Search Results for 'Niall Heffernan'

The second round of action in the Mayo GAA Senior Football Championship saw plenty of thrills and spills last weekend across the county.

With just four weeks to go to the start of the club championships in Mayo, the club season will move up a gear this weekend with a number of league quarter-finals taking place across the divisions.

This weekend sees the start of the Mayo GAA Senior Football Championship with eight games taking place across four different groups. Knockmore are the defending champions and the rest of the pack will be going all guns blazing to hunt down Ray Dempsey's men this time around. We look ahead to all the action over a hectic weekend of games.

The eyes of club footballers across the county are firmly focused on their opponents in the Mayo GAA championships following the draws for the group stages of the senior, intermediate and junior championships this week.

Such was the confidence of the Mayo set up that they would get over the challenge of Cork in their All Ireland semifinal despite what the bookmakers and others thought, they had their recovery plans in place for straight after their game in Cavan three weeks ago. Mayo manager Frank Browne told the Mayo Advertiser in the lead up to this Sunday's game that after they left the dressing room in Breffni Park, "We went straight back to reality, we went to a hotel in Longford, had something to eat and had a pool session."

Mayo Ideas Week will run from September 26 to October 4 across the county, the event is a series of idea generation, entrepreneurship and business events hosted by the development and enterprise organisations.

It is hard to believe on the eve of an All Ireland U21 final, that despite the best efforts of Ray Dempsey, Tony Duffy, and Niall Heffernan on the sideline Mayo had failed to reach even a Connacht decider in seven years until this year. The lack of success at this grade was seen as a worrying indicator to the possible prospects of the senior team who are currently backboned by a strong cohort of those who won an All Ireland U21 title in 2006 and those who were latterly involved in the sides that won Connacht titles in 07, 08, and 09 as their careers enter the final few years at the top level.

Michael Solan oversaw Mayo shaking off seven years of disappointment at the U21 grade in Connacht by guiding them to their first provincial final and title since 2009 against Roscommon in Sligo a fortnight ago. The Ballaghaderreen man sat down with the Mayo Advertiser in the lead up to this Saturday's All Ireland semi-final against Dublin to look ahead to that game and back on his first few months in charge of the side.