Search Results for 'Kevin Keane'

A little bit earlier than some would have liked the Royal Theatre Senior Football Championship roars back into life for 2010 on Saturday evening. First up in the championship are the champions and the new kids on the block in the solitary five team group in Charlestown at 7pm on Saturday. West Mayo will bring the combined forces of Islandeady, Parke, Louisburgh, and Balla together under the guidance of Padraig Walsh to try to topple Ciaran McBrien’s men in the championship opener. Charlestown will go into the game as hot favourites, but they have been known to be slow starters in the championship, and this early outing could prove to be a tricky encounter if the amalgamated side manage to click on the field. Players like Ollie Feeney, Jarlath O’Malley, Peter Collins, Simon Cloherty, and Conor Walsh will be watched to show they have the class to make the step up from the junior ranks to senior football.

Roscommon 2-9

Final preparations are underway for this weekend’s Safety Direct Galway International Rally. The event, which is the first round of the Citroen Irish Tarmac Rally Championship, kicks off on Friday evening with a ceremonial start in Oranmore village.

With the senior side bowing out of the championship in Croke Park last weekend, Ray Dempsey’s minor side will be looking to build on their Connacht championship win over Roscommon when they take on Monaghan on Saturday in Longford in the All Ireland quarter-final. Dempsey was able to mastermind Mayo’s first Connacht minor title in seven years thanks to a narrow win over a battling Roscommon side in Castlebar back in July and this Sunday’s game against the runners up in the Ulster Championship could send Mayo back to Croke Park. While they rode their luck at times in the Connacht final especially in the first half when Roscommon kicked themselves out of the game with some poor shooting, Mayo never let their opponents superiority on the field during the opening half get to them and kept plugging away before they took off on in the second half. Dempsey knows it’s going to be a big ask on Saturday and there is a lot of pressure on his side. “It’s nice to be here but as each game goes by the pressure builds up on you and your team. But this is where we want to be and that’s what comes with it.”

Galway Garda 1-09

I have been listening to the experts for a number of months now discuss the ‘player burnout’ topic. In fact it has been discussed on and off for the best part of a decade now. I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to suffer a little burnout myself listening to and, on occasion, talking about it.

Last Sunday in Dr Hyde Park in Roscommon, Killala captain Karl Dooher clutched the Frank Reynolds Memorial cup after the north Mayo men blew away the Roscommon champions by ten points. For the second time in three years Killala were crowned junior champions of Connacht to round off a successful year for the men from north Mayo. Marcus Hannick was the top scorer on the day finishing off with five points, all from placed balls, while James Ruddy grabbed their goal 21 minutes into the contest after some neat build up play which put them into a six-point lead, one which they never looked like loosing. Rory Hannick picked up the man of the match award for his tireless display in the engine room alongside Noel Ryan on an afternoon which was not designed for football in deep winter but that will be of little concern to the men from Killala who now have an All Ireland semi-final to look forward to in the new year.

As his side made the longer than normal trek back to the dressing room from the pitch in Dangan after subsiding to a five point defeat at the hands of NUIG, John O’Mahony faced the first of his interrogations at the hands of the hungry press core on the 50m line of the college pitch. After getting his first competitive view of his side for 2009 and how the new rules regarding yellow cards would play out, he held court over what he had just seen for the previous 60 minutes. Over the course of the game five players, two from Mayo and three from NUIG, were shown the line for picking up yellow cards, one as early as the eighth minute when Greg Begley was sent to the line for a clumsy challenge on Billy Joe Padden. “I believe the GAA are not going to change them because managers are saying they want them changed, but we have a meeting in the middle of January and I'll do my talking there. There will need to be some tweaking on them, the first lad to get sent off for NUIG my reading of it initially is it's a yellow card if you pull down a player, and will that lead to people appearing to be pulled down or fall and get a lad sent off. We'll give them a chance and see, if it adds to free flowing football then it's always a positive, but we'll have to hold our fire and see,” said O’Mahony.

The 2009 Safety Direct Galway International Rally gets under way on Friday January 16 with more than 40 local Galway crews on the entry list.

Mayo 2-6