First bit of team news about Saturday night’s match

It’s only three days to go now ’till our league clash with the Dubs but it’s deathly quiet out there, with little or no news about the game. In this world of 24-hour, non-stop news production, the lazy, lumbering hulk that is RTÉ isn’t often to be accused with being out in front with newsworthy tidbits (unless it’s about public sector pay, of course – they’re always good for the in-house stuff) but, to be fair to them, they’re the only ones saying anything at the minute and this morning are reporting that Alan Dillon and Cillian O’Connor will both miss the Saturday night HQ match.

The news about Cillian being out isn’t news at all, of course, as he’s been recovering from that dislocated shoulder injury since before Christmas (using that logic they may as well have added Andy’s ongoing absence to their headline) but Alan’s unavailability is.   That same report, by the way, also says that Colm Boyle, Donal Vaughan and Richie Feeney are all available for selection.

The Mayo News also has some stuff you might be interested in. Ed McGreal has a good analysis, based on a second viewing of the Tyrone match, of what we’re doing wrong at the moment while Sean Rice reckons that a win on Saturday is “crucial” for us. I’m not sure it is, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong – it’s always good fun to beat the Dubs (especially on their own patch) but it’s a bit early in the year to be talking about shit-or-bust matches.

The other bit of news – which isn’t news either, as it’s been known for days – is that Meath’s Cormac Reilly will ref Saturday night’s game. The most recent time we came across him was in last year’s Connacht final where there was much gnashing of teeth about his interpretation of what constituted an illegal handpass.

I see that @MayoGAA have just announced that the team for Saturday night will be published at lunchtime today. Shouldn’t that be ‘dinnertime’ or have ye gone all posh in the west?

PS: Emmet Ryan at Action81.com has a good preview on the game which is well worth a read.

6 thoughts on “First bit of team news about Saturday night’s match

  1. Hi Willie Joe,

    I’m afraid RTÉ aren’t quite first out with the news. That’s a rewrite of the story by Mike Finnerty that first appeared in The Mayo News yesterday. The story is not online but in our print edition. Needless to say RTÉ, like many other national media outlets I could name, did not credit the source as being The Mayo News.
    We are always grateful to yourself for crediting our stories.

    Keep up the good work!

    Regards,

    Edwin

  2. Thanks for that clarification and apologies for providing cover to RTE in relation to the story. Seeing as it wasn’t a story about Croke Park II, I had my suspicions that the story on RTE.ie may not have been due to legwork on their part but I couldn’t see where they were lifting it from. I can see it must be enormously frustrating for you and I know full well that this isn’t an isolated incident either.

  3. No need to apoligise WJ. You and anyone else shouldn’t have to second guess whether a story is an original or not – it ought to be explicitly stated. Mike Finnerty did the leg work for that story and we were the only paper to have that news so you would think any national outlet would credit it, but no. As you say, not an isolated incident at all.

  4. This team for Dublin looks like the strongest we have available at the moment, very close to a championship outfit ( with Dillon and O connor to come back of course)

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