The weekend's fixtures and more

It’s a weekend off in the Senior, Intermediate and Junior football Championships ahead of the finals in each of the three grades the following weekend. There’s other action on this weekend, though, and here are the details.

The LGFA county finals at Senior, Intermediate and Juniors levels are set to be contested this weekend. All of these deciders will, of course, be played behind closed doors but all of them will be streamed live via Mayo LGFA’s Facebook page.

In the Senior final, it’s a rematch between all-conquering Carnacon and Moy Davitts, as it was these two clubs who contested last year’s decider. This year’s final has been fixed for MacHale Park on Saturday evening, where throw-in is 6pm.

The LGFA Intermediate final is the curtain-raiser at MacHale Park on Saturday evening. MacHale Rovers go up against Kilmovee Shamrocks in that one and it throws in at 4pm.

Over at the Swinford Amenity Park on Sunday afternoon, meanwhile, the Junior A decider gets going at 2.30pm. St Brigid’s take on Kiltimagh for this title.

It’s also county final weekend on the hurling front. Tooreen are bidding for a fourth TJ Tyrell Cup success in a row this year and they’re up against local rivals Ballyhaunis in the decider on Saturday evening. The venue for the game is the Adrian Freeman Memorial Park in Tooreen where throw-in is set for 5pm.

Tooreen are planning to live stream the hurling decider on Saturday. ~~If, as they did with the semi-final, they stream the match on YouTube I’ll stick it up here on the blog as well as a live post.~~

UPDATE: Tooreen have now said they’ll be streaming the game via their Facebook page so I won’t be able to embed it here though you should still be able to get it running on your TV if that’s of interest to you.

While there’s undoubtedly an air of anticipation around Tooreen these days, there’s sure to be plenty of sadness too. That’s because Tooreen hurling club’s founding member, Michael Henry, passed away earlier in the week.

The surname Henry is, of course, synonymous with Tooreen’s hurlers. Without the efforts of Michael and all the others who worked – and played – with such dedication to ensure that hurling took root in the east of the county, it could well be the case there’d be no hurling played at all in Mayo. May he rest in peace.

In other news, there’s an interesting piece in today’s Irish Times (here) flagging a new online collection of GAA material that’s been made available on the Irish Film Institute website. This features newsreel footage of All-Ireland finals going back to the 1940s and it includes material on the 1950 and 1951 finals that hasn’t been made publicly available before now. You can check out the IFI’s GAA collection here.

Finally, if you’ve already listened to this week’s feature-length episode of the Mayo News football podcast – and, if not, you really should as it’s a cracker – you might be interested to know that I guested on the Péil Adore podcast (great name!) the other evening, where I warbled on about the club action within the county. If you want to listen to that you’ll find it here.

8 thoughts on “The weekend’s fixtures and more”

The Taoiseach said that the Government is ‘interested in’ allowing small crowds back into sports matches and this will be considered in the Covid medium-term plan due out next week.
Good news on the way. Whose responsibility will it be to maintain social distance?. Will the GAA be required to mark out seats in stadia where people can sit a d then ensure that only those seats are occupied?

Wouldn’t be too worried seats in stadiums just yet . I know it’s a pain in the butt but prior to adult matches going behind closed doors . Even at 200 allowed there was no social distancing at club matches. All the lads and lassies all cramped between two 50s . The odd one with common sense would stay on their own .
I know that those of us that volunteer at club level would love to get in but unfortunately if people are allowed back in whatever numbers, clubs will have to step up and police the social distancing. This in turn might not work as it will be hard for local to tell locals to move apart. Personally I think it more trouble than it’s worth as club games will be over in a month or so .