Search Results for 'Sean Armstrong'

The intensity of club football goes up a few notches when the safety net is taken away and quarter-final places are at stake.

I was in McHale Park to see Mayo disembowel Roscommon at their ease and I was in Markievicz Park to see Galway stumble luckily to a narrow 1-13 to 0-12 victory over Sligo. Based on the respective performances from both panels and managements, there will only be one result in Pearse Stadium in just over two weeks’ time. And that is a Mayo victory.

My uncle worked in the pub business all his life. It’s all he really knew. I remember clearly one day as a young lad when he asked me what a pub needed to survive. I was young and innocent so I spoke of good food, passing trade, live music, a good pint of Guinness, a growing demographic in the area and some sponsorship of local teams and events. Yada, yada, ya.

The news that Ronan McGarrity had been selected to play in Sunday’s Connacht Senior Football Final (subject to passing a fitness test on Sunday morning) against Galway in Pearse Stadium was a major boost for Mayo when John O’Mahony named his side on Wednesday evening. The Ballina midfielder looked to all intents and purposes to be out of the game after he picked up a fractured cheekbone in Ballina’s Mayo senior football club championship clash with Crossmolina almost a fortnight ago.

Despite being bitterly disappointed like many other Galway people by our defeat to Mayo on Sunday, and the manner of it, it must be acknowledged that the better team won.

So another year drifts by and the Galway senior footballers once again cannot make any real impression at the business end of the season on the inter-county championship.

1.The amount of ball lost in the tackle: On far too many occasions ball was turned over by Galway players. They allowed Mayo players to stop them and just physically rip the ball out of their hands. Mayo have obviously worked on their tackling, but from a Galway perspective it was most disappointing to see the likes of Finian Hanley, Paul Conroy, and others losing the ball in contact. Likewise we were blocked down on numerous occasions and that gives a great lift to the opposition. We must not allow that to happen this weekend.

Mayo 0-11

Mayo’s highly anticipated first round game in division one of the national football league will now not go ahead as planned in McHale Park on Saturday night February 6. The game will now throw in the following day on Sunday, February 7 at 2.30pm rather than at 7.30pm under the new floodlights, at the multi million euro redeveloped county ground.