Search Results for 'Jimmy Magee'

It has been an exciting eight months for Westport couple Pierce O’Reilly and Mairead Ni Maolchiarain, as their television station, Irish TV, continues to grow steadily.

IRELAND’S FOREMOST sports broadcaster, ‘the memory man’, and is coming to the Town Hall Theatre to share a lifetime of sporting memories.

Henry ‘The Western Warrior’ Coyle believes that the phenomenal success of the Irish boxers at the Olympics can inspire him to victory at the Royal Theatre, Castlebar, tonight (Friday) when he makes the first defence of his WBF Light Middleweight title against Marcelo Rodriquez. The two men came face to face for the first time on Wednesday ahead of tonight’s fight where they were introduced to the crowd at the annual Belmullet festival.

Who would have predicted that Dublin, Kildare, Down and Cork would be the last four standing in the chase for this year’s All-Ireland? It is so refreshing to see new teams emerge and it is also good that we will see new champions later this summer. Tyrone and Kerry have dominated the scene for the last eight years, and to be honest, it was becoming predictable and a little boring. That is why last weekend’s results were like a breath of fresh air.

It was Sigerson Cup last weekend so senior inter-county football teams had an opportunity to regroup and conduct a ‘where are we now’ review of their opening two games of the National Football League. In Mayo’s case the review might have involved the use of a ‘head doctor’ in order to establish how the team can mix the brilliance of the extraordinary second half comeback against Donegal, with the ordinariness of their performance in the first half.

The official biography of one of Irish showband music’s pioneers written by by a Galway journalist has soared up the book selling charts.

Last Sunday I witnessed two of the finest games of football that I have ever seen on All Ireland final day, and I have been at most finals since 1977. We occasionally get a memorable match, but rarely do we get two wonderful exhibitions of football. The two games were enthralling, exciting, nerve racking, at times but it was football played at its very best. I left Castlebar early on Sunday morning as I wanted to get to Dublin with time to relax and soak up the atmosphere before the games. Jones’s Road, on big match day, is a hive of activity and last Sunday I mingled with friends and acquaintances for almost two hours before going into the ground. We were blessed with the most glorious day that added greatly to the feel-good factor. There were lots hovering about the place hoping to pick up a spare ticket but I got the impression that there were very few floating about the place last Sunday. (No harm to see the touts taking a hit too in these economically depressed times.) I had my son Johnny and my daughter Sally Rose with me bedecked in their red and green ensembles. They were excitedly looking forward to seeing the Mayo minors play Tyrone. Others from my house were content with the luxury of home viewing. I met and chatted with a few of the 1983 Galway footballers as they made their way into Croke Park for lunch. They, and the Dublin footballers, were guests of Croke Park as they were part of the 25 year jubilee celebrations. I sent my two on their way into the game and made my way upstairs to the media section as I was lucky enough to be asked to work on the game for RTE Radio 1. I had a cup of coffee in the canteen with a few journalists and the unanimous consensus amongst these experts was that Kerry would win their third All Ireland in a row. They couldn’t call the minor match, but I did get the impression that if they were pressed they would side with Tyrone. I spoke with Micheál O Muireachtaigh to establish his views on the two sides. He thought Tyrone had some excellent players but “liked this Mayo team”. He referred to their physicality and suggested that this year’s team reminded him of some of the great minor teams he had seen from Mayo in years past. Micheál is too much of a gentleman and diplomat to suggest either team would win it, so he said that we should have a great game of football. And what a game we had.

•Galway ladies football junior team play Cork in the Aisling McGing semi-final on Sunday in Mallow (3pm).The junior team has already drawn with Cork earlier in the season. In camogie, Galway face Derry in Ballinasloe (2pm) on Saturday in the Gala Intermediate Championship, while in hurling the Galway intermediate hurlers play Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final at 5pm in Portlaoise.

On the weekend of a championship match Jury’s Hotel, Croke Park is normally buzzing with animated followers of all the participating teams and last weekend was no exception. I was there early as I had overnighted in the capital and I made my way to the hotel to soak up the atmosphere hours before the game. I mingled with a number of Cork supporters chatting about the match and, to a man, they were hugely confident of their chances against Tyrone. They talked about the maturity of the team this year, the options off the bench and the aerial dominance they had at midfield. A number of them suggested that, not alone would they beat Tyrone, but that they had availed of the 7/2 on offer from most bookmakers on Cork to win the All-Ireland. After engaging them in conversation and having the crack with several of them I must admit that they had me convinced, too, that they were the team to beat this year. Jack O’Connor and Ger O’Keeffe arrived at the hotel. There was a rush of eager youngsters to Jack looking for autographs and he was as courteous as one would expect from a GAA manager, spending time chatting and encouraging all of them. Jack’s son was playing on the Kerry minor team later and he was anxious to have some food before heading across to Croker. We chatted for a while with the ever attentive hotel manager, who incidentally is a Kerryman, and had food organised for the boys. They had played golf somewhere between Kerry and Dublin on the Saturday afternoon and O’Connor was as excited as a young lad with a new toy as he described how he hammered O’Keeffe in a game of ‘skins’ (golfers will understand what I am talking about here). I suggested that a Cork victory over Tyrone wouldn’t necessarily be the result that Jack would prefer. It was widely acknowledged that the Kerry lads would have loved a crack at Tyrone in an All-Ireland this year, bearing in mind their record against the current champions. He didn’t disagree and acknowledged that if Kerry got to a final against Tyrone, his job from a motivational perspective would’ve been a lot easier.