The Indo, which has significantly upped its quota of Mayo footballing articles this week, reports this morning that Tony Duffy will be unveiled as the county’s minor bainisteoir next Monday night, where his appointment will be confirmed by the County Board. The Ballintubber man has had success on the sideline with his own club when, along with James Horan, he led them to the county Intermediate title a few years back and he’s also done well in recent times on the coaching front at Kiltimagh Community School. In the latter he’s formed a good working relationship with Maurice Sheridan and the Balla marksman will, according to the Indo, be joining Duffy in the dugout for the minor gig, along with Mick Ruane, Dessie Ruttledge, Liam Lavelle and Vinnie Walsh.
That same Indo piece, as well as including some stuff on the Sheepstealers, also reports that new U21 boss Ray Dempsey will maintain the same team – Stephen Healy, Tomas O Grady and Kevin Beirne – who walked the line with him at minor level.
The Indo has also picked up on Johnno’s accusation about certain counties breaking the two-month ban on collective training. The Boss was on RTE radio yesterday evening and I caught the end of the interview in the car as I was out slipping and sliding around the Northside trying to locate a few bags of coal. (Needless to say, there’s no sign yet of any of the audio turning up on RTE’s website – no hurry lads, it’s only news after all). The world and its spouse knows that the ban was widely flouted in 2008 and it seems to have been the same story in 2009. GAA DG Paraic Duffy said back in October that there was going to be a major crackdown on counties who flouted the ban and Johnno is obviously now testing the waters to see if there’s any substance to this hard man stance.
I’d be enormously surprised if the GAA were to move against any counties on this, to be honest. The ban itself is, of course, a complete bullshit idea and like so many things in this country is there not to be enforced but instead serves merely as window-dressing, to give the pretence that something is being done about an issue of concern. Johnno is right, though, to call HQ’s bluff on it and it’ll be interesting to see what reaction he provokes. My money’s on a wall of silence.
Surely Johnno would be better off flouting the ban, rather than giving out about it and starting the season behind other teams?
Which Liam Lavelle is that lads ? Common enough name out our way…
A phone call to the mammy has revealed that is indeed liam lavelle from belmullet who comes round to the schools training the primary level kids, Excellent stuff and best of luck to all of them.
Johnno is starting to sound like the annoying pupil in the class who tells teacher that such and such a fella was bold. Who gives a damn if everybody broke that stupid rule. My crib with O Mahony is that he too should have been flouting it instead of drawing attention to Mayo and giving some county ammunition to fire at us. Assume that Duffy were to penalise say Galway, Armagh or Meath (if they were to unwittingly have breached that rule), Its Mayo the county that would stink as rats.
I guess it’s a choice between asking for permission or begging forgiveness if and when you get caught. It’s a dumb rule but the rules should apply to everyone and Paraic Duffy’s warnings of a crackdown will sound fairly hollow if they don’t follow through at this stage. I’m not sure we could be blamed by anyone if HQ comes after any county – they all know the rules and they’re all obliged to abide by them the same as we are.
The training ban is a bit stupid. I agree with the Armagh and former Irish rugby trainer Mike McGurn, in that there should be proper preseason training programs for players, to ensure that they do not burnout, as opposed to an outright ban
Phew !! Thank God good sense prevailed at C B Level and Tony Duffy the only credible candidate (which is telling enough on the appetite for managing Mayo teams at present ) got the job. hopefully his experience with schools and B’Tubber will continue the trend set by Ray and go one better in ’10