Search Results for 'Keith Higgins'

With the greatest respect to the pre-season provincial leagues, they are really what they are, challenge matches with large attendances. They are a means to an end, to prepare you for the competitions that matter, the National league and the championship. They are to build up fitness, improve your football skills, and try to unearth a player or two that might make a difference in bigger more important games. Unlike some folk out there, Mayo’s defeat by Roscommon in the final group game in the FBD league does not bother me in the slightest. After all Mayo, like most, were experimenting and playing with a very under strength team. There are two matters that do concern me however; firstly the delay in appointing Stephen Rochford means Mayo are a full month behind the other counties in terms of work done, and secondly the number of players Mayo have out injured for the start of the league.

For the second time in 12 months Roscommon came to Castlebar in the FBD League and went home with a place in the final after beating Mayo on their own patch. How this season will be judged will be seen in the months that come on much sunnier days, but in this encounter the hungrier and more in tune visitors were deserved victors.

Mayo are on the look out for a new senior football manager after the inevitable resigning of joint managers Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly last Friday night. It was a somewhat embarrassing saga in the Mayo GAA family that such an event occurred. By the time Noel and Pat resigned I had simply had enough. I was so drained from talking about it and anxiously waiting for any developments that I was relieved there was closure.

In this week’s column I expected to be wallowing about the glorious weather and plethora of club games in Mayo last weekend, that is as much of a mention it will get unfortunately. Just when we thought the dust had settled on our 2015 Championship we were greeted with the earth shattering news on Tuesday morning that there were major problems in the Mayo GAA family. The first murmur I heard was when the principal of St Attracta’s NS in Charlestown (Brian McDermott, an avid Mayo supporter) mentioned it to me in the school assembly yard at 9am. I walked back to work receiving texts saying “turn on the radio”. One message from England said “what the hell has happened”, I had no idea what was going on. For the rest of Tuesday my phone hopped as I spoke to countless journalists, radio stations, and even did a piece with Marty Morrissey for the Six One News. The media world was gone crazy looking for the story. The Mayo players had issued a vote of “no confidence” in the management.

Mary Hannigan of The Irish Times is one of my favourite journalists. Her TV View column in Monday’s Times is a must read as her humour, caustic wit, and wry take on things invariably brings a smile to my lips.

It might not have had the drama and frustration of how things ended last year in Limerick, but at the end of the day the result was the same and Mayo were bound for home on Sunday evening, with plenty of questions and plenty of regrets in the boot. In the past 12 months, Mayo have played in four All Ireland semi-finals (including replays both years) and not got over the line and back to the All Ireland final. Plenty time will be spent over the winter months picking over where it went wrong again and what could have been done. At the end of the day, the better team won. Dublin should have killed us off the first day when they were seven points up, but they made no mistake last Sunday when we were unable to hold onto a four point lead with the game entering the final straight.

Another chapter for Mayo’s House of Pain secured itself after the football team's 2015 adventure came to an abrupt end at the hands of Dublin in the semi final last weekend. In a few years' time people will look back at the result and the score line will suggest that Dublin were comfortable winners but the margins were very tight in this game. A stroke of luck for Dublin and, in my opinion, a poor refereeing decision put paid to any chance Mayo had of reaching the All-Ireland final and for another crack at Kerry.

Mary Hannigan of The Irish Times is one of my favourite journalists.