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Mayo can get to another All-Ireland final

After conceding 3-14 to Mayo, 4-12 to Tipperary, and 1-20 to Kerry in three consecutive championship games, there can be no denying Galway have major issues at the back.

Mayo head to Croke Park on Sunday for their fourth All Ireland quarter-final on the bounce since James Horan first took charge of the side. An achievement that any inter-county manager would be proud of, but in Mayo all that matters to some supporters is getting over the finishing line in first place in late September.

Last weekend saw the final group games in both the senior and intermediate club championships in Mayo. Speaking this week to the press, Mayo manager James Horan said that while everyone came though the club championships without major injury it does cause a hindrance for his preparation for next Sunday’s All Ireland quarter final. “You do lose significant time, unlike the Dublin or Donegal, they’re gaining a week, which is a double whammy, which we might lose here and they have a double gain. If it was standard across the board, it suits me down to the ground,” said Horan.

The four provincial winners have eventually been decided with Dublin and Donegal winning their respective finals in Leinster, and Ulster joining Kerry and of course Mayo. I was in a very precarious position last Sunday at 1.30pm, sitting in 30 degrees of heat by a gorgeous pool in the Algarve, do I stay or do I go to watch potential opponents for Mayo. There was only one winner, I left the swimming pool as I would have been uneasy sitting, wondering what was going on. I happened to meet former Breaffy player Robert Fahy and two of his kids who were there for the same reason as myself, we wanted to see if the Dubs were beatable as most people felt Meath were the team to do it.

The club championship got under way last weekend with the clash of the round in group one between reigning champions Castlebar Mitchels and local rivals Ballintubber, both pre tournament favourites for the Moclair Cup.

A group of influential American tour operators visited Mayo recently. They followed an action-packed itinerary, which also took in Galway, Sligo, Donegal, Belfast, and Dublin. These tour operators are responsible for making the travel arrangements for a range of large groups across the United States – including choral, pilgrimage, Christian heritage and educational groups. Their fact-finding visit was a fantastic opportunity to showcase what Mayo and Ireland has to offer such groups. They enjoyed a tour of Westport House before visiting the Croagh Patrick Visitor Centre and the National Famine Monument in Murrisk. Carefully selected and invited here by Tourism Ireland in New York, the itinerary for the tour operators was designed by Fáilte Ireland.

The dust has just about settled on the group stages of the Mayo championship and there is never a weekend that goes by that you are not intrigued or partly shocked by some of the results. I’m not quite the expert tipster I thought I was- our east Mayo friends in Aughamore let me down (Jimmy Killeen- the lethal Garrymore forward bagging himself eight points) along with Tomas Tierney’s Westport who failed to deliver on their promising victory in Tourmakeady.

The Mayo Senior championship was in overdrive last weekend (I am sure James Horan was waiting anxiously by his phone to ensure all his players came through their respective games) and while I was not surprised and had predicted most of the results, the drubbing Castlebar dished out to Breaffy left me a little shocked especially as I had them pencilled in for my “value bet of the week”.

FACED WITH the threat of redundancy, five women stage a lock-in at a shirt factory in County Donegal. Ellen, Una, Vera, Rosemary and Rebecca unite against a common enemy and stand up to ‘the man’ and the union, in an effort to save their jobs.