The Mayo News is also reporting today that Johnno has moved swiftly to clarify where he stands on his position as manager of the senior county team.  Contrary to the reports published in the last week, which apparently originated in the Irish Examiner (can’t find any link to it, though) but was also carried by the Irish Times, RTE and Hogan Stand, El Jefe stresses that he never said that he had “decided to take up the option for the remaining 12 months in the position”. Instead, he tells the Mayo News that all he’d said after the Meath game was that he was keen to stay on as manager.  Johnno has also explained the position on how much longer he has left under his current mandate and in this regard it turns out that my thinking when the issue came up this time last year was, in fact, correct: the two-year extension the County Board gave him last year was additional to the one remaining year that he already had.  This means that Johnno’s term runs to the end of the 2011 season and so does not terminate next year.

In light of Johnno’s clarification, it’s clear that (a) I shouldn’t have bothered writing about this at all last night and (b) there’s now absolutely no point in speculating about who will replace him as bainisteoir.  Instead, we can all settle back and begin looking forward to Connacht’s own Battle of the Bulge between our man and Big Joe at McHale Park next summer.  Mind you, if either the NAMA plan or the budget (or both) go tits up and we’re all off to the polls this side of Christmas, then all bets are off as regards who’ll be prowling the sidelines for us next year but, ceteris paribus (gotta have a bit of Latin every once in a while), our current man will still be there then.