Search Results for 'Pat Kelly'

While the post-mortem on Mayo’s inglorious exit from the Connacht championship went on over the week and will go into the future, it’s back to basics this weekend for the inter county football panel when they rejoin their club mates for the first round proper of action in the Royal Theatre senior and intermediate championships.

Mazda 3 'Make your mark' winner Micheal Aherne is presented with his new Mazda 3 executive diesel by Mazda brand Manager Pat Kelly on behalf of Monaghan and Sons Galway for Mazda Motor Group Ireland.

Margaret O’Rafferty was welcomed at last week’s sitting of the District Court when Judge John Neilan wished her luck in her new role.

•Three fighters from the Point Blank Gym in Parkmore faced off against their counterparts from the Top Pro Kilkenny Club for the Tribal Warfare Shield. Benjamin "Son of Life" Davis showed his speed when he knocked out Ger Coady with a lightening fast left straight, sending the ex-kickboxer to the canvas. Tom "The Catastrophe" Kelly had a war with Mick Timmins until early in the second round Kelly pounded Timmins until the referee stepped in, while Kevin Moran was able to get a dominant position and a technical knock out over Ray Dowd to make it a triple victory for the home fighters. Other Galwaymen on the card included Dave King who held off the early onslought of Swedish fighter Johan Vedenius to take a win in the second round by disqualification when the giant Swede inadvertantly broke the rules. Young Kiran Singh made short work of Dublin fighter Brian Kenny, taking only a shade over a minute to finish his opponent with a rear naked choke, while Tim Murphy increased Point Blank's spoils by bringing the featherweight title to Galway, defeating the Northern Irish Featherweight Champion Jonny Dooey. The main event saw Headford man Alan "The Cannon" Hannon give his all against his supremely talented opponent Martin "The Heat" Begley and midway through the second round Hannon secured a head and arm choke to submit the game northern fighter for the win.

Galway Garda 3-10

Isn’t it a long season for our inter-county footballers when you consider they had their first match of the year last Sunday week, and some or most of them will be involved at either club or county level for another nine or 10 months. I know that the footballers who take their preparation seriously rarely take a week off, and during those two months of so called inactivity at the end of the year will undertake a maintenance programme so as to not lose their superior levels of fitness. It is very easy to pick these guys out if you attend early season matches as they are normally the players that catch the eye. Pat Kelly, Austin O’Malley, Alan Dillon, and Peadar Gardiner are players that spring to mind immediately when I think of players that live as close to a monastic lifestyle as is possible for young men these days. That is one of the primary reasons why they are right up there when it comes to selecting man of the match performances in the FBD league and early rounds of the National Football league.

On Sunday, Killala will look to book their place in the All Ireland Junior Football championship final when they take on Liverpool side John Mitchels in Carrick on Shannon. This will be the second time in two years the north Mayo men have been within touching distance of Croke Park and the All Ireland final. In 2006 they fell short against Greencastle at this stage and they will be aiming to put things to right this weekend.

I have been intrigued over the years by the large volumes of people travelling weekly across the water to support, in the main, Glasgow Celtic and English soccer teams. No expense is spared it seems as these die hard supporters make their weekly pilgrimages to London, Manchester, or Liverpool. My 10-year-old son, Johnny, is a supporter of Liverpool so I decided to source a couple of tickets for a home match in Anfield as a Christmas present. I booked the flights last December. Departure was from Knock on Saturday morning with the return flights booked for Sunday lunchtime. I discovered, however, sometime in mid January that Sky Sports, which dictates when matches are played, had moved this fixture to Sunday which meant I had to re-book our flights. When I realised what Ryanair wanted to charge me to change my scheduled flights, I decided to stick with my outbound journey and book separate flights home on the Monday. With an arrival time of 10.45am in Liverpool and loads of time to kill I managed to secure two tickets for the Manchester v Blackburn game on the Saturday evening in Old Trafford. Johnny had got lucky!

Mayo, as you know, start with a home game against Derry in Ballina on Sunday. While it is true that our preparations haven’t been perfect, with sloppy displays in the FBD league, preparations in the last two weeks have gone really well according to reports! Some of the ‘big guns’ were out last weekend in Kilmallock, where Cork were the opposition. Mayo scored 2-12 in that game against a full Cork outfit. The game ended in a draw and apparently it was a good workout for all concerned. Trevor Mortimer has returned to the fray after a couple of weeks sunning himself in South Africa and Ronan McGarrity was back at midfield having returned from his honeymoon. Mayo were as near full strength as possible, with only the injured Conor Mortimer not featuring as he had minor surgery on a broken nose received a week earlier. After this game and another workout on Sunday morning against a Mayo u21 selection management would more than likely have made their minds up on a starting 15 for Sunday. At the time of writing the Mayo team hasn’t yet been selected but I will be surprised if it isn’t Clarke, Vaughan, Cafferkey, Liam O’Malley, Gardiner, Cunniffe, Pat Kelly, McGarrity, Parsons, Trevor Mortimer, Dillon, Padden, Conor Mortimer, Barry Moran, and Andy Moran. If Conor Mortimer isn’t selected then I expect Mickey Sweeney might get the nod here as he scored a goal and two points from three efforts against Cork. I believe we will get our campaign off to a winning start on Sunday. Derry are missing quite a few of their stars as I believe Mark Lynch, Enda Muldoon, Niall McCusker, Kevin McCloy, Colin Devlin, and Paddy Bradley are not available on Sunday for one reason or another.

It will take exactly three hours to cover the 122 miles it is between Castlebar and Letterkenny according to the AA on its website. So to make the 2.30pm throw in in comfortable time Mayo supporters will be leaving home from the county town not long after 10.30am on a Saturday. While Saturday evening games have become the norm for the National League, this weekend Mayo have the unusual fixture of a Saturday afternoon game against Donegal. The change in the fixture is something that the Mayo manager, while not overly happy with, will have to deal with. “It’s a strange one all right, when we heard that the game was not going to be played under lights we assumed it would be switched to a Sunday. But as far as I know it’s to do with TV rights that the game has to be on Saturday. It’s far from an ideal time for supporters to make a trip to Donegal and we need all the supporters we can at the games, and the people of Mayo want to come out and support us. We also believed that the game would then be played in Ballyshannon, but it was moved further away to Letterkenny, and this was all only decided last week, which was very late.”