Mayo and Westmeath come face to face this Sunday in Fr O’Hara Park Charlestown in a game that both sides badly need to get something out of.
Westmeath are pointless after their two disappointing defeats to Galway and Derry and a hat-trick of losses would leave them staring down the barrel of relegation to Division two.
A massive concern too for them is that they are minus 19 in the division scoring charts which indicates some major problems at the back for a side that prided themselves on being tight as a drum last season.
The Midlanders face Tyrone and Kerry in their up coming fixtures in rounds three and four and you don’t want to be facing those two teams with any confidence deficit.
I saw Tomas O’ Flatharta’s men in their recent league game with Galway and in the Leinster championship against Dublin last year and the big problem that they face is that their sweeper system leaves them short of a forward and overly dependent on Dessie Dolan and Denis Glennon for scores.
If those two are tied up, they lose. And if their opposition keep their spare defender in defence then you have six on five and Westmeath struggle to get sufficient scores to win tight games.
Their heavy defeat the last time out to Derry won’t have done much either to improve morale in the panel and their 2004 Leinster title seems a long way back now.
Mayo have one point in the bag from their impressive fight-back against Donegal and they will know that to progress up the table they must win at a bare minimum their home games.
John O’Mahony is one of the most experienced and successful managers in inter-county football and he will leave his charges in no doubt about the crucial nature of this Sunday’s encounter. However he has major fitness worries over four key players ahead of next Sunday which does not help their cause.
Barry Moran who has been lining out and doing well at full-forward is likely to be out after pulling a hamstring. The Castlebar Mitchel’s clubman, who is a student at Dublin Institute of Technology, had to miss his college’s Sigerson Cup final defeat to Cork Institute of Technology last weekend which indicates the seriousness of his injury.
Regular full-back Ger Cafferkey has also suffered a re-occurrence of an ankle injury and he will need a good few hours on the physio table if he is to man the number three jersey by Sunday.
His Ballina club-mate Pat Harte, who was an essential figure in Mayo’s second-half resurgence against Donegal, is also a doubt along with Alan Dillon who is still suffering with a hamstring problem.
That said, one man’s injury is another player’s opportunity and players like Kevin McLoughlin, Kieran Conroy, Austin O’Malley, Barry Kelly and Mark Ronaldson are all pushing for places in the team.
The game will be an all-ticket affair and with a good attendance expected it has the makings of a good battle. Based on Westmeath’s wishy-washy form to-date anything except a home victory would be a big surprise. Westmeath are plucky and will not be easily beaten, nevertheless if Mayo are hoping to do anything at all in the league this is a game in which they must collect two points.
Leave it to the Kerry boys
It was impossible to stifle a smile when reading during the week that returned AFL star Tadhg Kennelly is to be given the position of county coaching officer in Kerry by the end of the month.
Kennelly who is expected to feature at midfield this weekend against Derry is only home a wet week and already he has regained a position on the county panel and more importantly for him, has gotten employment at a time when many people are losing their jobs.
Obviously he is a perfect fit for the role and his profile can only be a good thing for Gaelic games in the county, however one wonders were there any other applicants down South who might have laboured over the years with their clubs or even at U-16 or minor level with county teams. Were they not worthy of consideration?
Anyone who has ever holidayed regularly in Kerry knows that they give a new meaning to the word “cagey”, and down around Killarney and Dingle they knew how to shear a tourist before the rest of the country knew what a tourist was. So organising a nice handy number for the recently returned football star would be no problem for the powers that be.
