Search Results for 'Trevor Howley'

Mayo 0-13

John O'Mahony named his squad for the championship on Monday, there were no major surprises in the 30 men named, with Belmullet's Billy Joe Padden the only man who wasn't involved in action so far this year coming back into contention. O'Mahony now has 33 days to get his team ready for Sligo in the Connacht championship opener.

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.

Dublin 1-9    ::   Mayo 1-8

Mark Ronaldson was named in John O’Mahony’s starting 15 to face Dublin this Sunday in McHale Park, despite the Shurle Glencorrib player having his appeal over a four week ban turned down by a hearing committee on Wednesday night. No official word has yet been confirmed if Ronaldson is to appeal the decision of the committee which will see him miss Sunday’s game and the game the following Saturday night against Derry, with the suspension due to expire at midnight after the trip to Celtic Park on March 13.

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.

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

Garrymore v Charlestown

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

Time has ticked by very quickly since Mayo took their final bow in the championship for 2008 on a warm August Saturday in Croke Park, slipping out of the championship at the hands of the eventual winners, Tyrone, by a solitary point. And with Cormac Reilly’s final whistle that day attention turned to 2009 and the talk of the pubs and sidelines as to what went wrong over the past two years. Well one thing is for sure, John O’Mahony is still in the hot seat and will remain there for the next couple of years after being given a new deal in the autumn. Who will make up his side this Sunday and for the rest of the year will be talking points for the next few weeks as a side begins to take shape as the opening rounds of the National League slip by.