Four months on from what most of us still regard as a bewildering All-Ireland final defeat to Tyrone, Mayo are back in inter-county action tomorrow evening. It’s just a pre-season outing but any match with Galway is likely to have a bit of a bite to it and this one will surely not be different.
The FBD League semi-final between us and the Tribesmen gets underway in the Air Dome at the Connacht GAA Centre of Excellence at 6pm tomorrow evening. With just 300 tickets being made available for it, Connacht GAA’s streaming service (which costs €10) will be the only option for those of us who want to see the match live (link to subscribe is here). Mid West Radio will also be providing live commentary on it.
As this is only a pre-season game, we haven’t named a team for it and we may not do so until shortly before throw-in. [UPDATE: We have now, link to team details below.] All 26 players in the match-day panel tomorrow evening can be given game time, the only proviso being that players taken off cannot subsequently be reintroduced.
The only other quirk – aside from the space age venue – about tomorrow evening’s game is that if it finishes level after seventy minutes the tie will be decided by way of a ‘golden’ score. This is because prevailing Covid rules mean everyone has to out of the Dome by 8pm.
Mike Finnerty has a preview of the game in this week’s Mayo News. You’ll find that here. In the same paper, Mike also ran the rule over five players who will be looking to force their way into the reckoning at Senior level this year – that’s here.
One player who definitely won’t be featuring for us tomorrow night is Kevin McLoughlin. The Knockmore man is in action instead with his club on Sunday, as they face Roscommon’s Padraig Pearses in the Connacht club SFC final. There’s a good piece with Kevin in today’s Irish Examiner – that’s here.
UPDATE: We’ve named our team for tomorrow evening’s game and a very experimental one it is too. Too late to do a post on it now, details of the match day panel are here.
Team named for tomorrow evening. I’ve updated the post with a link to the announcement of the team details. Very experimental line-up.
It is indeed
Except for the keepers ……
Interesting selection.Good luck to the five debantans
Jack Livingstone is a goalkeeper. Strange to have 2 sub goalkeepers, maybe everyone else is unavailable with club duty, injuries, isolating etc.
Will be interesting to watch the new players anyway.
I wouldn’t mind seeing plunkett get a decent run in the half forward line. I thought he looked quite dynamic and explosive there in the club championship and could be more suited to the role than in defence where he’s been relatively underwhelming for Mayo in his career so far.
Looking at the experimental nature of the 26 educated guess would say injuries and isolating. Galway are meant to have a good number unavailable also.
The think the quick pitch will suit Mayo more and should reach the FBD final for the first time since 2012.
Agree with you Larry Duff – on his attacking potential, and his underwhelming defending.
10 am start in California for me. Will have to have Midwest Radio streaming in the background during work! Great to turn the page to the next chapter.
Eoin O’Donoghue ?
Fully togged in front of the laptop tonight, off we go again, yyyyyeeeeeeoooooowwwwww.
Great to see new faces
Here’s hoping we can find two or three more options to add to the squad.
We’ve blooded a serious amount of young players since JH returned. I think we sometimes overlook the churn that we’ve had to absorb over a relatively short period of time.