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The Galway senior footballers have it all to do this Sunday when they face a vibrant Down in Tuam Stadium (2pm) in the National Football League round four.

Down 0-13

I cannot recall being as happy for a young bunch of players as I was last Saturday afternoon in Breaffy. Castlebar Mitchels u15s beat their local football rivals, Breaffy, in a pulsating encounter and in dreadful weather conditions. Most of the lads from both teams are great friends as many of them attend either St Gerald’s or Davitt College and play school football together. Winning this particular title was huge as the bragging rights would be of enormous importance when they returned to school after their mid-term break. Breaffy have several classy players at this level, testament to their solid work over the last number of years developing their underage structure, and they gave their all over the 60 minutes. But it was the Mitchels who deservedly prevailed on this occasion. They led from gun to tape and doggedly held on to the end for a magnificent victory. While reluctant to highlight individual performances at this level, Mitchels’ team captain, Rhyne Collins, was a tower of strength at no 6 and his 80 metre run from deep in his own back line in the closing minutes to lay on a match winning goal was truly inspiring. It reminded me of a young James Nallen in his heyday. I am absolutely convinced that many on view last Saturday will don the Green and Red in the very near future.

James Horan has named the same 15 to start tomorrow’s All Ireland quarter final against Down as started last month’s Connacht final victory over Sligo. The starting 15 was released to the media and the general public shortly before lunchtime yesterday and despite much speculation that there could be a couple of changes at least to the side Horan has stuck with the same 15 who took to the field in Hyde Park.

Once again this season, Mayo are the last Connacht team standing in the All-Ireland football championship and their dedicated band of supporters will be hopeful that their team will beat Down this Saturday (5pm in Croke Park and live on RTÉ), and set up an All-Ireland semi-final meeting with either Dublin or Laois.

When I got involved managing teams a number of years ago, I was occasionally like a headless chicken running up and down the line, cajoling players, kicking every ball, often shouting at backs and forwards to get out in front, telling players where to kick the ball, etc. I recall coming home from some games totally wrecked. In fact I often came home years earlier having played a match feeling much fresher. Managing a team can milk you dry. Thankfully, and I am sure much to the relief of the players I am involved with, I have calmed down a little in recent years. But for some strange reason, I found myself getting rather excited and agitated on the line last Sunday. Crossmolina are trying to win the senior league in order to take something positive out of our season. We had a home league game against Ballina Stephenites and after the first fifteen minutes I realised that this was a game we were desperately trying to lose. We were playing absolute crap! One of our players had celebrated his 21st the night before and I could see that a number of others had helped him with the celebration. We eventually got our act together though and just about managed to hang on and win the match by two points. It was mediocre stuff, but at this stage of the season, we would be happy to pick up two points from our remaining two matches and win the league.

Timing, they say is everything. If ever Westmeath football needed a boost it is now. Having mixed it with the big boys and tasted a certain amount of success over the past decade, we are now experiencing leaner times. Relegated from Division 1 last year, we are now almost certain to be relegated to Division 3, having not picked up a point in this year’s league campaign to date. Down at home and Tipperary away are two tricky engagements that still have to be negotiated.