Search Results for 'Alan McDonnell'

There is always plenty of open and honest discussion when the Mayo League hosts its AGM. This year’s will surely be no different when the clubs and the league executive meet for the AGM on Tuesday March 8 at 8pm in Milebush Park.

Cup finals are well known for surprises across the globe, but before even a ball has been kicked in this year’s Mayo FA Cup final there is a big surprise already and that is the two teams who will be taking to the field on Sunday. When the season began, there would not have been many punters out there willing to take a punt on both Fahy Rovers and Straide and Foxford United winning the competition, let alone both of them making it all the way to Milebush on finals day. Sunday will offer some kind of redemption to whichever side comes out on top as both teams get used to the fact they will not be playing in the Super League next season, as both sides failed to escape from the bottom four which dropped through the trap door. Next season they will be competing in the newly formed Premier A league.

Ballina Town striker Michael Duffy has been called up to the Irish junior side, the north Mayo hit man has already picked up one international cap in 2008 against the USA, during a period when he was in a rich vein of goal scoring form. But over the past two seasons he has suffered from a number of bad injuries which curtailed his playing time. He did come back last season to help Ballina Town finally claim the Super League title. Duffy has been called up for a quadrangular tournament involving the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man which will take place in County Down from next Wednesday April 21 to Saturday April 24.

This year’s Chadwicks Cup final (Mayo League FA Cup) sees the meeting of two Uniteds who have seen their historical positions flipped this year. Straide and Foxford United, one of the blue ribbon names in Mayo soccer saw themselves relegated at the death of the 2007 season to the Premier League, while Snugboro United surrvived and launched an all out assault on the higher reaches of the Super League this season. This assault proved ultimately unsuccessful but Johan Collins’s first year in charge of the side can only be marked out as a success so far. And if he is able to guide his men to pick up the Chadwicks Cup the season will have been an unqualified success.

Mayo Oscar Traynor team manager, Declan Kilkelly, announced his squad of players for the forthcoming group one games in the National Oscar Traynor Trophy competition. The panel includes four new players (Emmet Peyton, James Jennings, Paul Walsh and David Reilly) receiving their first call up along with another three players who have been added to last year’s squad (Ronan O’Boyle, Andy Neary and Gerry McLoughlin). Mayo will be competing in group one with the Inishowen League (away) and the Galway League (home).

Mayo will make the long trip north this weekend to take on the Inishowen league in their opening game in this season’s Oscar Traynor Trophy. For the second year in a row Castlebar Celtic manager Declan Kilkelly will be taking charge of the side and after narrowly missing out on qualifiying from the group stages last year Kilkelly will be hoping to at least improve on that this season. This year’s competition sees Mayo in a three team group with this weekend’s opponents the Inishowen League and the Galway League and with only one team to qualify for the next round of the competition.

Inishowen League 1

It's a simple task for Mayo on Sunday: win the game and book their place in the last eight of this season's Oscar Traynor Cup; while for Galway all they need is a point to reach their the last eight.

By the time that the Galway League awoke from their slumber in this contest with the Mayo League they were chasing the game for a draw which would have sent them through to the knock-out stages of the Oscar Traynor Trophy. It was not to be for the Galway League and in all honestly it never looked like they would threaten Emmett Payton's goal over the course of a bitterly cold 90 minutes in Castlebar.

While Christms is only around the corner the never-ending road that is Mayo soccer continues apace this weekend. Last weekend saw the Oscar Traynor side slip into the knock-out stages of the competition, this weekend the attention turns to the FAI Junior Cup. Both Castlebar Celtic and Manulla will be looking to make it into round six of the competition while Westport United and Mulranny United will battle it out to escape into the national stages of the competition.