Photo: Mayo Mick

With the return of the football, Monday morning also sees the return of the match reports. However, given that it’s pre-season January action we’re talking about here the reports, such as they are, are a bit on the pithy side. In fact, the only ones that provide any detail at all on our defeat to Leitrim up at Ballinamore yesterday are this one by Colm Gannon in the Mayo Advertiser and this one in today’s Irish Independent.

We do get a fair bit of coverage in today’s papers, however, and the reason for this is the ongoing war of words that has developed between James Horan and Joe Brolly. James didn’t specify that the Brollix was the target of his initial salvo last week but it wouldn’t have taken a genius to work this out and apparently the grinning idiot used his column in whatever rag he writes for to have a go at our man yesterday.

I haven’t seen yet what Brolly wrote in his column yesterday but if it’s anything like his usual fare I expect it’ll be the same kind of smart-arsed belittling crap that he specialises in. I did, however, see and enjoy hugely Tommy Conlon’s perfectly-judged take on the issue in yesterday’s Sunday Independent, which from Brolly’s perspective can only be seen as a very wounding piece of analysis. And that’s before saying anything about RTÉ’s role in the whole affair and their complete failure to provide any balance to the debate.

James was asked about the Brollix after the final whistle up at Ballinamore yesterday and he decided to let rip again. Colm Gannon got most of the quotes in his match report linked above and Cliona Foley in the Indo and Mike Finnerty in the Irish Examiner both have pieces on the issue this morning. James certainly wasn’t holding back yesterday and he aimed his fire – correctly – at both the hopelessly biased pundit and the so-called national broadcaster that employs him. While we can argue about whether or not the timing is right for all this to come out now, I think it’s good that we’ve finally broken cover on the issue and the start of a new year is as good a time as any to do so.

Now that James has said what he’s said, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained in our continuing with the verbal hostilities on this issue. James has made his point clearly and Tommy Conlon’s article yesterday shows that it’s not just us that thinks there’s a problem where it comes to this clown being allowed to spout this kind of nonsense with impunity on the national airwaves. Will it change anything? Probably not but at least Brolly has now been called out in a very public way for the utterly biased fool that he is and that has to be a positive development.