Search Results for 'Brian Cuthbert'

At least the GAA have done something right for us Mayo fans when combining the Junior All-Ireland final with our Senior quarter-final on August 8. It will be a long sitting in Croke Park however, for Mayo fans with the junior game throwing in at 2pm and the senior game expected to throw in  at 6pm. It is a great opportunity for the juniors and I am glad they are getting a run out on the hallowed turf. It may be a first and last experience for some of them as players so I am sure they will cherish it.

Last Sunday’s All-Ireland senior quarter final against Cork really had a bit of everything. The tone for the game was set up earlier in the week when Brian Cuthbert, the Cork manager, launched an attack on two of Mayo’s favourite sons, Kevin McLoughlin and Cillian O’Connor. This was then compounded by Cork selector Ronan McCarthy’s agreement with his manager when both players’ integrity was put into question and their ability to “foul tactically” and be very “streetwise” was used as a means of trying to give Cork an edge with the referee. McLoughlin and O’Connor are role models for youngsters all over the county and indeed country, and I feel the Cork management made a big mistake in naming them, particularly as they have a pretty much impeccable disciplinary record. The bottom line is you want your forwards tackling hard, and maybe if their own team were a little more “streetwise” against Kerry they would not have received such a hiding.

The assertion by Cork selector Ronan McCarthy in the Irish Examiner in lead up to Sunday's All Ireland quarter-final between Mayo and Cork, that Mayo duo Cillian O'Connor and Kevin McLoughlin were good at tactical fouling and getting away with it was lambasted by an angry James Horan in the aftermath of Mayo's single point win over Cork. Horan said that “our character was challenged in the lead up to the game by the Cork management, which I think is unprecedented in Gaelic Football, where a management team name players and for us it was taking the integrity of two of our players and our team. I think it's something that's disgraceful and they should be ashamed of what they done. Does that make victory sweeter for us? It probably does. I just think it's a new low when you have opposition management naming specific players and taking their integrity and good name. We've coaches and we try and play as well as we can all the time within the rules of the game and to have two guys who have struggled this year, to come out and say that at this level is not good enough at all.”

James Horan has made no changes from the team that defeated Galway in the Connacht final for Sunday's All Ireland quarter-final against Cork.

It wasn’t convincing and James Horan wasn’t pleased after it but Mayo picked up their second win in a row last weekend in Mullingar to get a bit of momentum build behind the team. This Sunday in Elvery’s MacHale Park a far sterner test will be given to Mayo when an unbeaten Cork team arrive in Castlebar under new manager Brian Cuthbert. The Rebels boss whose side have so far beaten Dublin, Kildare, Derry and Westmeath in the league has made eight changes to the team that beat the Oak Leaf county last Sunday, with Eoghan Cadogan, Aidan Walsh, Donncha O’Connor and Colm O’Neill just some of the star names that Cuthbert has drafted in for the game.