Search Results for 'Ciarán McDonald'

While they are far better known for their small ball game, the black and amber Cats from Kilkenny are standing in Mayo's way of reaching the All Ireland Junior Football Championship final tomorrow afternoon in Tullamore. Kilkenny who only field a football team at junior level have progressed to this stage of the competition after winning the British junior crown, travelling over and back to Great Britain for all their games this summer so far. In the final of that championship they saw off the challenge of Scotland to book their final four spot.

Colm Boyle has become one of the most vital cogs in Mayo's domination of the Connacht champoinship over the past four years, and he has an all-Ireland U21 medal in his back pocket from 2006 when the current Mayo management team of Noel Connelly and Pat Holmes guided Mayo to victory. But the quest for the big one goes on still for the man from the borderline, and his 2015 adventure gets up and running properly on Sunday when they head to Satlhill to take on Galway.

I remember about a decade or more ago sticking my notebook under the nose of the then Health Minister Michael Noonan, when he was in Castlebar opening the hospital or something and asking him a question about something health related for the Galway area. And in the way he had about him back then, in the days before he was canonised, he cocked an eye and said to me “Right sonny, you're here from a Goll-way paper. This is not a day for Goll-way. Today is Mayo's day, not Goll-way's day.”

Ballintubber opened up their account in the Breaffy House Senior Football League with a nine point win over Breaffy in a West Mayo derby on Saturday evening. The senior county champions were short a number of their key men going into the game with Cillian O’Connor, Alan Dillon and Jason Gibbons all ruled out of the match due to injury. The hosts had a strong side out for this league opener but with 12 minutes gone on the clock, Breaffy had been reduced to 13 player after both Seamus and Aidan O’Shea were both shown straight red cards by referee Kevin Connelly who was left no choice in the matter by either player.

One of Mayo’s greatest footballers of all time, Ciarán McDonald, has spoken about his heartbreak over never winning an All Ireland intercounty medal in a rare media interview.

World Cup fever is well and truly upon us with games coming thick and fast and most of us struggling to keep the lids open for the late starts every night. Mayo football and the World Cup is something I relate to from my memories as a Mayo footballer. I made my championship debut for Mayo all the way back in 1994, the World Cup was on in the USA the same year. It is hard to believe 20 years could go by so fast. Mayo football was taking a bit of a bashing then on the back of Mayo’s humiliating defeat to Cork in the All-Ireland semi final by all of 20 points in 1993. As a new kid on the block I did not care about the World Cup, and I was oblivious to the thrashing I am sure Mayo football was taking from the entire country, because I had achieved a goal I set myself as a 16-year-old who failed to make a Mayo u16 team for the Ted Webb Cup. When I arrived home from Mayo u16 training in 1990 to tell my parents I had been dropped from the panel because I simply was not good enough I swore to them that day I would play for the Mayo senior team before I was 20.

It has been a remarkable few years for Ballintubber, escaping with the intermediate title by the skin of their teeth in 2007 and going on to put together back to back senior titles in 2010 and 2011. This year, they are looking to make it three senior titles in a row. On Sunday in McHale Park, Crossmolina Deel Rovers will become the latest side to try to knock Peter Ford’s men off their lofty perch.

Ballaghaderreen v Garrymore

I was out of the country last weekend on a cycling holiday in Germany (more anon). I deliberately stayed away from all forms of communication until I arrived back in the country. By the time I landed in Dublin I was bursting for information on all of last weekend’s sporting activities. I called a few friends on the trek home from Dublin Airport and managed to get a good account of most of the action. The first conversation I had informed me of Kilkenny’s demolition job on Cork in the league final. These Kilkenny boys are simply in a different league to most others. I have watched them a couple of times earlier this year when they appeared to be just going through the motions, but once they get a whiff of a trophy they invariably rack it up a few notches. Jimmy Barry Murphy will, for the first time since his appointment as Cork manager, realise that the honeymoon period is over and his task of landing the Liam McCarthy is an enormous one when you consider the conveyor belt of young talent Brian Coady has at his disposal. But it is not just the talent that they produce year on year – it is their entire application and appetite for success that makes them so exceptional.

Castlebar Mitchels 2-10