Search Results for 'Robbie Hennelly'

And so another All-Ireland against Dublin ended with a crucial kick from the man whose sublime finish had us back here in the first place.

Connacht Championship quarter-final

They packed the ground from early in the day and there was a carnival atmosphere around Ruislip well before throw in. While the the football on display wasn't of the highest quality getting out of London without any slip ups was the main priority for Mayo and that's exactly what they did.

A piece of individual brilliance by two minutes into the second half by Evan Regan kickstarted Mayo’s drive towards their second league win of the season. Regan was picked out by Tom Parsons in the right hand corner of the pitch, the Ballina sharpshooter looked to be in trouble on more than one occasion, but he managed to create enough space for himself to beat two men and fire the ball low past Geoffrey Claffey and put Mayo into a six point lead.

It was a devastating loss for Castlebar Mitchels when they came up against a far superior and prepared Ballyboden St Enda’s yesterday. The comprehensive 13-point victory, wasn’t at all flattering on the Dublin men. Despite all the hype around Castlebar and through Mayo over the last few weeks, the huge support that came out to back them left Croke Park with heartbreak once again. From as early as the first minute when Colm Basquel burst through the Castlebar rearguard to finish in fantastic style, Castlebar were in trouble.

There will always be quibbles with the referees decisions in games, there were plenty to pick over from Rory Hickey’s display. In particular in the 26th minute when Aidan O’Shea was manhandled to the deck by a couple of Kerry players including Aidan O’Mahony, who were aided by Kieran Donaghy testing the strength of the material in the black and lime Mayo jersey. Aidan managed to scoop the ball over the bar somehow from being right under the crossbar for a point, but Hickey should have blown for a penalty before he ever got the shot off. But it wasn’t refereeing decisions that cost Mayo in MacHale Park, it was just bad decision making, poor execution of skills and just not being at the races in the final 35 minutes, all their own doing.

Mayo finally got off the mark after a pulsating battle with Ulster champions Monaghan in Clones last Sunday. Given the situation I feel this was the most important league game Mayo have played in the last 15 years as defeat would surely have left an insurmountable battle to survive in division one, so huge credit has to be given to both management and players. It would also have been the first time since 1994 that Mayo would have lost four games in a row at the start of a league campaign so needless to say Stephen Rochford did not want that statistic on his CV.

Vital interventions at the start and the end of this encounter from Robbie Hennelly saw Mayo over the line to gain their first two points in this years National Football League. Right from throw in Hennelly was called into action after Karl O’Connell burst through from half-way with the ball, but one on one with Hennelly the keeper stood tall to stop Mayo getting off to a terrible start.

Last Saturday can only be described as a Super Saturday within Mayo GAA circles with three big games on — However none of the results matched the excitement within the county. The All-Ireland champions Dublin travelled to Elvery’s MacHale Park for what was meant to be a walk in the park for them, given Mayo’s performance the previous week in Cork. What ensued was everything but as a very different Mayo made them fight to the bitter end, only for Dublin to scrape home by two points.

Mayo showed the kind of fight and heart that will have given their supporters plenty of cause for optimism going into the rest of the league campaign which will return at the tail end of the month. However, despite that fight and heart Mayo are still pointless after their first two rounds of action in the league and now face into two tough road trips to Ulster on the bounce before the final swing of three games at the tail end of Spring.