We’re absent – yet again, for the fifth time in the last seven years – from Sunday’s Nestor Cup decider but the county’s U17 team have already booked their place in their Connacht final.
This game has, according to this week’s Mayo News (paper and digital variants), now been confirmed for Monday, 6th June with throw-in set for 7.30pm. What’s not known yet is who our Connacht final opponents will be, as Galway and Sligo face off in the semi-final this coming Friday evening.
Whichever of them it is will also dictate the venue for the provincial decider. If it’s Galway then the final will be played at MacHale Park, as our lads travelled to Tuam for their group stage meeting. It’s a Sligo venue – almost certainly Markievicz Park – if it’s the Yeats County, as we played them in Ballina in the round-robin stage.
The game is also set to be broadcast live by TG4.
Must say that the minors were brilliant in the round robin tie against Galway, and that there seem to be several promising players scattered throughout the lines. The tactical set-up was really good too, managing to completely negate Galway’s top men, which is not something which I’ve seen much of with Mayo teams over the years.
The only thing is that the rather strange format of the Connacht Minor Championship this year means that our lads are kicking their heels while their opponents are getting the benefit of a few extra games before facing us. Hopefully I’m reading a bit too much into that.
I don’t think you’re reading too much into that at all, It Means Nothing to Me. Momentum is hugely important and I’m sure many of us seen U17 matches at club level where perceived form goes out the window on the day. With our lads waiting for three weeks to play the final while their opponents will come into it off the back of a winning run, that’s definitely a factor that could well influence the outcome.
I think it will be Galway that Mayo will face 1 win in 3 games isn’t a winning run to be fair.
While I totally agree with your concerns there @It Means Nothing to Me the flip side is you’d have to imagine there will be fierce competition in any of the A vs B games the lads are running. The likes of Dylan Gallagher, Oliver Armstrong, Sean O’Dowd, Tom Lydon, Rory Conway and Oisín Cronin will all be beating hard on the door given the flashes we’ve seen in games.
We all saw how big an improvement the lads made on their defensive setup for Galway, which must have required a lot of seriously hard work, in a short period of time so have to imagine Sean Deane and the team will be working hard on iterating and improving that sort of stuff (the transition in particular when nailed could really hurt opposition) over the ‘break’.
Fingers crossed they’re able to keep the intensity high and go into the bank holiday Monday flying.
Still trying to decide if I’ll be shouting for Sligo or Galway tomorrow. Pros and cons either way. Expecting a cracking game there too. Sligo will feel they owe them one.
Agree 3 week break far from ideal, but luck of draw in terms of fixtures also in that Mayo also had round robin bye in week 5 which led to the longer break… tonight’s game will be hard to call, 50/50 in my view ..Galway on home turf have to be slight favourites even if coming off the back of 2 defeats….and Sligo’s tails will be up after 2 wins and also an impressive display versus Mayo in Ballina before that….
Just noticed the Galway Sligo semi final is being covered by TG4 Sport YouTube tonight at 7p.m..
Delighted with that, had been thinking of grabbing it anyway with the usual PPV stream.
Great, TsuDhoNim, thanks for the heads-up on that. I’ll stick the feed from it up here on the blog, just to make it a bit easier for people to catch it.