Lyons T for Trouble? Mayo's D-Day is Here

The reaction in Mayo to what is expected to be a rubber-stamping of Tommy Lyons’ appointment tonight as the new Mayo senior team manager by the Mayo County Board has been varied.

Storming the Bastille
On the one hand, there are those who wish to storm An Sportlann, headquarters of the Mayo County Board, just as French stormed the Bastille in the name of liberty, before they made their way to Killala to spread the same gospel of freedom here.

And on the other hand, there are those who just want the pain to stop, like that clapped-out boxer on the telly who yearns for the old one-two that one only gets from Uniflu™. Think of the prisoners on the Moorish ships in Chesterton’s Lepanto, who find their God forgotten and seek no more a sign. You get the idea.

There are very few who welcome Tommy Lyons’ appointment and the one emotion that the Bastille-stormers, busted boxers and prisoners-broken-by-years-of-adversity share is a deep and dark dread towards what the future may hold under a Lyons stewardship.

It’s not about Tommy Lyons personally, although it can’t be said he helps. Mouthy metropolitans are seldom welcome back the heathery mountain. The big problem that people in Mayo have with a potential Lyons appointment is the way the appointment was made.

Heartbreak and Bitterness
After the heartbreak and bitterness of John O’Mahony’s Second Coming the Mayo Board was in humour to salve wounds. They promised a process through which a new man would be appointed, divisions healed, new processes set in place and the Good Ship Mayo pointed to a brave new tomorrow.

Everyone who got involved in that process now seems to have been sold a pup, as horse-trading went on behind the scenes. The result is Tommy Lyons. The stories about the nature of that horse-trading vary, but the bottom line is that there are very real fears that the Lyons appointment will happen for reasons other than what is best for the county team.

Liam Horan has been put in charge of a Strategic Review Committee but Horan’s first job as chairman of that committee will be to explain how exactly it’s the case that Tommy Lyons has a better chance of having a Mayo team still playing football in September than James Horan, Denis Kearney, Anthony McGarry or John Maughan. Or Mick O’Dwyer, if it comes to that. Because it’s not at all easy to see right now.

A lot of this has to do with the responsibility of the County Board. What is their duty? Is it towards the clubs, the debt on McHale Park, or have they also a duty to field the best team they can in the senior inter-county football championship?

There is no doubt – except, perhaps, in the addled minds of the GPA – that if there were no clubs there would be no GAA. But the county team cannot be treated in so cavalier a fashion as to appoint a manager for reasons other than his being the best man for the job.

In Memory of Our Fathers
People live and die by their county teams. This is true for all counties, of course, but – and An Spailpín must confess a certain bias here – it seems especially so in Mayo where the people are so defined by what the football team does. The very notion of the team, of a Mayo style, of the unique colours, has a resonance for people that transcends a game or an organisation. The notion that there is a Mayo team out there, playing football, is a part of people’s souls. It helps people understand who they are.

For instance: a great and good friend of the blog was at the 2004 final, and he got talking to the man next to him. The guy next to was from Limerick, but he had hunted down a ticket and come up anyway, because of his father.

His father was a Mayoman and had died earlier that year. The son was making a vigil to Croke Park to do honour to his father’s memory, to see a Mayo victory that was no longer possible for his father but that would have meant so much to him had he lived. The Mayo GAA scene meant nothing to this Treatyman, but the very idea of Mayo was vivid and clear in his head.

He went home disappointed, as did we all. But that man, whoever he is and where-ever he is now, deserves better than this. He did honour by his late father’s memory, and he deserves better. The poor deluded fools who travel on Sundays for FBD League games and National League games as well as the glamorous Championship games of high summer deserves better than this.

The gobdaws and buck eejits and helpless innocents who daydream at least once a week about what it will be like when Sam returns to Mayo deserve better than this. The ludramans and the mentally unbalanced who compose greatest-ever Mayo teams drawn from men who never played senior club football in their heads to pass the time deserve better than this. Or else it’s time for us all to wonder just why we invest so much emotional energy to just get smacked around by an ungrateful lover. Again.

The Eleventh Hour
Today the eleventh hour, but it’s still not too late. The Board can still turn away from the Lyons candidacy and appoint James Horan, one of the stars of the first John Maughan team of the mid-nineties and the current manager of Ballintubber, now contesting a county final for the first time in their long and proud history. Horan has galvanised the anti-Lyons feeling and become the people’s choice. It’s up the Board tonight to do the right thing. God be with them.

John O'Mahony, Like Humbert, Meets His Waterloo in Longford

Longford is surely en fete tonight, and good luck and congratulations to them all. Summer days like today are why you turn out in the winter and the porter will be as sweet as the night is long in the midlands tonight.

This is the second Mayo dream to end in Longford over a space of 212 years but the men who claimed the day are Gaels like ourselves and not an army of occupation led by a genocidal butcher. Good luck Longford, and long may you prosper.

Mayo can expect a good kicking from Uncle Eugene in the Indo on Monday but it’s the least of our worries now. The only reaction to any of this is a deep sadness for the past four years of Mayo football and the confirmation that another generation has moved on without winning an All-Ireland.

Blame and acrimony will be rife from Belmullet to Ballaghaderreen over Saturday night pints tonight but there’s nothing to be gained by it. Nobody who was involved in the Mayo setup this year wanted this, to be battered by Cork, battered by Sligo and now battered by Longford in three straight games. In the end Mayo fell like a house of cards, as the League final put shock lines through the team, leaving it destroyed and in freefall by the time the Championship came around.

John O’Mahony’s previously impeccable managerial CV is now sullied by his second coming as Mayo manager. Did Johnno want the job in the first place as part of a political plan, or was he bounced into it by the sort of behind the scenes shenanigans that seem part and parcel of Mayo GAA?

It doesn’t matter. Who cares? What possible difference can it make? Johnno is heartbroken tonight, the players, the supporters. The county has all senior inter-county football finished before the end of June. We haven’t seen that in a while.

So for once, let’s not tear the heads off each other. Let’s just think of Johnno as he was in his first incarnation, when he lead Mayo to their first All-Ireland in thirty-eight years in 1989. O’Mahony’s been criticised for some of his decisions in that final, but at least he was there in first place to get it wrong.

People look back now and think Mayo left that one behind but winning the semi-final really was that team’s All-Ireland. Fat people find it hard to remember what it’s like to be hungry. Johnno did his bit for Mayo in his time. That it didn’t work out this time is deeply, deeply sad, but it’s no cause for tar or feathers.

The trick is to learn and move on. Things happen us all in life, and that will never change. It’s how we react to things that defines us and makes us who we are. For better or for worse.

And now the Mayo County Board get a chance to truly define themselves. Mayo have been knocking at the door for so long now, and have had such consistent success at under-age levels, that now is not the time to panic. The county panicked in concluding that the team that reached two All-Irelands in three years were no good – “ladeens,” in a famously withering phrase. At least those ladeens were still kicking football in July.

The negative attitude to what were two very successful summers cost O’Mahony dearly, and the sort of self-immolation that’s popular in Mayo doesn't help maintain perspective. The three losses against Cork, Sligo and Longford were the end of a cycle, but the end of that cycle does not now mean that Mayo are Carlow all of a sudden. There’s no point in over-reacting or losing perspective.

The Mayo County Board need to stay calm, take deep breaths and ask themselves what are they about before the search begins for a new manager. They need to decide what traits they want themselves in a manager. Nobody has a perfect blend of abilities. The Board have to decide how they want those traits to blend, which ones to prioritise and which ones to leave to backroom staff. Should the new manager be a better coach than a man manager, say? How will responsibilities be devolved among the team – because management is very much a team game now?

How should the Board respond to the Scared Generation? There is a belief that men have to be jettisoned, that some players are permanently wounded by the disappointments of those All-Ireland years.

An Spailpín is of a contrary view. An Spailpín believes that those reverses can be used as a motivating tool. There’s no point in pretending that half a century of history didn’t happen. Better therefore to have someone like Liam McHale somewhere on the management team to remind individual players that losing stinks and the next generation does not want to be haunted as the previous ones are.

Some people will think this puts pressure on players. There’s pressure there already, and pretending that the weight of expectation isn’t there will not make it go away. Better to embrace it and draw strength from it than to use the “you’re a fish, you’re not a steak” philosophy. That one gets found out in the end.

The process will be long and arduous, but it’s not like we haven’t been here before. An Spailpín’s shortlist has three names – Ray Dempsey, James Horan and Pete McGrath. Let the search begin. Mayo will not be down for long.

Mayo Championship Preview 2010

Leonard Cohen, like all great poets and artists, is a Mayoman. He’s not actually from Mayo, of course, but that doesn’t matter. Mayo is so much more a state of mind than an actual place, bounded by mere convention of geography or physical reality. Mayo is bigger than that.

And how else but through being a Mayoman in his soul could Cohen, the poet of romantic despair, have written so many songs that so precisely describe the condition of those associated with the team? Tonight Will Be Fine, the song the players sing the tunnel in the hope of avoiding another catastrophe. Ain’t No Cure for Love, as the fans pick the bones of another black day on the long road home. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, as the Board try to figure out how in God’s name they got saddled with floodlights that they can’t turn on. And for the manager, Hallelujah, of course.

Hallelujah opens with a scene that’s very appropriate to John O’Mahony at the moment. King David is trying to write a psalm in order to give praise to God, and he’s finding it a bit of a struggle:

It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

It’s just like looking into Johnno’s head, isn’t it? The baffled king composing Hallelujah. Herding cats is a fine job compared to this. And right now, it’s very hard to see them getting herded to Croke Park anytime in the late summer.

Anything can happen of course. O’Mahony has turned things around before, rejigging Galway after Roscommon hammered them in Tuam nine years ago. Maybe he can take the ashes currently before him and restore life to the husk of a football team.

Johnno was all about positivity after that loss against Cork two weeks ago. The problem is that he’s been talking down Mayo’s chances since he was given the keys of the car four years ago so it’s something of a challenge to suddenly turn that around and expect people to believe in a long summer.

An Spailpín hopes to God there’s positivity in the camp, because there’s very little of it in the county. Whatever else you can say about O’Mahony, he hasn’t been afraid to try players. All his team selections have been radical. But they haven’t worked, and that’s the crucial thing.

There’s no shame in losing to Cork. It’s not like Cork are a bad football team. But to see the Mayo team so lacking direction against Cork was heartbreaking.

Kieran Shannon wrote in the Tribune last Sunday that Mayo haven’t shown bite since 1997. Kieran Shannon must be watching a different a different Mayo to An Spailpín. There was plenty of bite in the team that challenged the Hill in 2006. The team that came back from 1-3 to 0-0 down after ten minutes to beat Galway in 2004. Bite isn’t the issue. Mayo’s issues are deeper than that.

And too deep, unfortunately, to resolve this year. There are many great players in Mayo – again, contrary to popular perception – but they don’t know where they’re playing or what they’re meant to do. They’ll give heart and soul for the colours and the county, but there are too many pieces out of place to fall into place in time to mount a serious run in the Championship this year.

The yearning of Mayo people for a deal sealed on the third Sunday of September is seen as unrealistic by many commentators. It does not seem impossible to An Spailpín Fánach. Mayo reach so many finals how is it unreasonable not to expect them to win one of them, if only by a combination of pox and the law of averages? No wonder the Minister for Education is trying to get Universities to accept people who have failed Honours Maths in the Leaving. As a nation, we're clearly cook at sums.

The happy day will come. It’s not impossible that it will come this year, of course, but it’s not likely. Which doesn’t meant we should give up. Heart with No Companion is another song that Leonard Cohen has written that speaks directly to the true-hearted men from the County Mayo.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, sport, GAA, football, Championship 2010, Mayo

Football Debate in the County Mayo

An Spailpín is flattered to be once more in the pages of the Mayo News this week, the paper offering the best sports coverage in the county Mayo. And aren’t their pictures from the Connacht Final just marvellous? You have to hand it to them.

As the discussion rages and we tear over the evidence of the defeat to Galway, your sentimental Spailpín couldn’t help letting his mind drift back to four years ago come Friday, when a few of the boys were whooping it up in Eddie Gaughan’s saloon. We were discussing Mayo’s victory earlier that Sunday in Castlebar against Roscommon, whose sad decline had already begun at that stage.

It was a poor enough game, and memorable really only for a final minute pitch invasion that caused then selector George Golden to run out onto the pitch (at a much faster clip than you’d think a man that wintered as well as Georgie could manage, I might add) in fear that the match would be abandoned. In a practical effort to clear the pitch, Georgie set about boxing every head within swinging distance, a performance that put Horatius at the Bridge in the ha’penny place.

So it was a mellow gathering in Gaughan’s that night, as the summer stretched before us. Our thoughts turned to the vagaries of management, and how John Maughan had returned to lead his people once more to the Promised Land. Or at least, it was mellow at the start.

“It just goes to show you,” said An Sionnach Seang to the assembled company. “Maughan is the best manager we ever had.”

“He lost them on the line!” spat An Bata Damhsa.

“What are you on about?” queried An Sionnach.

“1997!” wailed An Bata, for whom the hurt was still real. “Maughan changed four lines to make one substitution! Madness – the softest All-Ireland ever! Johnno is the only man for that job – will he no’ come back again?”

“Johnno?” An tUbh Breac looked up from the stool in the corner. “Johnno is a traitor. No man did more damage to Mayo football than John O’Mahony. Galway were dead and gone and they’ve two All-Irelands now! And it’s all Johnno’s fault!”

An Bata Damhsa wasn’t taking that one lying down.

“Sure what else could he do when his own didn’t want him?” countered An Bata. “Didn’t the Board run him out of the county?”

“Don’t make me sick,” said an tUbh, seldom a man to back down. “He did nothing in his final two years in Mayo except lose to Galway and lose to Roscommon. No-one can compare to John Maughan’s achievements. Least of all Johnno.”

“Well I don’t know what you’re all talking about,” said An Tuiseal Tabharthach, coming back in from a refreshing smoke and scope up and down O’Rahilly Street. “You haven’t even mentioned the best manager we’ve had in over thirty years yet.”

“Who?” chorused we all.

“Pat Holmes,” said An Tuiseal, pulling on his pint of special.

“Pat Holmes!” Consternation in Gaughan’s.

“Yeah, Pat Holmes,” said An Tuiseal, wiping his mouth with that implement a thoughtful God gave him for that very purpose, the back of his hand. “Wasn’t Pat Holmes manager of the only Mayo senior team to win a national title in thirty years, the League in 2001?”

“Ah for Jesus’ sake a Thuisil!” said An Sionnach, getting more Rua by the minute. “For the love of God – Pat Holmes! Pat Holmes!” added An Bata, making common cause with his enemy of two minutes’ before. An Spailpín Fánach thought he spied an tUbh Breac coming dangerously to the boil, and decided it was time to step in. I slurped some strengthening stout, rose unsteadily, and addressed the congregation.

“Boys – isn’t this the story of Mayo football all over? We’ve just had a great win in the Connacht Final over an ancient and feared enemy, and here we are getting stuck into each other six hours later! For God’s sake, can we not enjoy it while it’s here?”

So we sat down to toast Mayo, with the long summer whose twists and turns, the high of the win over Tyrone and the miserable low of Bradygate, were still full and fertile before us. But that argument developed after Mayo won the Nestor Cup, their first Nestor Cup in five barren years as I recall. You can imagine how many wigs are on the green at home this week after Mayo lost one.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, sport, GAA, football, Mayo, Gaughan's, John Maughan, John O'Mahony, Pat Holmes

An Spailpín in the Mayo News

Yesterday's piece on the pressure mounting on John O'Mahony is in this week's Mayo News, the paper that provides the the best football coverage of the Mayo papers. You can check it out here.

The Walking Shadow: McDonald Dispute Brings Johnno's D-Day One Year Early

There will be one TD on the Yes side of the house who will be serenely indifferent to this week’s recriminations and repercussions over last week’s ambush of the Lisbon referendum. John O’Mahony, Fine Gael TD for the County Mayo, knows that the people of Mayo can look on the ebb and flow of the geopolitical tide with a steady eye, but losing to Sligo can get a man run out of town on a rail.

When John O’Mahony returned as Mayo manager two years ago, he said that one of his objectives was to calm down the annual early summer frenzy of ambition and excitement that builds from Belmullet to Ballaghaderreen and all points in between as Championship approaches. In this at least, John O’Mahony has been an outstanding success, as there has seldom been a greater air of foreboding and unease on the eve of Mayo’s first game of the Championship.

A cloak of invisibility, similar to that favoured by Fionn Mac Cumhaill himself, has enveloped the county team since their final league appearance, against Tyrone in Omagh. The exchanges then were gentle, as the sides waltzed each other around Healy Park, each with eyes firmly fixed on other partners. Since then even the rumours have dried up and no word at all, good, bad or indifferent, has emerged from the camp to get the people talking outside Mass of a Sunday, or during occasions of venial sin on the preceding Saturday night.

The situation reached its nadir when Mayo played Offaly in a challenge in Doctor Hyde Park some weeks ago, a challenge about which nobody seems to know or have seen anything. Mayo turned up like a flying column, played a game that nobody seemed to know was on twenty-four before, and then disappeared back into the mist, like they were Brigadoon Sarsfields instead of one of the top eight inter-county teams in the country.

As such, it is perhaps less than surprising that the weight of pre-match discussion centres around a man who isn’t on the panel at all. Part of the reputation that John O’Mahony enjoys has to do with his image as a conciliator, a man who can pour oil on troubled waters. This year, that oil caught fire like a chip pan and left O’Mahony badly burned, as Ciarán McDonald gave an out of character interview to an national newspaper saying that he valued nothing more than wearing the green above the red, and was bitterly disappointed not to have the chance to do so this summer. It was sufficiently explosive to have John O’Mahony do an early morning interview on local radio on the day of that paper’s publication saying that nothing was set in stone and the summer is long and all the rest of it, but the damage had already been done.

Now, while news of the county team remains strictly under wraps, McDonald has been like Banquo’s ghost during his appearances with Crossmolina, dispatching Ballaghaderreen and Knockmore with some aplomb in recent times. It hasn’t got to the stage where they play Simple Minds’ Don’t You Forget About Me on the PA at the Crossmolina home games, but that step can’t be far away now.

Looking back through the years, it seems impossible to be a hero in Mayo football without being dropped or forgotten or overlooked. And the constant turning of the world means that if Mayo do catch fire this summer, and if the coming men arrive this year, then history will very quickly swallow Ciarán McDonald, just as it has McHale and Padden and Corcoran and all the rest. But in the meantime, John O’Mahony has left himself a considerable hostage to fortune is this upsetting public falling out with Mayo’s most charismatic player since Willie Joe.

When John O’Mahony was doing a radio show during John Maughan’s final year in charge it was fascinating to hear the reverence in which he was held by many of the callers. It was like he was perceived as the football equivalent of the Biblical Joseph, exiled by his own tribe only to win two All-Irelands in the land of the Pharaoh.

The spurned figure of McDonald has now blown away that mystical aura, and John O’Mahony will address his team on Sunday as a man who knows D-Day has come one year sooner than he would have liked. Eamon O’Hara and co are waiting, eager to show that their Connacht title was no fluke. It’s only the first game of the Championship, but even Johnno’s legendary political skills will be in extremis should the Yeats county men storm Mayo, and cause a terrible beauty to be born.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, GAA, football, John O'Mahony, Ciarán McDonald, Mayo

Tuarimí Éagsula Bainisteorachta agus an Séú Geansaí is Fiche

Tá an ionchoinse ar cad a tharla foireann rugbaí na hÉireann i gCorn Domhanda na Rugbaí, agus conas a d'fhágadar na h-oilean mar an bhfoireann is fearr in Éirinn riamh, agus a d'fhilleadar ar ais mar caoirigh ina gclampar féin (maith thú, a Bhabs!), faoi lánsheoil arís. Agus mise féin i mo mhac leinn síceolaíochta an duine, tá spéis mór ag bhur Spailpín faoin mbearna mór a d'éirigh idir na h-imreoirí ar an gcéad XV agus na h-imreoirí ar an ndara XV - na realtaí agus na maoir uisce, más maith libh.

Dar le Eamon Ó Súilleabháin, oiliúnóir foirne na hÉireann, sin mar a bhfuil an saol - tá Drico níos fearr leatsa agus mar sin caithfidh tú fanacht ar an mbinse agus do ghobsa a dúnadh, agus a ndúnadh go daingean. Ach tá tuairimí eile ag bainisteoirí eile, agus tá Seán Ó Mathúna, TD, taobh thiar céann de na scéalta is ansa liomsa maidir le foirne, imreoirí ar imeall na foirne, agus síceolaíocht an duine féin.

Bhí Seán Ó Mathúna ceapta mar bhainisteoir na Gaillimhe le cúpla bhlian, agus meas mór air ar fud na tíre tar éis rugadh na Gaillimhí ar a gcéad Craobh le dhá bhlian is triocha i 1998. Ag an am seo, bhí geansaithe nua ag Gaillimh agus bhí na h-imreoirí go leir cruinnithe le cheile ag Johnno chun phictiúr nua na foirne a thógail agus iadsan gleasta go leor ina ngeansaithe bhreá nua. Ach nuair a tháinig na geansaithe nua, ní raibh ach cúig gheansaí is fiche ann - bhí ceann amháin dul amú.

Duirt an t-imreoir gan geansaí gan bhac leis, go mbeidh sé ceart go leor, gurbh fhéidir leis an griangrafadóir an geansaí nua a chur isteach leis an bhFótóshiopa, ach ní ghlacfadh Johnno le seo. Amach leis a ghuthán phoca, chuir sé glaoch ar an bhfear taobh thiar na ngeansaithe nua, agus thóg Johnno an cluas uaidh go dtí go mbeadh an séú geansaí is fiche aige. Choinneáil Johnno an painéal le cheile, gan le déanamh acu ach féachaint ar a mbrógaí agus a dtóna a scríob, go dtí gur tháinig an séú geansaí seo. Ach nuair a tháinig an gheansaí ar dheireadh agus a thógadh an phictiúr agus a sciop na h-imreoirí abhaile, bhí fios maith acu nach raibh duine acu níos tabhactaí ná duine eile i súile Sheáin Uí Mathúna.

Beidh sé suimiúl go leor, nuair a dtiocfaidh na dirbheatháisneisí amach, cad a tharla don nglúin órga - agus an glúin gheal a bhí acu chun deochanna a thabhairt don nglúin órga agus tart acu.

FOCAL SCÓR: Insíodh dúinn leis na miosa gurbh iad seo an fhoireann is réidhe riamh. Má bhíodh siad réidh, cé ar thug cead dóibh dul amach le brogaí donna ar a gcosa agus culaithe dubha ar a ndroma? Ní ghlacfeadh Glenda leo dá mbeadh sí ann fós, bail ó Dhia uirthi!





Technorati Tags: Gaeilge, rugbaí, Eddie O'Sullivan, John O'Mahony

His Master's Voice - John O'Mahony on Laochra Gael

The diaspora and deoraíocht of the sweet County Mayo will gather around their TV sets tomorrow night to watch Laochra Gael profile John O'Mahony at half-nine on TG4, only the second Mayoman to feature on that marvellous show. Your faithful chronicler will certainly be tuning in.

Speaking of Johnno, he seems up and running in his election campaign. A visit (bewigged, behatted and further disguised, of course - one dare not risk the social ostracisation that would inevitably follow if word got out that one was fraternising with Fine Gaelers) to the Fine Gael Mayo candidates site shows us that of all the candidates, Johnno is using online exposure to its greatest effect. And how disappointing to note that Ms Michelle Mulherin's web page is completely blank. Ms Mulherin is clearly being deployed as a sweeper for the party's bigger guns but the fact that she's one of few women in the field - if not the only woman - and the fact she's from Ballina, which has spent the past five years sulking about not having a representative in Dáil Éireann, should surely make her worth watching. Wouldn't it be gas if she took Enda's seat? God knows, she'd be doing her own party a favour, God love them.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, politics, John O'Mahony

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

John O’Mahony is at last returned to his people. All over the County Mayo, in that physical place that is confined by the broad Atlantic to the West, Sligo and Roscommon to the East and Galway to the South, and the spiritual place where Deoraíocht Mhaigh Eo have made their homes far from the land of shamrock and heather, Mayo men and women are throwing back their shoulders, straightening their backs and looking at the world with brighter eyes. Johnno is back, at last.

So great is the event, in fact, that your correspondent, An Spailpín Fánach, has ascended from the airy planes of cyberspace to return once more to the World of Man. As part of the full coverage of the Ascension in the Mayo News, the greatest newspaper in the recorded history of humanity, there are 700 words from myself on what Johnno’s return may hold for the County Mayo. Click here, as they say, for further details. Maigh Eo abú.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, Mayo, John O'Mahony