Photo: Boards.ie

Counting down the days now to the Connacht semi-final against Galway. Maybe time for a poll on it? Nah, I leave that ’till a bit closer to the game.

Let’s start with Cillian O’Connor, who did some media stuff earlier this week and who features in some coverage arising from this. The Irish Examiner has a piece (here) and there’s also some audio from Newstalk where he chats with Oisin Langan (here).

The latter is well worth a listen if you want to hear what Cillian had to say for himself, both about the forthcoming Galway game and also about all the media brouhaha involving us of late. As you’d expect, Cillian comes across – as he did when he was on the Mayo News football podcast the other week – as a serious, focused young man, someone who isn’t going to get flustered in a hurry.

Over at the Mayo News, meanwhile, there’s a piece with Brendan Harrison, who also featured on the podcast recently and whom I had the pleasure to meet at the Aghamore book launch last Friday night. That’s another gent who has his head well screwed on and whose thoughts are clearly zeroing in on Galway on Sunday week.

In the same paper, Galway’s All-Ireland winning captain Ray Silke, in an interview with Mike Finnerty (here), sounds bullish enough about his county’s chances. He reckons there’s “a sense of momentum” about Galway at the minute, an assessment that’s hard to argue with given their positive League form this spring and the U21s’ run to the All-Ireland final. Ray concedes, however, that it’ll take “a huge performance” from the Tribesmen if they’re to beat us on Sunday week, a conclusion that doesn’t sound too far off the mark either.

That’s the lot for now. A quick notice before finishing up, though, for those of you based in Galway city. I’m hitting the road for the City of the Tribes this afternoon as we’re recording the pre-Galway game Mayo News football podcast this evening at Ward’s Hotel in Lower Salthill, where throw-in will be 8pm or thereabouts.

Anyone who fancies eavesdropping on the discussion that’ll feature in this edition of the podcast is welcome to drop by then. Sadly, I’ll have little time for further chat after we’re done as I’ll need to get back on road again as soon as I can but, as I keep saying, it’s on the field where we need to be doing our talking now.