Search Results for 'Jimmy Browne'

And then there were 12, we’re just under three weeks out from the Connacht Final and a dozen sides are left in with a shout. While Armagh, Dublin, Cork and Galway are given another week to ready themselves for the elite eight phase of the competition, tomorrow (August 2) sees Mayo back in action. All eyes were on the draw drum on Sunday evening to see who would Mayo get of the quadruplet of sides who managed to make it through the previous two rounds of action. Each of the potential adversaries had there own pitfalls, Down a side who seemed to be on the up this year with Ross Carr moulding a side, Kildare who bombed so famously against Micko’s Wicklow in the long grass of early summer, but Kieran McGeeney is a man used to getting things done and has picked them up. Monaghan the new darlings of the football world with boundless enthusiasm and with Banty McEnneany patrolling the sideline and celebrating wildly at final whistles. But it wasn’t to be any of that trio, Tyrone were pulled from the hat and they pose their own series of questions that will have to be answered.

I have fond memories of the summer of 1985. The Mayo football team was managed that year by Liam O’Neill. He was an excellent manager and coach, a driven man who really wanted nothing more than a Mayo team to express themselves in a meaningful way on the national stage. The former Galway player left no stone unturned in generating a self belief in the players in order to shake off a perceived mental weakness of the Mayo team back then. He was working with the nucleus of an All- Ireland winning under-21 team that had claimed the title in 1983. We were blessed at the time with a number of great footballers, players like Willie Joe Padden, TJ Kilgallon, Martin Carney, Eugene Lavin, Frank Noone, Jimmy Burke, and Jimmy Browne to name just a few, all talented footballers that in hindsight should probably have won lots more. We lost the Connacht final in the old Pearse Stadium in 1984. I remember big Tom Byrne scoring what appeared to be a perfectly legitimate goal in the dying minutes of that game that would surely have won us the final, but for some reason the goal was disallowed by the referee Mickey Kearins, he of Sligo fame.