Mayo would still be allowed compete in this year’s Connacht senior football championship, if a solution to the impasse between the county board and the players can be resolved in time, the Mayo Advertiser has learned this week. “We received an email this week on Monday morning from the Mayo County Board informing us that they would be withdrawing from this year’s championship,” Ita Hannon, secretary of the Connacht Ladies’ Council, told the Mayo Advertiser. When asked if Mayo would be readmitted into the championship, she confirmed that the Connacht Council would let them back in if they asked. “Of course we would let them back in. We’d never stop anyone from playing football.”
Last Thursday night (May 20 ) the Mayo Ladies’ GAA Board met where the delegates of the clubs voted by 26-5 to withdraw Mayo from the senior championship this year. The vote followed the board’s inability to convince Pat Costello to reconsider his position after he resigned following the end of Mayo’s league campaign which saw them hold on to their division one status, but end the competition with a severe beating from Cork.
Mayo finished the league on Sunday April 11 going down by 1-22 to 0-6 in Cork, at the end of the following week the players held a meeting where they discussed where the team was going. They then met with Pat Costello to discuss the outcome of their meeting. On Sunday April 19 Costello resigned from his position as manager because his position was “no longer tenable due to being constantly undermined by certain players within the panel”, according to a statement issued by the county board. At the end of April the delegates to the county board passed a motion to ask Pat Costello to reconsider his position by 47-2. But 18 days later he replied to the Mayo Ladies’ County Board saying that he wouldn’t be coming back, and at last Thursday’s meeting of the county board the delegates voted by 26-5 to withdraw Mayo from this year’s championship.
When Costello took over the job he became the fourth man to manage Mayo in the space of four calendar years, having taken over from Kevin Reidy who brought Mayo to a National League final and an All Ireland semi-final last year, losing out to Cork on both occasions. Michael Ryder proceeded him in the job in 2008, and guided Mayo to the All Ireland semi-final once again where they were beaten by Monaghan at the penultimate stage. In 2007 Frank Browne was the man in charge when Mayo claimed the National League title, beating Cork in the final and reaching the All Ireland final in Croke Park where Cork beat them. The players and the county board clashed after the 2007 campaign when they didn’t reappoint Frank Browne for another year despite the wishes of the players that he was retained.
