Search Results for 'Brian McIver'

An acquaintance of mine from Galway and his wife took a few nights away in lovely Westport last February to celebrate Valentine's Day. When he had a few jars taken one evening he went talking football with an older man in his sixties in a local tavern and proceeded to start slagging him about Mayo's defeats in All-Ireland finals since 1989.

An acquaintance of mine from Galway and his wife took a few nights away in lovely Westport last February to celebrate Valentine’s. 

After the horror show a few weeks ago in Croke Park between Dublin and Derry in the National League, opinion is again divided as regards the state of Gaelic football. That game finished 0-8 to 0-4 in Dublin’s favour with many describing it as the worst game of all time. It really upset Joe Brolly who apparently left the game early with his young son such was his disgust at what he was watching.

If you dropped the needle on a seven inch copy of “Teenage Kicks” by some of Derry’s most famous sons The Undertones in Celtic Park on Sunday, when Barry Moran picked out Mikie Sweeney inside the Derry defence, by the time the track had had belted it’s way through it’s 2.28 running time you would have seen Mayo comfortably win and almost lose the game in a hectic epilogue at the end of normal time.

I thought it was going to be close.

Cillian O’Connor remains the one injury doubt for Mayo from those who were available for selection last weekend for Sunday’s Allianz National Football League semi-final in Croke Park. The Ballintubber attacker, who had to leave the action after just 10 minutes in Elverys MacHale Park last Sunday, may not make it back into the starting line-up for this weekend’s game. The team is due to be announced at some stage today (Friday, April 11).

Derry travelled to Castlebar last Sunday to take on the home side in what was a crucial game for Mayo to see if they would qualify for the playoffs of the National league. I should have smelled a rat earlier in the week when the bookmakers had Mayo at an outrageous 1/16 to beat the Oak Leaf county. This game could have been a cracker but it turned out to be a damp squib. Derry fielded only one of their starting 15 which made us realise from the outset that they did not care about the result, we will only know for sure if Brian McIver got anything out of this game when we see the Derry line up on Sunday.

In seven day's time it's sure to be a very different game, with a place in the league final at stake. Derry came to Elverys MacHale Park with their spot in the last four already in the bag and made 14 changes from their game the previous week against Kildare with only Emmet McGuckin holding on to a place in the first 15. James Horan made five changes from the team that faced Dublin with Kevin Keane, Shane McHale, Tom Parsons, Seamus O'Shea and Mikie Sweeney all getting starting spots against the Oak Leaf county.

First things first, win on Sunday and Mayo can look forward to a National League semi-final on Sunday week. That is the only thing that James Horan will have had his side concentrating on this week following last Saturday night’s draw against Dublin. It was a game they should have won, having a man advantage for 45 minutes and leading the game by six points with 20 minutes to go, and not seeing out the game is something that you can get away with in the league and learn from rather than have it happen in the championship.

After the breakneck start to the year with five games in 31 days, the past fortnight would have come as a welcome respite for James Horan and his management team as they had two weeks to work with their panel without having to prepare for a game at the same time.