what role he plays" on Saturday week. Depending on how the match is going, a cameo appearance for the last 15-20 minutes is, I would have thought, the likely option.

There's a more definitive quote from The Deputy in the Western concerning Super Mac's hamstring injury and this doesn't sound good, I'm afraid. The injury occurred last week and Johnno says that "he's gone for a few weeks", which could mean that not only is he likely to miss the Cavan match but, if we win, the second round qualifier tie on the following weekend as well. We could all be gone by then, I suppose, and not just for a few weeks either.

If it's downbeat you want, then this quote from Kevin Beirne (who was a selector with the minor team) should do the trick nicely. Kevin speaks about his concerns for the future arising from our failure to win a provincial minor title for the last number of years and reckons we're entering "a state of emergency". An overstatement, perhaps, given our recent national success at U21 level but it certainly is a concern.

Finally, I notice that Dessie Farrell has provided his tuppence worth on the issue of payments to managers, which Jack O'Connor raised in his kiss and tell book about his time as Kerry supremo. (I was going to buy the book until I discovered that it was ghostwritten by Tom Humphries. That's right. The guy. That likes. To pretend. That he's. The new. Con Houlihan. And has. The really. Fucking annoying. Habit of. Writing two. Word sentences. Yeah. That Tom). As regards payments to managers, the words Elephant and Room seem somehow appropriate - it's like being back in the Eighties where everyone knew tax fiddling was going on all around the place but where it was never mentioned officially. Now that this particular hare is up and running (seeing as it relates to Kerry, a coursing analogy is appropriate, I feel) it's difficult to see where it will lead. Not, sadly, to the Kingdom being disqualified from the 2004 and 2006 All-Irelands, as one bright spark on Mayofans.com suggests. Nice idea, though.

That's it - more tomorrow on the first provincial football final of the year - where Cork defend their Munster title against those Kerry upstarts - and also that interesting Leinster football semi-final clash on at Croker between Laois and Wexford.

Midweek update

2007-06-27T10:14:00.000+01:00

I'm up to my mammaries at the minute so this'll have to be a quick one. Nothing much to report, in any event, apart from the usual comprehensive coverage of recent happenings in the Mayo News. In case you haven't yet perused this wonderful weekly, here's what they're saying on football issues esta semana.

First, there's a piece by Mike Finnerty on the team's preparation for the Cavan match, which includes what we already know about Ronan and Super Mac. There's also a few quotes from Johnno, where he says that "it's not an easy draw but it could have been worse." (He's really warming to this bullshit politics-speak, isn't he? Come off it, Johnno, it's as easy a draw as we could have hoped for!) He goes on: "Getting a home draw was vital". Was it? If the aim is to slither unconvincingly into the quarter-finals (in which case, can we please have the winners of the Limerick/Louth match next followed by Sligo after that?), I can see where he's coming from. If, however, we want to find out at the earliest opportunity if we're any bloody good this year, then, in my view, the School of Hard Knocks is where we want to be. As Four Goal McGee said recently on this humble site, Meath in Navan would have been a nice draw to get and, had this happened, we'd certainly have learned a thing or two about ourselves on July 7th. As things stand, I'm not sure we'll be much the wiser after our joust with Cavan Bucks.

In the same article, it's also confirmed that David Kilcullen, Tom Cunniffe and Mark Ronaldson have all played a part in recent challenge matches. It's beginning to look as if Kilcullen might well line out at CHB against Cavan but the other two are more likely to be on the bench. BJ seems to have been reconverted back into a forward and may even play at full-forward against Cavan. That would make a great table quiz question, wouldn't it - which Mayo player lined out at full-back in one championship match and full-forward the next? (Though not, admittedly, as good as this one: "Q. Who played for Kerry and Dublin in the same All-Ireland? A. The Artane Boys Band. Boom! Boom!")

Kevin McStay reckons that the draw against Cavan was as soft as we could have hoped for (see what I mean, Johnno?) and he's still bubbling with enthusiasm about our prospects for the Summer, saying that "recent results and performances and, more importantly, the enthusiasm levels, indicate that O’Mahony is going to try and repeat his 2001 heroics." But then he goes on to spoil it all by bigging the Dubs - again. Just wait till the likes of Tyrone get their hands on those soft-centred metropolitans, Kev, and watch them kicking their over-hyped holes all round Jones Road.

Kev also talks about the disappointing demise of the minors, where he chillingly (pardon the pun - you'll see why in a minute) notes that, while all is going well for us at U16 and U21 level, at minor we "have hit a long and dangerous patch of ice". Brrr! If you want to read more on the minors, here's Edwin McGreal's match report and here's Ray Dempsey's take on the defeat.

Bugger! I didn't mean to take so long with this one. Now I'm rightly in it . . .

Ronan's return confirmed

2007-06-26T10:00:00.000+01:00

Both this morning's Indo and Hogan Stand have now confirmed yesterday's reports that Ronan McGarritty has, indeed, returned to the fray. He played for about twenty minutes in the challenge match against Cork at the weekend and will be back in the panel for the qualifier tie against Cavan on July 7th. While it's got to be doubtful that he'll start the next day, it would be great to see him back in action at some stage over the seventy minutes.

We've missed Ronan's presence hugely in midfield over the past few months, most notably in Salthill where Joe Bergin was afforded complete freedom in the air around the middle. This was exactly where Ronan dominated the exchanges so comprehensively in last year's Connacht final and his absence on May 20th was one of the reasons (though, admittedly, only one of many) why we failed to compete with Galway that day. Assuming we get past the Cavan Bucks on July 7th, Ronan might welll be ready to start in the next round, which, in turn, would free up the likes of David Brady and David Heaney for duties further back.

It's not all good news, however. The same story in the Indo also carries confirmation that Ciaran McDonald has been sidelined with what they describe as a "muscle injury". No more than Keith Higgins, Super Mac would be a big loss if he's not fit to play against Cavan. However, there's still ten days or so to go (so soon! so soon! Where's my bloody replica shirt?) and so it's possible he might yet be okay for our Saturday night joust with the Cavan Bucks.

Well, at least Mac is still breathing, unlike poor old mob boss, John Abruzzi, who bit the dust at the hands of the Feds last night in Prison Break. And then there were seven . . .

Evening throw-in against Cavan

2007-06-25T15:58:00.000+01:00

The venues and times for the first round of the qualifiers on the weekend of July 7th/8th were announced today, full details here. We're scheduled to start laying into the Cavan Bucks at McHale Park at seven in the evening on July 7th. I don't get it with these evening throw-ins, I must admit, and it's going to be a bit of a pain in the arse for me to get to this one but such is life.

I don't normally peddle in second-hand news but . . . I was informed earlier on by a reliable source that Mid-West Radio were reporting today that Ronan McGarritty played a part in the challenge match with Cork at the weekend (this has, I notice, also now been mentioned on the Hogan Stand message board) and that Super Mac is nursing a hamstring injury, which could make him a doubt for July 7th. Make of this what you will.

The weekend’s action and the qualifier draw

2007-06-25T00:03:00.000+01:00

There was championship action in three provinces again yesterday, with Munster once more the odd one out, although yesterday’s hurling exploits from that quarter more than made up for the absence of any big ball activity. And then, at last, there was the draw for the first round of the qualifiers which means that we finally know who we’ll be up against on July 7th.

Before talking about yesterday’s action, it’s worth having a quick word first about the minors, who went under to All-Ireland champions Roscommon by 1-11 to 1-5 on Saturday evening in the Connacht semi-final. This was a highly-rated Mayo minor team but they were well beaten, for the second year in a row, by the Rossies.

Saturday’s loss means that it’s now six years (and counting) since we last won a provincial title at minor level, which is more than a little bit worrying in terms of future development. I know, we’re doing much better at U21 level but you’d still want to see regular success at minor to be confident that sufficient talent is coming through for future years. This doesn’t seem to be the case.

Onto yesterday’s matches and the clash between Galway and Leitrim at Carrick, where Nickey Brennan was in attendance to open the impressive new stand at Pairc Sean MacDiarmada. (Incidentally, it’s only a year since we played Leitrim up there and they hadn’t even started on that stand back then. Now, just twelve months on, the whole job is done. These Leitrim GAA guys are seriously impressive. Maybe they could be given a meatier project to work on, like the Dublin Metro or something. I bet they wouldn’t do as much fannying around as the RPA).

Galway were relieved to emerge from Carrick yesterday with a four-point win after what was a hard-fought and reasonably close game. However, much of Leitrim’s good work in defence and around the middle was undone by an inability to take the many chances they created – Donal Brennan’s goal miss in the second half was the worst example of this profligacy – while Galway were more economical in front of the posts. Nicky Joyce scored five points from play and the kind of clinical finishing that he showed was the main difference between the sides.

From a Mayo perspective, it was interesting – nay, heartening – to see a team tear into Galway and to give them a fair few hits, as well as being able to take whatever belts were coming their way. It was notable that, once Leitrim had signalled their intent in this department, Galway were less keen to dish it out, knowing full well that the compliment would be returned with interest. Mayo players and management would do well to take note.

The other interesting thing from this match was the refereeing. This is not a Mayo whinge but it’s clear that had the Salthill match been refereed like yesterday’s was, Galway would have ended up that game with only three or four players on the pitch. Ja Fallon, for example, was allowed to belt all around him in Salthill with total impunity – committing at least four yellow card offences in the first half alone – but he was booked yesterday for pulling the Leitrim goalie around by the arm. There were plenty of other similar examples where Galway weren’t given any latitude for misbehaviour yesterday, whereas in Salthill they were allowed to do what they liked. I know, the ref we had on May 20th was a complete clown but it was as if the rule book had been completely rewritten between the two games.

Anyway, in the end Galway survived the scare that Leitrim gave them and will now be red-hot favourites to beat Sligo in the Connacht final. Leitrim, like ourselves, meanwhile head for the qualifiers and they pulled a tough one – Donegal - in yesterday’s draw although they do get to play them in Carrick.

Up in Ulster, Monaghan pulled off a minor shock by beating Derry to qualify for their first provincial final in almost twenty years. They should have won far easier than they did – a jammy second half Derry goal kept them in far longer than they deserved. A Northern acquaintance of mine was insisting to me last week that Derry were dark horses for Sam, given the number of naturally talented players they had, as well as the emotional uplift he expected them to get from Eamonn Coleman’s untimely death. However, they looked far from All-Ireland material yesterday and drawing Armagh in the qualifiers more than likely means that their championship season this year will end on July 7th. No wonder Joe Brolly looked crabbier than usual this evening.

Meanwhile, another capacity crowd at Croker saw the Dubs beat Offaly in a dreadful contest to book their place in the Leinster final. Maybe it was because there was no wall of media hoopla surrounding this match – the fans with typewriters were all probably too knackered after their exertions last weekend to bother about this one – that the Dubs’ supporters reverted to type and only began to stream into the ground a few minutes before the scheduled throw-in time of 4pm, which resulted in a 15 minute delay in getting the action going.

Whatever about when it started, this was a contest that couldn’t end soon enough. After Dublin’s predictable whirlwind opening, they faded fast and had they been playing a side with more about them than a woefully inept Offaly, they could well have been beaten. The after-effects of the two-match tussle with Meath were clearly visible but the Dubs will need to shape up and fast if they’re going to be able to live with any half-decent opposition from here on. Assuming they make it to the Leinster final, Laois could well ask Pillock’s men some searching questions.

Eventually, after 6pm for gawdsakes, we had the qualifier draw yesterday evening. We pulled Cavan from the hat, at home too, and you’d have to feel that this was a soft enough draw for us. Cavan made their exit from Ulster at the hands of Down the same day as we were beaten in Salthill, although they have played one more match than us in this year’s championship, having initially drawn with the Mournemen the previous Sunday. We’ve since played each other in a challenge, which Cavan won by a goal, so the two sides will know a thing or two about each other. In addition, it’s not the first time we’ll have met in the qualifiers – we beat them in 2005 on our way to an All-Ireland quarter final defeat to Kerry that year. And we still owe the hoors for that galling single-point defeat in the Big Wind All-Ireland final of 1948, when the ref blew up with a few minutes still on the clock as we were, with the gale at our backs, pressing for the equaliser. See why I mean? Refs were shite back then too.

Just one final thing: Mayofans.com are reporting that we beat Cork (minus Nicholas Murphy and James Masters) by three points in a challenge match at the weekend in Ennis. Liam O’Malley reportedly lined out at full-back with David Kilcullen at no.6. Hmmm . . .

We've just drawn Cavan!

2007-06-24T18:02:00.000+01:00

We've just pulled the Cavan Bucks from the hat in the qualifiers, at home as well. It's one we should definitely win, with no excuses if we don't. More on this later plus a review of all the weekend's action (including the defeat for the minors yesterday).

Potential opponents in the qualifiers

2007-06-22T00:15:00.000+01:00

With the long-awaited draw for the first round of the qualifiers finally set to take place in Carrick-on-Shannon on Sunday evening, it’s an opportune time to look at who we might pull from the hat at the weekend.

There are already thirteen of us in the draw for Sunday. As well as ourselves, this particular sea of souls comprises Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Kildare, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Meath, Roscommon and Westmeath. Added to the pot on Sunday will be the losers of the matches between Monaghan and Derry, Laois and Wexford and Galway and Leitrim. In addition, if Dublin lose to Offaly, they get to join in the fun too (if Offaly lose, it’s straight to the Tommy Cooper with them) and, with seventeen teams then in the hat, there would be a need for a preliminary round on June 30th. On the face of it, this seems unlikely to happen.

Leaving aside the merits or otherwise of what kind of opposition we should be looking to get, it’s obvious from the above list that there’s a hierarchy of sorts in terms of potential opponents on July 7th. In order to keep this analysis reasonably neat, I’ve assumed that Dublin, Galway and Laois all win next Sunday, thus tipping Leitrim and Wexford into the pit whereas I think Derry and Monaghan are much of a muchness. So, for what it’s worth, here’s my hierarchy and who fits into it:

Tier 1 (extremely difficult to beat): Armagh.
Tier 2 (tough, particularly if drawn away): Meath, Donegal
Tier 3 (potential banana skins): Fermanagh, Kildare, Monaghan/Derry, Westmeath
Tier 4 (should win, regardless): Cavan, Down, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Roscommon, Wexford.

I think it’s safe to say that, for the first round at least, we want to avoid Armagh. They were extremely unlucky not to get past Donegal in Ulster where they looked to have done enough to win until that square ball goal gave Donegal an undeserved victory. It’s fair to conclude that Armagh wouldn’t have been whipped out the gate by Tyrone last Sunday and, although they’re not as powerful as they were in their heyday, Armagh are still a major force to be reckoned with. If we draw them away from home, it could be the end of our championship for this year.

Meath and Donegal would both be tough customers and, given our previous clashes with both of them, we could expect any tie with either of them to be spiky enough. I’d love us to pull Meath – they’d be a real challenge and I think we’d be fully fired up for it. If we got past them, we wouldn’t care all that much who we drew in the second round.

The likes of Fermanagh, Kildare, Monaghan/Derry and Westmeath could all, on their day, give us plenty of gip. We have, of course, lost to two of them in the qualifiers in the past – Westmeath in 2001 and Fermanagh, in 2003. (Curious aside: that defeat to the Ernesiders four years ago was the last time we lost to anyone except Kerry and Galway in the championship.) If we’re not on our game (you know the crack: over-elaboration coming out of the backs, not assertive enough in midfield and headless chicken-like in attack) we could find ourselves under pressure against any of these. However, if we have made the kind of improvement that Kevin McStay was gushing about the other day, then we should be able to handle any of them.

We should be too good for any of others, regardless of how sluggish we are. If, however, we’re up against maybe Down or perhaps Longford away from home and we’re playing particularly poorly, then we might be in trouble but, really, there’s no way we should fail to get past any of these.

That’s it – only a few days to go till we know who we’re playing on July 7th and then this ridiculously long interregnum (which will have lasted almost half the length of time that elapsed between last year’s All-Ireland final and the start of this year’s NFL) will finally be nearing its end.