Right – I’ve had enough. The longest day of the year is only a few weeks away now but it’s as dark out there this morning as it would be on a dull day in November and it looks as if it won’t stop raining ’till Christmas. Nothing for it but a bit of diversion, then.

Someone (and I can’t recall who it was, despite doing a trawl of my email inbox just now) suggested some weeks back that we should have a competition on the starting line-up for the Leitrim match. I think now would be an opportune time to launch such a competition and I’ve even managed to come up with a prize for it as well.

All you need to do to join the fun is to name what you think will be the starting line-up for the Leitrim match and also name as many subs as you want (up to a limit of fifteen so you can name 30 players in all). Then email your entries to me at mayogaablog@ymail.com, i.e. don’t enter them via the comments as that would spoil the fun somewhat.

The closing date for entries will be Monday 18th June and the prize for the winner is a copy of Breandán Ó hEithir’s wonderful book Over the Bar, of which I’ve still got one spare copy. The winner will be the person who gets most (or all) of the starting fifteen on the 24th correct (and, to be clear, it’ll be the team that starts on the day, not the team named in advance) and, in case of a tie, the person who get most of the subs correct will be the winner.

Off with ye now and mind those puddles.