In the opening weeks of the blog’s existence in early 2007, it was just me talking to myself. I’d read articles about blogs, I knew that the majority of them never became established and died rapidly, that many never attracted any readers at all. That was of no concern to me at the outset. To be honest, I’d probably have […]
Photo: The 42 A quick one, just to provide an update on those who may or may not be available to play Donegal this Sunday, courtesy of this week’s Mayo News (paper and digital variants). The good news first. Keith Higgins and Lee Keegan should both definitely be okay for Sunday. A number of other experienced players – Chris Barrett, David […]
Former Kerry manager Jack O’Connor has recently joined the Irish Times as a Gaelic football columnist, where former Cork hurling supremo John Allen has also taken up residence over the last few weeks. The opinions of this pair of Munster heavyweights will be worth perusing over the coming months, not least because both of them have delivered All-Ireland triumphs for […]
The excellent Mayo News has loads about Sunday’s league final defeat. Johnno says that the squad’s focus was already on the Galway game before Sunday but he did admit that he would still have liked to win the title, having previously – in his incarnation as Galway Bainisteoir – failed twice (once to us) at the final hurdle. He thought […]
The league is over – and, remember, it was only ever the league – with the clock now ticking down to our showdown with neighbours Galway at Pearse Stadium in four weeks time. Time for some final thoughts on last Sunday’s match but then it really is time to move on.It was, I have to admit, disappointing to have to […]
The late, great, Ivan Neill of the Western People once famously jumbled his metaphors many years ago in his match report of a narrow Mayo loss at Croke Park. The year was 1986 and the match was the league semi-final against Monaghan where we went under by a point, despite having a surfeit of good possession. Ivan was not impressed […]
The U21s were well beaten by Laois in their All-Ireland semi-final yesterday at Hyde Park but it wasn’t just their own muted display – allied to a gutsy Laois performance – that led to the downfall of the reigning All-Ireland champions. I know I keep banging on about referees (and will bang on some more in a bit) but I […]
Sure why wouldn’t we? Aren’t we (a) the defending All-Ireland U21 champions and (b) the league specialists (eleven titles and counting)? Paddy Power tends to agree, making us narrow favourites for tomorrow (we’re evens, Donegal are available at 11/10) but strongly odds-on (8/15) to prevail against Laois in the All-Ireland U21 semi-final today. Elsewhere, the Indo think we’ll win both […]
Donegal have now named their side for Sunday’s NFL final with Mayo at Croker. As expected, they’re missing full-forward Brendan Devenney and half-forward Rory Kavanagh as well as wing-back Paddy McConigley from the side that started against Kildare in the semi-final. Tomas Donoghue comes in for McConigley, Christy Toye takes Kavanagh’s wing-forward place, while a reshuffled full-forward line sees Colm […]
There we were not expecting a team to be named until Saturday at the earliest (or, as Setanta had it, “just before kick-off”) when Johnno only goes and announces it following training last night. Not only that, but we’ve got two versions – this one from the Mayo GAA website (stop sniggering – they do put some useful content up […]