Search Results for 'Niall Cullen'

It’ll be a tough one to take this for Mayo, they had beaten all before them and beaten Galway twice before in the Connacht championship, but when it came to the biggest day of all Galway had their number.

Westport are the All-Ireland intermediate football champions after a pulsating win over St Colmcille's of Meath. It was hearts in mouths stuff at the bitter end as a Colmcille's player lofted a ball towards the Westport goal mouth only for stand in keeper Aaron Dunne to calmly clear his lines. The final whistle was blown immediately afterwards.

They survived the loss of their inspirational full back Kevin Keane after just ten minutes, then lost their goalkeeper Patrick O’Malley to a black card with six minutes to go and conceded a penalty, which was converted and saw their lead pared back to three points, then two points and then one point as six agonising minutes of injury time seemed to take an age to tick by, but when the full time whistle was blown, the warriors from Westport were All Ireland intermediate champions.

The Mayo minors championship adventure ended in Tullamore on Bank Holiday Monday where they went down battling to the Leinister champions Kildare by six points. In a game that had plenty of attacking adventure and impressive performances, it also had lots of talking points from the man in the middle Niall Cullen who issued four black cards in the game, three of them for Mayo. But at the end of the day the better side on the field won the day as Kildare turned the screw on Mayo in the second half when they had a strong breeze at their back to book their place in the All Ireland semi-final.

For those of you who have ever been to Old Trafford to watch Man Utd I am sure you are familiar with the song about “never dying” in honour of the club’s resurrection after the tragic Munich Air disaster. I know there has not been such a tragedy in Mayo football terms but such a song would be very appropriate about Michael Solan’s Mayo u21 team. They never give up. They never die.

There was no need for the Mayo faithful who made the 300km round trip to Tullamore to switch on their radios on the way home if there was more than one happy soul making the trip back west on Saturday evening. For they had plenty food for thought and conversation after seeing Mayo produce one of the gutsiest comebacks in memory to edge into the All Ireland u21 final on Saturday, April 30 against Cork.