Search Results for 'James Nallen'

The future of Mayo football was given a new direction on Wednesday night when James Horan was appointed as the new manager of the Mayo senior football team for a term of three years. The Ballintubber manager who this year guided his club to their first senior county final was put forward by the five man interview committee and ratified by the county board delegates at a county board meeting. Horan won two All Stars during his playing career for the county, lining out 57 times for Mayo between his debut in 1995 in the national football league and his last game in 2002 against Cork in the All Ireland quarter final. He scored 4-83 for Mayo over his seven year inter county career. Horan’s back room team will be made up of James Nallen, Martin Connolly and Paul Jordan, Tom Prendergast, Dr Sean Moffatt, Paul O’Grady, Joe Dawson, Liam Moffatt, and Ed Coughlan.

The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning it's hard to tell exactly which it was, but after a long drawn out saga James Horan was the last man left standing when decision was finally made. After months of talk, chatter, sure things and favorites it was the Ballintubber man who came through after the chase rounded the last corner. The guessing game was finally over when the white smoke puffed out from the new stand in McHale Park and the two time All Star was unveiled as the man to lead Mayo into the future and towards what everyone hopes will be a bright new direction.

Ten championship games are down for decision this weekend in the Claregalway Hotel Senior Football Championship.

In just over six weeks time the real deal will get under way when Mayo head to Sligo in the Connacht championship. But on Sunday all roads lead to Croke Park and a second joust with Cork inside three weeks. But this time national honours are at stake. It has been an impressive league run so far by Mayo, picking up tough away wins against Tyrone, Derry, Kerry, and Cork along with home victories over Galway and Monaghan. The only black spot on the copybook so far this term was the single point defeat to Dublin in McHale Park, but in the grand scheme of things Mayo supporters can have nothing to complain about so far this term. When the league started back on the first Sunday of February, most people’s expectations and hopes were that Mayo did enough to survive in division one. But since their blitzkrieg start against Galway, John O’Mahony’s men have barely paused for breath, as the faced down nearly all comers, with the exception of Dublin, a game they should have won, kicking 18 wides over 70 minutes.

Mayo footballing star and former Swinford player David Heaney, who only announced his retirement from county football yesterday, has transferred to Claregalway for the coming season. His transfer was rubber-stamped by the Galway County Board last weekend.

Fresh from guiding a new look Mayo see off Joe Kernan's Galway side in McHale Park with ease, John O'Mahony wasn't getting carried away with his side's destruction of the near neighbors.

Ever since Joe McQuillian blew his final whistle in Croke Park last August and brought Mayo’s 2009 season to a shuddering end at the hands of Meath, all minds have been set firmly on the start of the national league and Mayo’s next crack at an All-Ireland run. The FBD league has run its course to a final spot against Galway at the end of the month, but Sunday’s game against the old enemy is where it all really begins again. While the lights may have been extinguished on this fixture by planning issues, there should still be plenty of fireworks on the field when the sides go head to head on Sunday in a game where both sides have a lot of questions to answer about each other.

Like many other pundits and indeed Galway supporters - if they are prepared to admit it after the event - I travelled to Castlebar last Sunday expecting a very close game, but I felt that Mayo would just sneak over the end line in the closing stages.

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

Garrymore v Charlestown