I said before Christmas that there was some work underway on putting together a publication which details all of the county’s league and championship results for the last sixty years. Regular readers here will know that I’ve been gathering this information and putting it online in a results archive on the site here over the past eighteen months or so but I was delighted when Donal O’Donoghue contacted me before Christmas to say that he had teamed up with Mick Byrne in Castlebar to produce a book containing all these results and a whole load more, such as yearly match and scorer statistics, player appearance records for the sixty years and the top fifty scorers over this period. By the way, here’s a quick question for you on that: name the top five scorers (in all competitions at senior level) for the county between 1950 and 2009? And in the correct order.
As I’ve mentioned before, Donal also collected some of the results and team details from the 1950s that I’ve got on the site here and he also did a load of painstaking double-checking of my records, finding more than a few errors in the process too, I might add. As a result (pardon the pun), the information on teams and scorers and so on contained in the book, which is entitled Mayo: sixty years of thrills and spills, represents an accurate and comprehensive record of every senior match of note that the county has played in over the last sixty years.
Interested? Of course you are but before I tell you how to get a copy, I should also point out that Mick and Donal are donating the entire proceeds raised from sales of the book to the Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation and so this means the two lads are absorbing the full cost of publication themselves. In these straitened times we live in, such generosity of spirit – for what is truly a very worthy cause – is more than a little uplifting.
The book costs €7 and Donal tells me that he’s hopeful it’ll be available on the day of the Galway game at McHale Park (possibly inside the ground but he’s not 100% sure about that at the moment – if I hear anything definite on that score, I’ll post details here). Mick Byrne will, as well as pulling pints, also be selling copies in his pub on Main Street in Castlebar, Castle Books on Castle Street in the town will have it, as will Easons in Castlebar and Ballina and Elverys in Castlebar, Ballina, Westport, Claremorris and Sligo. If anyone located further afield is interested in getting a copy, the easiest thing for now is to drop me an email here and I’ll make sure the lads get it and get back to you with details on how to order. Donal is also looking at other options, such as possibly making it available over eBay, and if I get any information on this I’ll provide details here on the site.
I’m delighted to see that this initiative has come to fruition and Mick and Donal deserve great credit for making it all happen. Here’s hoping that well-thumbed copies of the book will be sitting proudly on the bookshelves of all true Mayo GAA nuts in the not-too-distant future.
Brilliant stuff!!!
Dont need much of an excuse to pop into Micks for a pint of stout…but ill defo pop in on sunday to buy off the man himself!!!
Great stuff, I can’t wait to pick up a copy.
Joe
Great to hear. Hopefully it will be avaliable on eBay for all us exiles.
Some news from Hogan Stand –
Dillon & Mort are due back early from their travels, should be back for our third game (Dublin).
And for anyone who can’t get to McHale park on Sunday, TG4 are showing deferred coverage of the game (as well as the Tyrone game the following week)
Blind guess at the 5 top scorers since the 1950s. 1 Joe Corcoran 2Willie McGee 3 Joe McGrath 4 Conor Mort 5Ciaran McDonald or Peter Solon
I see 2 great players, who have no doubt appeared many many times in the book of records, have retired from inter county today – James Nallen and David Heaney. Even if they were on the fringes of late still a bit of news that they are officially no longer involved. Great servants both !
Great servants for sure and i wish them both well but i would have nallen on a different level to be honest. His loyality was matched by very few and same can be said of his football ability. Heaney was a great servant too but i always got the feeling that he needed more coaxing to play ball and prob hasnt as many caps as you would think either.
Forgot about your question WJ!
Like ontheroad, pure guessing here:
1 Conor Mortimer
2 J Corcoran
3 M Sheridan
4 A Dillon
5 M Carney
Dan – if you’re definitely interested in getting the book, you can just pop me an email with your details and I’ll make sure it gets to the lads who can then get in contact with you about it. Thanks for the heads-up on the TG4 coverage: I’d seen (but forgot to mention) that the Galway game was being shown on deferred coverage but I didn’t know about the Tyrone one. That probably makes up my mind for me about whether or not to go to Omagh.
Ontheroad – you’ve got two out of the five there, Jinking Joe correctly in first and Conor, though he’s not 4th. Willie McGee came in 16th, Joe McGrath 11th, Super Mac 6th and Peter Solan only 26th (that surprised me too – he scored 5-2 in a single match against Sligo 1949! Sadly, that doesn’t count as this is just 1950 to 2009 we’re talking about). Keep trying …
Ma-Yoman – Sad but inevitable news about Jimmy Nallen – 132 matches, 119 starts, incredible service to the county. I’ll do a piece on him later on. From what I can see in the Mayo News, David Heaney hasn’t officially called it quits yet but it does appear that this will be the case too.
Dan – see earlier response to OTR. It’s Joe Corcoran at no.1; Conor’s in the top five, but not either 1st or 4th (that narrows it down); you’ve got Maurice Sheridan bang on at 3 (1-220, 41% from play – can that be right?) and you’ve also got Martin Carney nailed on at 5 (10-150, 91% from play). Alan Dillon is 7th. If you parse all the above, it becomes clear where Conor sits in the pecking order. That only leaves one mystery man at 4 …
would the mystery be Michael Fitzmaurice – he was sharp enough at the aul frees !
Ok sound WJ, I’ll drop you an email. Thanks.
I’m stumped on this one I think. Padraig Brogan?
Sorry lads – it’s not Michael Fitzmaurice (14th on the list, with 2-116) or Padraig Brogan (9th, with 10-113). I’ll leave it till tomorrow as I suspect that ontheroad will wake up in the morning with the answer!
If there was a prize WJ i would hazard a “guess” of an answer!!!
But then that would be cheating.
Great work!
Not at all surprised at Maurice Sheridan there-a much underrated player and a gentleman by all accounts. It’s a little surprising that there is still such generosity out there to put the hours of work into a book like this for nothing-AND fund it out of your own pocket. Great Stuff. RTE? Get this on the news.
You know full well, Donal, that you’re barred from guessing here but you could have come along under an assumed name and stunned us all. I guess that would be cheating too, though!
Maurice Sheridan’s inclusion in the top five didn’t surprise me at all, it was just the 41% from play number that I was wondering about.
Well, ontheroad (in a separate comment) has made one more valiant attempt to nail our mystery man but none of his three suggestions this morning are correct either: Tom Langan weighs in at 12th (with 28-42, that’s a hell of a goals-to-points ratio, by the way), Seamus O’Dowd is at 25th (with 6-62) while John Gibbons is at 27th (with 13-39).
Okay, then, time to reveal the top five:
1. Joe Corcoran (20-358)
2. Conor Mortimer (14-329, not out yet)
3. Maurice Sheridan (1-220)
4. Tommy O’Malley (12-147)
5. Martin Carney (10-150).
For the full top 50 you need to buy the book – go on, it’s for a worthy cause!