The Mayo News has a bit of, well, news which is worth drawing your attention to and there are also a few other bits and pieces worthy of mention before I slope off for the evening.
The first is that Ed McGreal reckons Aidan O’Shea might be facing a two-match ban for his straight red last Sunday. This is because under the GAA’s arcane disciplinary code repeat offenders get double penalty points and so Aidan’s (at the time meaningless) retrospective ban for clocking Paul Galvin in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final could see him pick up an extra match ban for his troubles. It doesn’t look like we’ll be appealing any ban either and it’s not clear yet when the beaks are going to arraign Aido but I guess it’ll be soon.
It’s not on the Mayo News website but Ed McGreal was kind enough to post a picture via Twitter earlier on showing the photographic proof contained in the print edition of the paper concerning the correctness of ref Barry Cassidy’s call in relation to the shouts for a penalty when Enda Varley got felled in the first half of last Sunday’s match. This shows that Enda was, indeed, outside the square when he was deliberately tripped by that little Poland scut so credit where it’s due to the much-maligned official. Maybe he will get to ref the All-Ireland after all (well, Mother Superior Duffy and Blind Joe McQuillan were the last two to be given the honour so on that basis no-one can really be ruled out).
Ed also has a piece about the chaotic end to the match on Sunday where he says that the ref had a match programme (which hit its target) and a plastic bottle (which missed) fecked at him as he made his way to the dressing room. Ed also says that one of the stewards also apparently went native and engaged Barry Cassidy on some of the finer points of the rules of Gaelic football as they were making their way off the pitch. Oh dear – at least they won’t be able to take a home match off us.
Okay, that’s enough about Sunday. Mike Finnerty has a preview of tomorrow night’s do-or-die preliminary round clash in the U21 Connacht championship, which takes place at McHale Park (throw-in 7.30pm). After his heroics with the minors in 2008 and again in 2009, Ray Dempsey has had two very lean years in charge of the U21s and so the pressure will really be on to get a run going in this campaign. It doesn’t help, of course, that tomorrow night’s opener is against the reigning All-Ireland champions but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt so we just have to get on with it. There’s no word yet on how we’ll be lining out but Galway’s team was announced earlier on and the details are available here.
Finally, you may have noticed this article by Colm O’Connor in this morning’s Irish Examiner concerning RTÉ’s pathetic coverage of this year’s league. I’ve been giving Montrose a fool’s pardon on this for some time as I was under the assumption (which I now know to be incorrect) that RTÉ didn’t have the rights to the NFL and so could only use the matches already broadcast by Setanta and TG4 in their godawful League Sunday highlights programme. Turns out that’s not true – a point alluded to by Newstalk’s Ciaran Murphy yesterday (both on the Off the Ball show and on Twitter) – and that RTÉ could show highlights of all the Division One games if they were arsed to do so.
What made me laugh was that they trotted out “the current financial climate” as the reason for their piss-poor coverage of the league, whining that they weren’t in a position “to send a camera to every game” for their highlights programme. Sure, the bloody clowns never send a camera to any game at all, relying as they do on the Setanta and TG4 content. And this isn’t a policy that began today nor yesterday either so that blather about “the current financial climate” is just blather.
It’s good, though, to see that some sports are being spared the axe. The “current financial climate” hasn’t prevented RTÉ from expanding its love-in with rugby as they’re now broadcasting live coverage of Ireland’s U20 internationals. It’s not just for bogus tweets that the so-called ‘national broadcaster’ needs a good root up the hole.
yes AOS WILL GET ONE GAME FOR SUNDAY AND ANOTHER 4 A REPEAT OFFENCE IN SIDE 48WEEKS OF HIS LAST SUSPENSION.
There was a lot of chopping and changing in the midfield partnership to find the best partnership and JH seemed to think it was BM and AOS…but now we’re faced with this task which is a good tester and I’d rather see the question of will whoever comes in for AOS step up to the mark? His older brother is a big man (but I think he’s limited in some footballing aspects of his game) or will it be Pat Harte? Time will tell. Tough game for the U21s…best of luck to them. Maigh éo abu
Don’t suppose the u21 game is on tg4?
‘Fraid not, JJ, but Midwest will apparently have full radio commentary from 7.30pm. @clubmayo have said they’ll be doing live updates on Twitter as I guess @MayoGAA will be doing too.
WJ , not sure if this was posted earlier , some interesting figures here and apologies if a re-post
http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14807:board-officers-meet-club-mayo-dublin&catid=14&Itemid=100008
i cant see much of an option for club mayo but to come under the umbrella as their funding would probably dry up otherwise
They can’t send cameras to all the Div. 1 games? But they can waste money on The Craig Doyle Show?
maybe RTE have an axe to grind with the powers that be in Jones Road
I’m almost sure I posted a link to that report a while back, Roger. I think your assessment is correct in that the Cairde Mhaigheo route would appear to be the only game in town for Club Mayo now.
Hey Lads like any other semi-state I think RTE live in their own bubble where the general view of anything that is not located within the proximity of Montrose is one of suspision/negativity. There are countless examples like the only state infasructure project investigated as a waste of money by Primetime was the western rail corridor and the fact that Connacht rugby games are rarely show live or if there is any highlights it’s given about 10 seconds on the Rugby highlights show (less than the highlights show of a womens 6 nations match on won paticular night!!!).
Basically they see the Gaa as something mad and outdated the boggers still mess around with and that the only significant fact to know about gaa is that the poor helpless island people had to wrangle a heap of their tax money to build a Stadium on the north side of Dublin where no well rounded educated RTE journalist ever ventures unless to report on gangland crime!
Fair play to the U21s on a hard fought victory – Cillian O’Connor in imperious form on the frees, showing what we were missing on Sunday.
Well done u21s. Grt win lads, sounds like we deserved it, and Ref gave us everything!!!!!!!