Search Results for 'Paul Galvin'

Kerry 1-20 & nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; Mayo 1-11

Mayo manager James Horan will wait until this evening to announce his starting team for Sunday’s All Ireland semi-final against Kerry. It had been expected that the Ballintubber club man would announce his side on Wednesday night, but he has decided to wait until this evening to unveil his starting selection. Horan is waiting on the fitness reports of both Trevor Mortimer and Peadar Gardiner who picked up injuries in training for the county side and in club action respectively over the past few weeks. A third name was added to that list of worries on Tuesday night when Swinford’s Aidan Campbell picked up a knock at training in preparation for the clash.

I get an odd gig doing commentary for RTE Radio One and last week I was given my choice of four games. I opted for the Down v Sligo match in Cavan as it was the nearest to home. I left in good time and had the luxury of arriving at Breffni Park with time to spare. I enjoyed the company of Joe O’Connor from Ballintubber (Cillian’s uncle) for the best part of an hour before the game. Joe is a garda based in Ballinagh and understands the nuances of Cavan football inside out. We chatted about the Cavan football scene, as like us here in Mayo, Cavan are on the look out for a new manager after the departure of Tom Carr. Tom Reilly from Belmullet is the County chairman up there and has the onerous task of selecting a new man to take charge. The word is that there aren’t too many jumping out of the woodwork looking for it.

I always find it exciting when waiting to see what teams are paired against each other from the qualifier draw. I watched it live last weekend and once it was decided it would be Longford a good lively discussion took place about Mayo’s chances of progress. Most felt Mayo would be capable of beating Longford, a team that had a very mediocre season to date. When it was clarified later that evening that Longford had been awarded the home advantage for the match on Saturday June 26 (information that was not to hand when the discussion took place earlier), the task looked that little bit more difficult. I suggested in this column last week that it might be better for all if Mayo were drawn against a top tier side. Armagh, Derry, Kildare, or Donegal immediately spring to mind. Had we been drawn against any one of these teams and managed a victory, I feel the team could redeem itself and could certainly give us some hope for a reasonably good run through the qualifiers. However a match against Longford in Pearse Park just doesn’t set the pulse racing for me and I hope this particular clash gets the team a little more excited than I feel about it right now. I watched Longford play Louth in the Leinster Championship two weeks ago. It was a game they could so easily have won and they played without their star man, Brian Kavanagh. Their other star forward, Paul Barden, did play that evening, but was not 100 per cent fit. Both apparently are back training and will start against Mayo. Also in recent years I have attended the compact Longford venue and witnessed the home side frighten the lives out of very formidable opposition. I recall in 2006 a Dublin team looking mightily relieved to leave the midlands after scraping a two point victory over the home side. Longford sent Derry packing the year before in a qualifier game. Most of you will recall Kerry really struggling to beat them last year. So when their manager Glen Ryan suggested last week that he didn’t care who his side were drawn against as long as they had a home draw, you can fully understand where he was coming from.

Inter-county management is a tough station. The facts speak for themselves this season.

Inter-county management is a tough station. The facts speak for themselves this season.

1. WIN BREAKING BALL

The Vodafone football All-Stars are due to be announced tonight (Friday), live on RTÉ with the hurling All-Stars having been announced earlier on this afternoon. As is the norm, the All-Ireland final winners will get the bulk of the statuettes, with the defeated finalists also collecting a few baubles as consolation for their year.

Kerry 0-13

The talk of the weekend was undoubtedly the replayed Cork v Kerry Munster championship match on Saturday evening. I thoroughly enjoyed the match as it had some brilliant passages of play. There was outstanding fielding, score taking, and some of the tackling from players on both sides was technically superb. Cork were fantastic. They are a fit, strong, and powerful side, with quality players in practically every position. They must be the number one choice of many to win this year’s All Ireland such was the quality of their performance. It had been suggested that the momentum may have swung in favour of Kerry after their strong finish the previous weekend, but Cork proved yet again that they could soak up anything Kerry threw at them. They seem really focused and ready this year. The key difference from my observation was their freshness and greater hunger. It is not often we hear that the general mood in the Kingdom is rather sombre as early as mid-June, but there is a feeling out there that there is a somewhat laboured look and feel about Kerry this year. And you can understand why. They have visited the well so many times in recent years, having played in every final since 2004 and let’s be honest, they have taken a fair old battering along the way, particularly from some of the strong northern teams.