James McCartan named his side last night for tomorrow evening’s NFL opener against our lads down at McHale Park (throw-in 7.30 pm).  Here it is:

Down (NFL Division One v Mayo, 5/2/2011): Brendan McVeigh; Aidan Brannigan, Dan Gordon, Luke Howard; Liam Doyle, Kevin McKernan, Paul McPolin; Peter Fitzpatrick, Kalum King; Daniel Hughes, Mark Poland, Martin Clarke; Conor Maginn, John Clarke, Brendan Coulter.

So for all their talk about a raft of injuries and the bunch of walking wounded they’d have to take west with them, that team features nine of the lads who started in last September’s All-Ireland final against Cork, with another of Saturday night’s starters (Conor Maginn) having come on as a sub that day.  Sure, they have a few lads unavailable through injury but then so do we and with that line-up, featuring proven campaigners like Dan Gordon, Kevin McKernan, Kalum King, Danny Hughes, Marty Clarke and wee Benny Coulter, we’ll have our hands full tomorrow night.

It’s nearly time for action and I’ve a full day’s work ahead of me so I’ve little more to say here now about the match.  I’m heading west in the early afternoon tomorrow and looking forward quite earnestly to the first proper match under the new regime.  Hopefully there’ll be a big crowd there – I’m a huge fan of Saturday night league action and the bigger the live audience the better the sense of occasion at it.

If you can’t make it to McHale Park, the match will be live on the subscription-based Setanta Sports channel (they’re showing the Dublin/Armagh game on Setanta Ireland and also, in a notable first, will be also be broadcasting that one at the same time in HD – dopey people in RTÉ please take note) and Midwest will, no doubt, also be doing live commentary on the radio. I’ll do the odd tweet from the ground but if this is your chosen medium for following the action make sure to tune into @clubmayo, @ColmGannon, @edmcgreal and @mayogaa as well as they’ll probably be doing more frequent updates than I will.  Also, if anyone else out there plans to do their own tweeting during the game, make sure to add the #mayogaa tag to it so everyone else can pick up what you have to say for yourself.  I’ll be doing my usual verbal bullshit after the final whistle and, as I’m stopping the night on holy ground, should have the match report up before midnight.

Isn’t it just great to have the football back?