Search Results for 'Kerry'

A Mullingar businessman is celebrating one year in business next month and to mark the occasion is launching a brand new lunch menu and having a mega giveaway for all those who have supported him throughout the year.

Who would have predicted that Dublin, Kildare, Down and Cork would be the last four standing in the chase for this year’s All-Ireland? It is so refreshing to see new teams emerge and it is also good that we will see new champions later this summer. Tyrone and Kerry have dominated the scene for the last eight years, and to be honest, it was becoming predictable and a little boring. That is why last weekend’s results were like a breath of fresh air.

For anybody with primrose and blue blood running through their veins, all roads lead to Croke Park this Sunday as Fergal O’Donnell’s men bid to upset the odds when they face Cork in the All-Ireland quarter-final.

THE MATCHMAKER is second only to Glenroe in terms of being synonymous with the actors Mick Lally and Mary McEvoy, and the duo return to the stage in John B Keane’s hilarious play.

The last time Mayo made the trip to Cork in the National Football League, they came out of Páirc Uí Rinn with a slender one point win and one foot in a league semi-final and consigned the Rebels to division two football for the next season. A lot has changed in the past two seasons since then for Mayo. Only five of the team that lined out that night started for Mayo in their last National Football League game against Monaghan; Liam O’Malley, Keith Higgins, Conor Mortimer, Andy Moran, and Alan Dillon. Mark Ronaldson came on as a sub three years ago as he did against Monaghan. Kenneth O’Malley, who was between the posts that night, is still involved in the panel as is Pat Harte, and the injured duo of Peadar Gardiner and Aidan Kilcoyne who also made an appearance in that game, the likes of James Kilcullen, Enda Devenney, Ger Brady, and Aidan Campbell who all started have fallen by the wayside, along with Marty McNicholas who kicked 0-2 that day after coming off the bench. David Heaney and Kevin O’Neill have both retired from the game.

The Galway footballers, under the management team of Joe Kernan, Seán Ó Domhnaill and Tom Naughton, will complete their maiden league campaign next Sunday with a home game against Derry in Pearse Stadium at 2.30pm.

Galway Ladies currently top the table after maintaining their unbeaten record in this year’s Bord Gais Energy NFL division one campaign.

There is a strong Galway flavour in RTE’s Road to Croker programme tonight at 8pm. The show looks back at Galway’s All-Ireland winning season in 1998 and has some clips from the championship campaign of that season.

Nobody said it was going to be easy, and so far at least, division one certainly hasn’t been easy for the footballers of Westmeath. With three rounds played they are still seeking their first points of the campaign and are left propping up the table.

On the weekend of a championship match Jury’s Hotel, Croke Park is normally buzzing with animated followers of all the participating teams and last weekend was no exception. I was there early as I had overnighted in the capital and I made my way to the hotel to soak up the atmosphere hours before the game. I mingled with a number of Cork supporters chatting about the match and, to a man, they were hugely confident of their chances against Tyrone. They talked about the maturity of the team this year, the options off the bench and the aerial dominance they had at midfield. A number of them suggested that, not alone would they beat Tyrone, but that they had availed of the 7/2 on offer from most bookmakers on Cork to win the All-Ireland. After engaging them in conversation and having the crack with several of them I must admit that they had me convinced, too, that they were the team to beat this year. Jack O’Connor and Ger O’Keeffe arrived at the hotel. There was a rush of eager youngsters to Jack looking for autographs and he was as courteous as one would expect from a GAA manager, spending time chatting and encouraging all of them. Jack’s son was playing on the Kerry minor team later and he was anxious to have some food before heading across to Croker. We chatted for a while with the ever attentive hotel manager, who incidentally is a Kerryman, and had food organised for the boys. They had played golf somewhere between Kerry and Dublin on the Saturday afternoon and O’Connor was as excited as a young lad with a new toy as he described how he hammered O’Keeffe in a game of ‘skins’ (golfers will understand what I am talking about here). I suggested that a Cork victory over Tyrone wouldn’t necessarily be the result that Jack would prefer. It was widely acknowledged that the Kerry lads would have loved a crack at Tyrone in an All-Ireland this year, bearing in mind their record against the current champions. He didn’t disagree and acknowledged that if Kerry got to a final against Tyrone, his job from a motivational perspective would’ve been a lot easier.