Messages

If Cork line out as selected then I cannot see them winning especially as Donnacha O'Connor is injured and they are only playing Shields from the U21's. Cork have decent enough backs but the forwards are weak both in terms of creating and taking scores - they need twice as much possession as the other team. Even against Tyrone there was only two points in it when Mulligan was sent off and also Tyrone had to replace their two corner backs. Tyrone more or less gave up in the last 15 mins and it was easy for Cork to get some handy points. If Mayo break even at midfield they should win as I cannot see Cork scoring more than 9 or 10 points and Mayo are capable of 1-12 or 1-13. Forecast is for dry weather which will test the cork backs..the night against Tyrone pitch was heavy and it was more suited to backs.

Looks like you're a man that knows your Cork football Tatler Jack. You were right on the money in your predictions.

I was astonished to hear that Sligo delegates voted against him reffing the 1989 Final. Any idea why that was Seánie? Was it because of Mayo involvement, or was there dirty work at the crossroads?

He seemed pretty bitter about it. I thought it a sad way to finish a fantastic career. Fair play to TG4 for profiling him. They understand what the GAA is about.

[secure the 3 points]

hopefully the new faces can perform well enough to secure the 3 points at the same time.

You might need to go aisy on the Sky Sports hoss. 

From this morning's Irish Independent:



Mayo get light relief

Monday February 19th 2007


Mayo 1-14

Clare 1-8

SF Challenge

TEENAGE centre half-forward Aidan Campbell and Ballina Stephenites' wing-back Enda Devenney gave new Mayo manager John O'Mahony food for thought with sparkling performances in a challenge match to mark the official turning on of new floodlights at Ballinrobe on Saturday night.

A Mark Ronaldson goal after 27 minutes put Mayo in control, and he had a chance to add a second but his second-half penalty was saved by Clare 'keeper Joe Hayes.

SCORERS - Mayo: M Ronaldson 1-0, A Campbell 0-3 (2f), A Kilcoyne 0-2 (1f), B Regan 0-2, E Devenney 0-2, E Barrett 0-2, M McNicholas 0-1, G Brady 0-1, G Mullins 0-1. Clare: D Molohan 0-6 (5f), R Donnelly 1-2

© Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/

The Sunday Business Post is reporting this morning that the IRFU will make twice as much from the Croke Park matches as they would have were they still in Lansdowne Road.

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS-qqqs=news-qqqid=20854-qqqx=1.asp

Is this the first time that homelessness has made good business sense?

Trua Dé ar na cinn gan ciall.

I posted on this same topic today, until Hound pulled me up about it. Apologies for the clutter.

Beats me why I bothered now, looking back. I don't see why anyone should be surprised at what the FAI do, or the bizzare media-cheerleaders for this whole shameful selling of Croke Park business.

Áine Lawlor was asking some guy on Morning Ireland this morning if he didn't think it was great "to see the sporting traditions on this island united." United? United how? What does that mean? It means nothing - it's just more propaganda to cover up what is a craven cash-making exercise on all sides, that sells out eighty years of history, tradition and values in the process. God help us.

The Daily Telegraph is not noted for anything other than staunch Unionism. How astonishing, then, that they should print this article about Croke Park. The Indo picks up a lot of copy from the Telegraph - I don't think they'll be going for this one. How quickly we forget.



'Old foes' return to Bloody Sunday site
By Brendan Gallagher
Last Updated: 11:08am GMT 07/02/2007

Tipperary's popular half-back and captain, Michael 'Mick' Hogan, who had travelled to Dublin for an afternoon's sport to play in a friendly against Dublin, lay motionless on the greensward of Croke Park, blood oozing from his gunshot wounds, cut down by a British machine gun. So too Jane Boyle, dressed in her Sunday best, who had attended the match with her fiance and was to have got married five days later, and William Scott, a fanatical 14-year-old 'Dub' or Dublin supporter.

A couple of yards away lay 11-year-old William Robinson and 10-year-old Jerome O'Leary – good friends, Gaelic football fanatics and defenceless children who were bleeding to death after being gunned down by the so-called tough men of the Black and Tans. At one point during an afternoon of madness, the Tipperary and Dublin teams were lined up in the centre of Croke Park to be executed summarily by the British but mercifully a high-ranking, although unidentified, officer intervened and screamed that there had been enough killing on this awful day. November 21, 1920. Bloody Sunday. The first Bloody Sunday, that is. The second followed 52 years later in Derry.

In all, 14 Irish citizens were killed by British forces at Croke Park on Bloody Sunday and 80 badly wounded – including Hogan's Tipperary colleague Jim Egan – which goes a long way to explaining why the ground is so strongly identified with Irish nationalism. Part shrine, part cathedral, a living historical monument to the freedom fight. Hill 16 – the massive terrace that holds up to 15,000 fans – is built on the rubble of Sackville Street (renamed O'Connell Street when the British moved out) after the uprising of Easter 1916 had left the city centre in a state of some disrepair. The rubble was carted out to Croke Park, piled high and grassed over.

It is a mercifully rare, probably unique, occurrence for a sportsman to be shot dead by British troops on the field of play, so the story of Mick Hogan warrants re-telling. Indeed, just telling – it is doubtful if anybody this side of the Irish Sea without Irish antecedents has ever even heard it. Strangely, it was never included in history lessons in British schools.

Horan was born at Currasilla near Nine-Mile-House in Tipperary in 1896 into an old and much respected farming family. A talented sportsman who played for the Grangemockler GAA club, he rose quickly though the junior ranks to captain Tipperary, and like most able-bodied men in the area he joined the local volunteers to help in the underground fight to rid Ireland of the occupying British Army. Indeed, as a natural leader, he had been elected company commander of the Grangemockler Volunteers on the Friday night before the Tipperary team travelled up to Dublin by train the next day.

The Irish War of Independence (1919-21) had meant that all Gaelic sport had been banned by the occupying forces throughout 1920 but by the autumn a few inter-county matches had been allowed and Tipperary's game against Dublin – undoubtedly the two top sides of the era – had been organised hastily to raise funds for the families of those who had been imprisoned by the British. It was undeniably an overt political act during a period of extreme tension. While that does not excuse anything that followed, it does place the incident in context.

Bloody Sunday took place soon after the death of hunger striker Terence McSwiney and execution of Kevin Barry, and the Irish Republican Army were looking for revenge. Early on the morning of the match, in an operation planned by Michael Collins, a hit squad – the 12 Apostles – staged a series of raids on British intelligence officers in Dublin who were collectively known as the Cairo Gang. An hour later 14 covert intelligence officers had been killed and six badly wounded.

The British Army, based at Collinswood, considered how to retaliate and thoughts turned immediately to Croke Park where a crowd of between 15,000 and 20,000 people was expected. In fact, however, Dublin was in such turmoil that day that the figure was nearer 10,000. The Army later argued that such a crowd was probably the best hiding place for the assassination squad and their intention was to search everybody as they left after the game. Anybody not cooperating would be shot dead on the spot.

It was a combined exercise between the Police (RIC) and the Army (Black and Tans), with the latter taking the lead. A spotter aircraft was dispatched to fly over Croke Park where the game had started half-an-hour late, and three armoured vehicles circled the ground. However, contrary to Hollywood's version in the film of Michael Collins — Liam Neeson taking the starring role — a tank did not burst on to the field itself.

On the approach of the soldiers and police, the turnstile attendants raised the alarm, a stampede ensued and the armed forces rushed straight into the ground and on to the pitch, firing indiscriminately. In the chaos it is doubtful if they actually targeted Hogan as such, although Army officials would probably have known of his background and that of other players. They were simply reckless as to whom they killed.

Later that night two IRA officers, Dick McKee and Paedar Clancy, were arrested for their alleged part in the morning assassinations and shot dead at Dublin Castle while "trying to escape". Meanwhile Hogan's remains, accompanied by the team, arrived in Clonmel on the Wednesday after the game. Thousands joined the funeral procession to Grangemockler.

He was buried in his Tipperary football suit, the coffin was draped with the Tricolour and lowered into the grave by the men who had played beside him on that fateful day.

Thirty years later the main stand at Croke Park was named in his honour and one of the massive new stands retains his name. They say sport and politics shouldn't mix but on this day they were indivisible – which explains why Croke Park will always be more than just a sports stadium and Mick Hogan is more than just a Tipperary football player.

• The Six Nations clash between Ireland and England is on Feb 24.


Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

Daithí Ó Brádaigh is the boy to captain the sweet County Mayo.

A fairly tame article to be getting worked up about I would have thought.

I suggest though that it would be better contacting Tom himself about it rather than coming on here whinging about it.

Ara come off it a Bhuachaill Cuain na Gaillimhe, we're only doing the Fat Man a favour by talking about it here. He'll be able to squeeze another thousand words out of this for next week and then take the weekend off, able to eat sausages 'til he bursts on Saturday in Croker. 

The article in question:



Only churls churlish over Croker lights

Tom Humphries

Mon, Jan 29, 2007

Locker Room:In the murky alcoves and quiet corners of the chat rooms there are still some contributors bellyaching and muttering darkly about next Saturday's floodlit extravaganza in Croke Park.

A friend used to describe the Livelineprogramme on RTÉ Radio 1 as a civic forum for cranks, and happily the internet and its humming chat rooms have extended the possibilities for that benighted portion of the population who are never happy unless they are grumbling.

To sneak around the chat rooms eavesdropping one would suspect the Dublin-versus-Tyrone shindig was like the Vietnam draft, a compulsory exercise and one likely to lead to death or maiming.

Legislation for the draft has apparently been drawn up by a cabal of media types with nothing better to do. Finally, it is clear the game will do nothing but harm, the least of its unforeseen consequences being media interest, which as we all know, hits a team like the MRSA superbug hits a hospital.

For the rest of us it's a nice little celebration. If you were dragged up a certain way the new year starts in earnest only when the serious GAA action begins again. That period of the year between the end of the provincial club championships to, well, next weekend is spent in a period of suspended animation, marked (well, more so than usual) by feelings of ennui, lethargy and slight depression.

Sure, there is the diet of soccer, the Premiership, The Roy and Niall Show, and the ever-entertaining soap opera of the domestic league, which even in its downtime lurches from crisis to crisis like a drunk walking against the traffic.

For a bewildering number of people on this island there is the Heino as well, an event we take more seriously than the rest of the world put together, and well, why not? If it mixes sport with a suggestion that somebody drinks this beer instead of that beer we're all for it so long as it ain't the GAA that's at it.

All those distractions are fine but they are somewhat remote. The country isn't in full gear till the GAA is up and running and speculative conversation abut the summer is coursing through the veins of the nation.

Next Saturday night is a celebration not just of the end of the winter doldrums but of the end of one period in the GAA's history and the start of another.

The first floodlit game to be played in Croker comes, as we'll tire of hearing over the next few months, before the gates are thrown open and the new tenants are let in.

There are a small minority of diehards, begrudgers and whingers who, like the poor, shall always be with us, and they aren't happy. These people attract cameras and microphones like starlets having wardrobe malfunctions on their nights out. A disproportionate amount of attention is given to things they would be better off keeping private.

These are people from within the GAA who believe that when they cut themselves shaving they seep green, green blood. They are the people from outside the GAA who actually enjoyed the GAA's discomfort over Rule 42. Cold-war types who still live it.

For both sides, Michael Greenan, of the Ulster Council, is an icon and his threat to run for the presidency of the GAA is a promise to bring both sides to business as it was practised, say, in 1959.

The rest of us (barring the iconic Michael Greenan) are just happy to see the back of that dark period of time and to be on the cusp of an era where the GAA's achievement at Croke Park is highlighted and talked about and welcomed and respected.

For the next few months we might still be backward-looking, swamp-dwelling stickballing Neanderthals but we are the ones opening up the grand house and taking the rent from our professional friends. Only a churl would be, well, churlish about it.

Dublin and Tyrone are a perfect way to start things off in the post-churl era.

Mention of those teams and Michael Greenan actually reminds us of that splendid piece of YouTube footage which showcases about five minutes of highlights, head-butts, high tackles and carnage from the Dublin v Tyrone game in the Skydome in Toronto back in 1990. Peter Canavan was 18 and looked like Rick Astley.

The so-called Battle of Omagh was sissy stuff by comparison, but there, scampering around happily in his referee's outfit on the artificial sward used for those foreign abominations of baseball and gridiron was our Michael Greenan.

There's a sense about this season that there is an All-Ireland out there for the taking. Missing a couple of stars, settling a few others and just getting his feet under the table is likely to hinder Pat O'Shea. Armagh are in a curious spot, too old in parts, too young in others. Mayo have John O'Mahony but have they the mental strength? Cork seem a little bit off, especially in the forwards.

That leaves Dublin and Tyrone. The Ulster champions have the best footballers and maybe the shrewdest manager but they've been rolling on for some time now and it will be interesting come summer to see if they have the intensity in their gut to play their high-pressure game. And Rick Astley is gone, taking with him that raw edge which made him so infuriating for opposition fans to watch.

And the Dubs? There's a point to prove after last August and it will take a few new faces to prove it. For a long time the rap on the Dubs has been that they take athletes and try to turn them into footballers (they actually take hurlers and turn them into footballers but let's not go there now), but with Diarmuid Connolly, Bernard Brogan and Dotsie O'Callaghan all bubbling up nicely there's a lot of class to choose from in their forwards.

Midfield is a slight worry in that Ciarán Whelan, patchy though his excellence is, can't go on forever, but the evidence in Tullamore yesterday is Darren Magee is coming back to the level where he is a serious option.

The defence is a greater worry. There's lots of talk about putting the Sigerson-winning midfielder Ross McConnell in the number three jersey for a while and, looking at the back lines, one wonders sometimes where the necessary toughness is going to come from. Where is the Gay O'Driscoll, the Pat O'Neill, the Paddy Moran, or Keith Barr or Eamonn Heery? Ger Brennan brings a little of that and there's a quiet constituency that likes the outside chances of Paul Brogan of Plunketts as well.

That's what makes next Saturday such an opportunity on every level. It's an occasion . The GAA celebrating itself a little while it stands on the threshold of history. And it's a game. Tyrone, who have been experimenting madly in the McKenna Cup, against Dublin, who have been a little more cautious but need three or four new faces to shake things up.

What could be better than throwing a few players into the mix in front of 82,000 people while playing opposition that wants to put down a serious marker? Both benches get a rare chance to see what their tyros might be like under pressure at the height of summer.

We all step out into the light on Saturday and two sides who fancy themselves for the long haul to next September get to have their credentials examined against that light. It will be magical and it will be interesting too. And it's only February.

Relax in the chat rooms, lads. Enjoy the show.
© 2007 The Irish Times

From the Irish Times of May 2006:

Burning passion hard to quench

Interview/Jimmy Murray: Keith Duggan talks to legendary Roscommon footballer Jimmy Murray, the man who captained the county to their first All-Ireland senior football title in 1943

The football used in the 1944 All-Ireland final between Cavan and Roscommon hangs from a metal chain on the dark wooden ceiling in Jimmy Murray's pub in Knockcroghery. It is blackened and a bit battered and all the more powerful for that. One night in 1990, a fire broke out in the pub, burning half the counter and destroying some of the All-Ireland photographs and memorabilia that Jimmy had placed around the room.

The ball was suspended from a piece of string then, and in the heat and tumult it fell to the flames, destined to be cinders. A crowd had quickly gathered in the village trying to fight the fire, and one man dashed into the melting room only to reappear, triumphantly shouting: "I've got the ball. I've got the ball!"

"I said something like, 'forget the ball and quench the bloody shop'," laughed Jimmy Murray during the week. "But it would have been a shame if it had gone all right."

Murray captained the 1943 team, the first time that Ros' lifted the Sam Maguire and the beginning of a remarkable period of achievement that becomes more luminous the further into history it retreats.

Roscommon won the All-Ireland championship in 1943 and 1944, buckled in 1945 and rose again to produce what Murray believes was their best season of football before losing to Kerry in the All-Ireland final after a replay.

Kerry would defeat the Primrose County in two further successive September showdowns, those of 1962 and 1980, the last appearance by Roscommon on All-Ireland final Sunday.

And, as the country feels the tremors of another football championship, Roscommon's record seems a perfect example of just how difficult and elusive the ultimate prize is for all counties other than the eternal giants of the game.

With a small population - the 2002 census had Roscommon at just over 53,000 - less than half that of Galway and Mayo and smaller than Sligo, the county has 19 provincial titles to go with five All-Ireland titles and those immortal back-to-back All-Irelands - a feat that frustrated all contemporary teams.

And as Murray says, "People here were stone cracked mad on the football then and they are today, too."

Roscommon are undeniably a thoroughbred football county, and yet they are available at odds of 200 to 1 to emulate the feat of the men from half a century ago.

No reactionary, Murray is full of praise for the style and speed of the modern game and agrees the business of winning the All-Ireland has become tougher than ever.

"It has all levelled out," he remarked, dapper and nimble and sitting by a pleasant afternoon fire in the family livingroom at the rear of the pub - three hardback scrapbooks packed with photographs and newspaper clippings lie on the table. "In my time, Ulster was Cavan. All the Northern teams have got fierce strong and there are few really weak teams now. There isn't much between most teams on a given day."

When Murray began playing for Roscommon in 1938, the county were graded junior and they lost in the first round of that year's championship to Galway. "It meant our first pick wasn't even good enough to beat Galway's second pick. That was my introduction to Roscommon football."

Bleak as the beginning was, it makes their transformation into a team that would leave an indelible impression on an entire generation all the more impressive. The funny thing is that, in identifying the reasons for their success, Murray hits upon the very reasons that are regarded as vital today - cutting-edge training and a dominant personality.

"Dan O'Rourke, no matter what they say about him. He was a politician and a Fianna Fáil TD, as everybody knows, but a great football man. Now, I never voted in my life, but as far as Gaelic football went, he was number one with me. He was a hard man, very strict, a Pioneer, but would smoke away and was a great GAA man. I would say he spent thousands on the GAA.

"We were inside at collective training in the old hospital in Roscommon, it was vacant at the time. The wards were there with beds and a kitchen, so it was ideal. He got in a cook and a trainer, and that was all we needed. The GAA eventually banned the collective training because it got too professional, and they were right, too. You left your job for it.

"Now, it was tough and enjoyable, but it was a bit professional. You would head down to the pictures in the evening and you would have young lads carrying your boots or your bag for you.

"But Dan's first collective training was in his own house. He had about two big bedrooms and he had a big garage where he kept his cars. And they cleaned it out and brought out 15 beds and we stayed there.

"Dan's family - his wife and daughters - fed 20 young lads for two weeks a good breakfast, dinner and supper. And by God, we were well fed. Better food than some of us were used to. He was obsessive, and he had an All-Ireland in mind from the beginning."

The team's ascent was slow and formidable. They won the Connacht junior title in 1939 and the All-Ireland a year later. At senior grade, they lost successive Connacht finals to Galway in 1941 and 1942, but had won minor titles in 1939 and 1941.

By 1943, O'Rourke's vision and the totalitarian training methods of Galway man Tom Molloy fell into perfect synchronicity. The county and colours were like a fresh breeze during the staid life in wartime and 63,000 made it to Croke Park to see them face the mighty Cavan.

"The grass looked so green as I ran on to the field and I felt so much alone that I glanced back to see if the rest of the lads were there at all," Murray once said about that moment. Once the game began, though, they played as if to the manor born.

They were feted all that autumn and returned fresh and with confidence soaring, felling giants Mayo, Cavan and Kerry on the way to retaining the Sam Maguire.

Their tired, first-round defeat to Mayo in 1945 was no great surprise after those two tremendous years, but 1946 still rankles.

"It was the one that got away, unquestionably. Six points up with a few minutes to go? I believe a lot of people had gone. Kerry people often told me afterwards they were on the Jones's Road when they heard the word. They got one soft goal and then a very good one and that was it. Kerry were Kerry. We beat them in 1944, but 1946 was the best football that Roscommon played."

In the finals of 1943/44, both the Cavan and Kerry centre backs were substituted, such was Murray's influence. Significantly, he was on the sideline when the Kingdom made their late comeback half a century ago.

"I got my nose smashed and I was all blood, watching the game from the sideline. So the St John's ambulance men came up to me and said, 'come here until we wipe that blood off you, you will be going up for the Sam Maguire in a few minutes'. They were convinced it was just a matter of getting cleaned up and going up for the bloody cup. Then, sure, disaster struck."

A year later, Murray's career was ended by a cruel knee injury. He was aged 30 and believes he had the disposition and fitness to play for another four years. "I was an addict for football, I lived for the bloody game."

He still does. At 89, Murray complains that his memory gets fuzzy sometimes, but his voice is as sharp and clear as a whistle, and he still sings a terrific version of The West's Awake. He has an historian's passion for the GAA and collected everything he could that was written about Roscommon during his playing days.

Murray's Bar has become a stopping point for celebrated GAA stars from across the country and he keeps a book of photographs of them all - Eddie Keher, John Connolly, Kevin Heffernan, Brian McEniff, Mattie Gilsenan and generations of Roscommon players.

Of the eight Murray brothers who grew up around this household, four won All-Irelands. Tony was a minor in 1939, Phelim and Jimmy won both junior and senior honours, and Oliver, the youngest, was on the victorious minor team of 1961.

It was an extraordinarily rich period, and the eldest of the Murray boys admits that he has often been perplexed and stunned over the years by how thoroughly it disappeared. The team broke up. Dan O'Rourke held his seat for 10 years and went on to become president of the GAA.

Murray does not believe O'Rourke's devotion and influence on Roscommon football helped his political ambitions, however. O'Rourke was honest and dogmatic and did not believe in buttering people up. But nobody could deny his importance to the county.

"We were delighted by what we achieved and maybe our heads got a bit swollen with it. But we never dreamt for a minute that Roscommon would go down so flat and never come back since. I always felt it was only a matter of years before we would come back. And we nearly did a few times."

He sat in the dressingroom in Croke Park before the 1980 final against Kerry, half offering advice and half hoping to pass on the winner's touch through some sort of clairvoyance. "For all the good it did," he laughs now.

But he refuses to lose all optimism, arguing with his son John that Roscommon were not so far away in Connacht last year, that they made a hash of two great goal chances which could have turned the game for them. He still ventures up the road to Hyde Park on fine days, talking easily with people who want to come up and shake his hand.

Captaining one's county to a maiden All-Ireland title bestows a lasting fame upon a man and Murray accepts it for what it is.

Not so long ago, he was introduced to the writer John McGahern, who politely asked for his autograph, being of the generation of children thrilled by the feats of Murray, Carlos, Keenan and McQuillan. Murray was equally keen to get McGahern's autograph, and so the pair swapped signatures.

There are not so many of the great Roscommon team left now, so there is something majestic about that wrecked, totemic football hanging in a bar on the main road from Roscommon to Athlone.

We spoke for a while about the likely conquerors in the upcoming championship, and Jimmy Murray shook his head as if it were a fascinating puzzle.

"Hard to know. Hard to know. The Northern teams will be strong. And you can never write off Kerry. You never can."

That much never changes.
© 2006 The Irish Times

Lovely stuff from the great Duggan of the Times, a man that always seems to understand the heartbeat of the GAA.

-------------------------------------------------

And it's all about to begin again

Thu, Jan 18, 2007

GAELIC GAMES: Keith Dugganwas in Ballinode, Sligo, for a match that marked the beginning of John O'Mahony's period in charge of Mayo

All journeys begin somewhere. Four months after their All-Ireland adventure ended in painful circumstances against Kerry, the footballers of Mayo took the field again.

The circumstances could hardly have been much different. Instead of the towering vista of the Hogan Stand, the Connacht champions played with the twinkling windows of Sligo hospital for a backdrop. They were facing a tidy young student team for whom the chance to play one of the marquee counties and push on for a place on the FBD Connacht League final made an attractive double.

Although the GAA boasts astonishing crowd attendances at grounds on high summer Sunday afternoons, it is on nights like this you really have to marvel at the mass appeal of the association. They might well have handed out medals of valour along with the programmes in Ballinode for the loyal, the curious and the downright mad who showed up to watch a match that marked the beginning of John O'Mahony's period in charge.

Gaelic culture has changed considerably since the Ballaghaderreen man last roamed the sidelines with Mayo some 16 years ago and his shaman acts with Leitrim and Galway in that period meant his popular return was always going to elicit considerable interest.

On Tuesday night, TG4 featured O'Mahony in its Laochra Gael broadcast and the archive material was a salient reminder of just how many significant Connacht football moments bear his fingerprints. At one point in that documentary, O'Mahony produced a sturdy 1980s video camera he purchased himself for the purposes of video analysis. The old machine was not on the job last night and in any case, O'Mahony would probably choose to wipe this particular archive. In front of maybe 1,000 people, Mayo lost to Sligo IT by 1-10 to 0-9 points.

Those who showed up early wisely faced their cars towards the pitch and sat contentedly behind the wheels, planning on enjoying the game from behind the windscreens as if gazing out on the Atlantic at Rosses Point.

The students though, used to long warning walks in lashing rain, had different ideas and quickly formed an enthusiastic box around the edge of the pitch. Given the latest GAA furore on sideline rules, it made for an amusing spectacle. It was hard to gauge just how many people were on the sideline midway through the first half but it was definitely over 500 people, not all of whom were selectors.

As Mayo's David Brady, fresh out of retirement, pleaded with a linesman after skidding towards the crowd, "We need to move them back a small bit. For their own sake."

It was that kind of night. Brady was one of several familiar faces that O'Mahony and his selectors played from the beginning. Seven of the team that started last year's All-Ireland final were playing. Ballinode, a fine, floodlit facility on the outskirts of Sligo town, was just the place to let the Mayo boys know they were back from the Floridian cruise, with a bitter cold wind and a pitch glistening with damp.

For all that, the football was crisp. Mayo played Ballaghaderreen man James Kilcullen at full back and the imposing number three enjoyed a busy first half, with Sligo benefiting from a lively display by Barry Regan, also from O'Mahony's parish.

But it was the sight of Marty McNicholas knocking over frees under the bright floodlights that illuminated just how difficult and fleeting the chance to claim a place in a football county like Mayo can be. It does not seem too many years ago since the Breaffy man was being heralded as the chosen one among the generation of talented minor players that Mayo cultivated at the end of the last century. Through injury or bad luck or one crucial indifferent day, that senior promise has never fully materialised. You often hear of such prospects quitting, disillusioned or fed up or simply bored with waiting for their chance. At least McNicholas still has time enough to give it another push.

"Yeah, Marty had a long period there recuperating from a cruciate injury and he started back training with Breaffy and has come in with us," said O'Mahony afterwards. The new boss will hardly have spent the midnight hours poring over his notes on this match. There was little to say other than there are no soft touches in elite Gaelic football anymore.

Sligo IT, one of the new forces in the college game, lined out full of running and a glittering full-back line containing Leitrim's Barry McWeeney, Roscommon corner back Seán McDermott and Donegal All Star Karl Lacey.

On a tight field, the match had the feel of a competitive training work-out and the students got the decisive break, a lovely, sweeping move that began in the arms of goalkeeper Paul Durcan and finished with a planted shot to the Mayo net by Tomás Costello.

"I think it was clear we were fairly rusty out there, that it is a while since we have played football together," said O'Mahony afterwards.

"There are players coming back from holidays and the rest of it and that was reflected in what we saw out there tonight."

The largely young crowd enjoyed it though and - as ever - the biggest support seemed to come from Mayo. A few drifted away in the second half, Big Brother fanatics perhaps or maybe off for Wednesday night pints. Student priorities are different. Those who hung around applauded a good victory from the college.

"If Sligo win on Sunday, that means they are through regardless of how we do," confirmed O'Mahony. "So that's the first competition down the swanee," he concluded with a beam.

Fifteen minutes after the final whistle, Ballinode was deserted and two amorous dogs had the playing field to themselves. Someone considerately switched off the floodlights shortly afterwards.

The Mayo players weren't long heading south from the Yeats county. The road back started here.
© 2007 The Irish Times