Search Results for 'James Laffey'

With so many people spending more time inside over the past few weeks and for weeks to come, now is a great time to get some reading done and there are a number of great sports books out there - many of them with a Mayo twist - that you can get your teeth stuck into - as well as some others from around the world of sport worth getting stuck into.

When it comes to the lore of Mayo football, the men of 1950 and 1951 are the benchmark against which all others are still judged, and while all who achieved greatness for Mayo in that period of time are highly regarded, Padraig Carney was one of those held in the highest of esteem.

GROWING AFFLUENCE and increased leisure time are said to be the main reasons for the growing presence of sport in the daily lives of more and more people. The sports sections in newspapers are getting bigger, and there is rarely a news bulletin on radio or TV without a sports report.

The rivalry between Galway and Mayo is as old as the provincial championship itself. The Connacht GAA Council was actually founded on the same day that Galway and Mayo contested the first ‘official’ Connacht senior football final. That game was played in Claremorris in November 1902 and was won by Mayo. Galway played “with the wind and the incline” in the first half while the vast crowd agreed to “keep strictly outside the field of play”, something the organisers clearly regarded as an unexpected bonus.

Galway is home to a large number of Mayo people and people with Mayo connections, many of whom will be interested in the upcoming 'Exploring Mayo' talk by Bernard O'Hara.

Three new book launches, panel discussions, creative workshops, poetry and fiction will be central to a jam packed Wild Atlantic Words Literary festival which runs from this Wednesday, October 4 to Sunday, October 8 in Castlebar.  And the programme has something for every taste — children's events, young people's writing, history debates, sporting memoirs, culinary arts, hometown reminiscences.

Powering the West - a History of Bord na Móna and ESB in North Mayo will be launched in the Town Hall, Crossmolina, this Friday evening (7pm) by retired UCD professor of archaeology Dr Seamus Caulfield. The 400 page, coffee-table style hard cover publication is a fascinating mix of personal stories and wonderful images of Erris. It is a history of the pioneering spirit of men who tamed and brought under control the “unmanageable” bogs of Erris and gave rise to huge employment in an immigration and unemployment blackspot.