The first match in the 2010 championship was played this evening in Gaelic Park, New York, and for much of the seventy minutes there was a chance that one of the most sensational upsets in championship history might occur, as Galway laboured badly in the humid conditions to put away a sticky New York outfit. We’d struggled for the opening fifteen minutes or so in the same fixture last year, falling four points down to the Exiles before we opened up and then went on to kill off the contest by half-time. Galway, by contrast, only managed to make this evening’s game secure in stoppage time, despite New York having two men sent off during the second half. Galway were only a goal to the good as the match entered injury time but then a late goal and point ended up giving them a rather flattering seven-point winning margin, on a scoreline of 2-13 to 0-12 (match report from RTÉ is here).
Galway’s main man this evening in the Big Apple was the evergreen Padraig Joyce, who bagged 1-7 of the visitor’s total in his first competitive appearance for the county since Joe Kernan took over on the sideline for them. Although the Fat Controller is likely to be less than impressed about the manner in which his mother’s county flirted a little too keenly with humiliation in tonight’s championship opener, I don’t think he’ll be reading too much into it and neither should the rest of us either. The bottom line is that Galway have, albeit after a stuttering performance against a patched-together Exiles team, secured their place in the Connacht semi-final and now it’s up to our lads to do the same. Sligo on June 5th stand in our way of making this particular date and I expect we’d all be happy enough to escape from Markievicz Park with the same kind of winning margin that the Herrin Chokers eventually achieved in Gaelic Park this evening.
Joyce is an example to all , fantastic player.
roll on our own first championship date.
Would read nothing into it. We found London tough in 1996, 1-11 to 1-5. We did ok after that. Connacht is more even this year and Galway and ourselves will find that out.Great player that P J. A pity we could not keep the “forgotten one” on for another while.
galway did okay jimmy nallen and dave heaney retired since then have lost interest in mayo also its hard to support mayo with conor mort there
It’s a dull Bank Holiday, I suppose, so no better time for yet another cretinous anti-Mort comment!
cd obviously didnt make it to croker last sunday……there was an awful lot worse than mini mort on display..starting with his older brother.
Bit harsh there WJ- Mort jnr. is not the most likeable of players on or off the field. Not an excuse for abuse, but perhaps an explanation- it’s hard to divorce the personality from the performances a player puts in.
Perhaps I was, innocentbystander, but, to be honest, I’m not so sure. Personally, I couldn’t care less what he’s like off the pitch – I know as little about his off-field personality as I do about the rest of the players and I don’t think that what he (or anyone else) is like off the pitch has any bearing whatsoever about how he should be viewed as a Mayo player. He should be judged on his performances on the field and the last day, not for the first time, he got half our scores and proved to be the only one with a cool head close to the posts when everyone else was pissing away easy chances for points. Nothing to dislike in that, I’d say.
C Mortimer is (by far) the most naturally talented corner forward in Mayo and arguably the only person to rival him for natural scoring ability is a certain someone from Crossmolina who’s not in the panel anymore (not J Nallen by the way!!). Anybody who says that he shouldn’t start or Mayo would be better without him doesn’t know the first thing about football and is struggling to seperate personality from footballing ability.
in fact i would turn cd’s statement on its head , after what i saw last sunday it would be very hard to support mayo if mortimer hadnt been playing for them !! everyone else apart from clarke had performances verging from brutal to not very good at all!
he seems like a great character to me, the audacity to wear that T-shirt last year knowing he would only come on as a sub.. cutting short his travels to come back and fight for his place… wish we had more like him…
Ya lay off the Mort for God’s sake, guys don’t have to do this, they don’t have to give up their social lives for the summer for football, they do it because they want to so I say thanks to each and every one of them for the effort and the dedication.
I still think he is more devestating as an impact sub, but he has proven his place on the starting XV.
Mort prob deserves the corner slot. He is a reasonably proven championship performer unlike Varley. Still think Varley is a better option if we need a goal though so could be a key man for us yet.