As you probably know by now, the juniors came off second best to Sligo in yesterday evening’s Connacht final. The defending champions led from the off and they kept their noses in front all evening. The winning margin was just a single point but, as they say, to win by one point is as good to win by a hundred (unless it’s the Kerrymen you’re playing of course).
I don’t have a match report from Charlestown last night, but the excellent score updates on Twitter from @MayoGAA and @ColmGannon kept me up to speed on what was going on (and will give you a blow-by-blow account of what happened, if that’s of interest to you). The Sligo GAA website also has a fair bit on the game, including a short piece about the match, details of the teams and scorers and an extensive photo gallery (from which I took the photo used here).
It was tough luck on our lads to lose out by the minimum margin but fair play to Sligo in finding a whole new junior team this year which was good enough to retain their Connacht title. Can this year’s version now go on and retain the All-Ireland as well, I wonder? Their next outing is in the All-Ireland semi-final on 6th August against the Munster champions – best of luck in that one, lads.
I was in Charlestown for the Junior Connacht Final. I thought Sligo played nce football as did Mayo ,from time to time.The game was there for Mayo in the last few minutes but Sligo seemed to want it more.
The ref. made a very important decision as the game entered its last seconds. Mayo had posession, with a forward clean through for the equalising score at his mercy when the ref stopped play for a free in, to Mayo ,about forty yards out , which was missed and Sligo won
.
Our half forward line were poor, one in particular gave way cheap posession ,several times during the game and was not taken off.
Conroy was very good in corner forward, he looked very lively,was first to the ball and got some great scores. He must be good enough for James Horan’s squad.
Ed, at least that ref gave a free. In 2008 v Tyrone Cunniffe was bursting through in the last seconds, was fouled. The ref blew the whistle and took the ball…game over.