As well as watching out for the weather – which, by the sounds of it, will be little changed from the kind of half-hearted ‘summer’ conditions that have been with us for the last fortnight or so – it’s always worthwhile, in looking ahead to an upcoming championship fixture, to keep a weather eye out on who is going to be in charge of proceedings on the day. Not that we can do much about it but, having taken it up the you know where from refs in the championship in each of the last two years, we have every reason to be more concerned than most about who gets the job for games involving us.
So, relax, hombres – it’s not Joe McQuillan, who will be on duty closer to home at the weekend, as he’s doing the Tyrone/Donegal Ulster semi-final. It’s not Pat McEnaney either and, with the help of the Good Lord, we won’t run into him again before he hangs up his whistle for the final time at the end of this season.
The man we have got this Sunday is Rory Hickey from Clare, who, by my reckoning, will be reffing a championship match involving us for only the second time, with his first being our comfortable win over New York the year before last. The previous September, he was the man in the middle for our drawn All-Ireland minor final against Tyrone. Our most recent encounter with him was this year’s NFL match with Cork in McHale Park back in April.
willie joe – you know what goes around comes around – i was so glad to see meath under Banty being on the receiving end of two blatant bad refereeing decisions against kildare, not alone do we in mayo have a gripe against the said pat, but must have been sweet for kildare as well when pat looked after his neighbours Down last year so well.
enjoying all your news keep up good work.
peter
Having been at the Cork match, and having watched another of his matches this summer on the box, Hickey seems to take some bizarre decisions that would leave you scratching your head. I’m not at all thrilled to see him refereeing this match, but at least it’s not Maurice ‘Meglomaniac’ Deegan …
I’d say Pat McEnaney will be the ref for the Connacht final.
forget the ref, go out and play hard and be there on your teammates shoulder when he needs you. this mayo team need to win back the crowd with a big hearted gutsy hard hitting performance, there is no other way , especially against the tribe, who by all accounts are keeping a very low profile…
No point in worrying about the ref, he will do what he will do and that might suit us and might not.
What we need is James Horan to be bold and truly follow his instinct which I believe is good but for some reason has been hamstrung. In 1993 Kevin O Neill came from nowhere and kicked 0-3 in his championship debut in the Connacht final. He followed that with 0-5 in the semi final v Cork.
Such was his class that he won an All Star that year. He must hold the record for winning an All Star on the back of two games. Going through Willie Joes marvelous archive I can only see that years Connacht final as Kevins senior competitive debut. Oh for a find like that next Sunday.