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02 AIB ALL-IRELAND SENIOR CLUB FINAL 2014 One great team deserves another THE MAYO NEWS TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2014 MIKE FINNERTY DANIEL CAREY EDWIN MCGREAL SEÁN RICE WILLIE MCHUGH TREVOR WATSON KEVIN MCSTAY The Mayo News, worth waiting for every Tuesday THE BIG MATCH ZONE BETTING ODDS TO WIN Castlebar 15/8 St Vincent’s 8/15 Draw 15/2 HANDICAP St Vincent’s (-2) 11/10 Castlebar (+2) 10/11 THE REFEREE EDDIE KINSELLA (LAOIS) SOME of the Mitchels’ lads will probably recognise the man in the middle from his role in refereeing the 2009 All-Ireland Minor Final between Mayo and Armagh. Castlebar’s Aidan Walsh was the captain that day.The Courtwood native also took charge of St Vincent’s win over Summerhill in the Leinster Senior Club Championship back in November. His latest Mayo assignment was last Sunday’s national league match against Westmeath in Mullingar. A BRIEF GUIDE TO CASTLEBAR MITCHELS THE club was formed on December 11, 1885 and it’s almost certain that Mitchels took their from John Mitchel, the Young Ireland leader who was banished to Tasmania in 1848 after being found guilty of treason. After the formation of the club, their colours were green and yellow. Mitchels won their fi rst Mayo senior championship title in 1888. They have won the title on 28 occasions in all. A BRIEF GUIDE TO ST VINCENT’S THE St Vincent’s club is based in Marino, on the northside of Dublin. They were founded in 1931 in Marino, although its club grounds were in Raheny for a number of years, but it moved to its home back into Marino in 1987. St Vincent’s have twice won the All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship, most recently in 2008. Their Dublin Senior Football championship title win last year was their 26th time to win the title. LAST FIVE MAYO TEAMS IN SENIOR CLUB FINALS 2005: Ballina Stephenites 1-12, Portlaoise 2-8 2003: Nemo Rangers 0-14, Crossmolina 1-9 2001: Crossmolina 0-16, Nemo Rangers 1-12 1999: Crossmaglen 0-9, Ballina Stephenites 0-8 1997: Crossmaglen 2-13, Knockmore 0-11 TABLE QUIZ CASTLEBAR Mitchels are holding a fund-raising table quiz tomorrow night, Wednesday, March 12 in An Sportlann at 9pm. All the proceeds of the quiz will go to the training fund for the senior team for the All-Ireland club fi nal. Teams of 4, cost €40, lots of prizes and a good night guaranteed. All support welcome. Contact Finian Joyce 087 2313884 for further details. UP FOR THE MATCH ON MID WEST RADIO IF you want to get in the mood for the big match on Monday, then tune into Mid West Radio this Thursday night at 10pm as Angelina Nugent will be presenting a special All-Ireland Club Final ‘Up For The Match’ live from An Sportlann, Castlebar. Among the guests lined up for the show are Tommy O’Malley, Tom Reilly, Fr John Cosgrove, Cllr Noreen Heston, Tommy Quigley and our own Edwin McGreal. All are welcome to attend, the more the merrier! KEY NUMBER 10 GAMES both clubs have played to reach the All-Ireland Club Final. CLUB IS FAMILY: A LETTER FROM LONDON NICOLA WALSH VIVIENNE Westwood once said: “There’s nothing else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere”. There are just six weeks in the year when I disagree … I’ve built a life in London, built a home, built a community. But I struggle with the absence of GAA – not being up at Josie Munnelly Park on a Sunday for the league, not being home to see the brother’s football boots lined up at the clock facing match time, having no one to remind me “it’s only the league”. I struggle with not being home for the bad times. But even more, I struggle not being home for the good. The club final is a reminder of this. As a family and community, we invested so much in Mayo over the years that I personally nearly forgot that I also belonged to a club. When FOR CLUB AND COUNTY Castlebar Mitchels supporter Nicola Walsh is also a big Mayo GAA fan. She is pictured with her ‘Mayo4Sam’ sign at the Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona. your heart breaks so badly for one, it’s inconceivable that it may belong to another too. But it is when Mam rings and says they have gotten through; it’s when you can’t make the final but you bring your Aussie flat-mates to Clogher; it’s when home isn’t home without a match; that’s when you know you are part of something special, something that means distance is only space, not a state of mind. It’s very rare that anyone misses the place. Sure, I miss Mick’s after a match, but it’s the people that make Castlebar home. It’s the people who congratulate you on the brother’s game, who talk about Durcan’s second goal and that the best thing that ever happened to Mitchels was that Tom King learned to play soccer. It’s the game, the talk, the people. That’s why, no matter how far away from home you are, you will never be further away than how you feel on match day. But just because we are not there doesn’t mean we are not watching. Just because we are not there, doesn’t mean we are not supporting. Good luck Mitchels, from all parts of the globe. There’s nothing else like GAA. Nothing at all, anywhere. Nicola Walsh, sister of Castlebar Mitchels player Aidan, lives and works in London. THE ULTIMATE PRIZE Pictured is one of the two All-Ireland club medals won by well-known GAA coach, Jarlath Cunningham from Castlebar (pictured right). He won this particular medal with Crossmolina Deel Rovers in 2001, while he also coached Clonbur to the All-Ireland Junior Club title in 2012.
THE MAYO NEWS TUESDAY, MARCH 11, 2014 03 CENTRAL FIGURE Aidan Walsh feels he’s ready for Croke Park again TAKE5 ALL IRELAND FINAL MATCH-UPS ALAN FEENEY MOSSY QUINN > THE former Dublin forward has been winning rave reviews over the last ten months for his scoring exploits. In fact, in Vincent’s 10 championship matches since May 8 last, Quinn has clocked up 2-64 (0-33f, 0-5 ‘45s), an average contribution of exactly seven points a game. We think Mitchels will ask Feeney to pick him up, although reinforcements probably won’t be far away either. EDWIN MCGREAL INTERVIEW CAN it really be six years since the 2008 All-Ireland Minor Final If Mayo had managed to retain possession in the final minute of injury time against Tyrone, Castlebar’s Aidan Walsh would have been the hero. It was 25 seconds into added time when Walsh kicked a wonderful free from 40 metres out, 15 metres in from the Cusack Stand. It flew over the crossbar at the Canal End. It was a score good enough to win any All-Ireland but, right on 62 minutes, Tyrone’s Matthew Donnelly kicked the equaliser. Mayo lost the replay. Walsh returned the following year as captain only to encounter heartbreak again, Mayo losing the final to Armagh by three points. He hasn’t disappeared since then but the question of ‘what happened to him’ has been posed many times by Mayo fans who don’t follow the club scene. Anyone who watched Castlebar’s recent win over Dr Crokes will have seen just how well he is moving these days and Walsh, who just turned 23 last month, admits he’s in good shape. “I’m definitely fitter and stronger this year than I have been before,” he told The Mayo News. Interestingly he puts a lot of that down to not being involved with any county team in 2013. In the previous five years he was in with Mayo at Minor (two seasons) and U-21 (three) and moving from county to club, with different peak points in the season, disrupted his momentum. Plus, he decided against going to America in the summer of 2013, unlike the previous two years, and it was certainly a more structured season for him. “This is the first year that I’ve had a proper pre-season with the club. When you get the full whack of preseason you know the pain and realise the hard runs in January that you’ve missed before. You’re in a lot better physical shape. “There’s confidence from knowing you’ve the work done that you can go, say, for the first half at 100 miles ENJOYING HIS FOOTBALL Castlebar MItchels’ Aidan Walsh is pictured at the team’s All-Ireland Club Final press night. Pic: Sportsfi le an hour because I know I’ve more in the tank, you’re not holding it.” And that was, he says, especially apparent in the Crokes game after he had made the most of the Christmas break to shake off a couple of niggling injuries which had plagued him from late summer onwards. Walsh admits he hates using the phrase ‘game one’ and ‘game two’ and so on, which has been the instinctive response of many Mitchels players and management this season when explaining how it is only one game at a time. Whatever about the phraseology though, it’s clear it’s not just an exercise in optics by the group. “We set out our aim at the start of the year to win the county title, but then we parked that and focussed on each individual game after that and we refocused after every game then.” The pre-season target was the county title. Many felt that would be the limit of their ambitions. Such thoughts have been flung to one side. “There was a feeling of ‘job done’ after the game and the day after. We didn’t just go into the dressing room, put the cup to one side, and say ‘we’re looking to Corofin now’. “It was the first training session after the county final, the next Wednesday evening. We just had a meeting where we asked, ‘are we going to be happy “Our confidence is high because everyone is confident in themselves” enough to win the county title’ We said that we would push on.” And how about the form they’ve found since — are Mitchels a team liberated by finally ending their 20 year barren spell without the Moclair Cup “I don’t really buy into the monkey off our back kinda stuff. It’s not that teams in Mayo are trying to shut you down or anything but other teams outside of Mayo are a step-up because it is a higher competition, and they’re trying to implement their brand of football. There’s a bit more freedom to get our system into the game, and we’ve managed to do that. “We are confident enough that if we can get ourselves right … Look, if we play to our potential and a team beats us, we’ll say well done, fair play, best of luck to ye. Our confidence is high because everyone is confident in themselves.” TOM CUNNIFFE DIARMUID CONNOLLY > MITCHELS’ versatile backs could be given a variety of roles on Monday but we believe ‘Turbo Tom’ is the man to try and curb the infl uence of Vincent’s enigmatic playmaker. On his day, Connolly can win a game on his own and knows Croke Park like the back of his hand. Expect Cunniffe to get touch-tight when he needs to, but attack at every opportunity too. BARRY MORAN > EAMONN FENNELLNELL THERE are any amount of ways the big men could pair off but it seems ems highly likely that these ‘county lads’ will spend some time in each other’s company. While Moran may pop up at full-forward, we think Castlebar will need him around the middle too where Fennell and his gargantuan partner, Daithi Murphy, need minding. Midfi eld is where the game will be won and lost. NEIL DOUGLAS GER BRENNAN > THE Vincent’s captain didn’t dn’t play in the semifi nal due to injury and also missed a large chunk of the Leinster campaign due to suspension. However, the Dublin stopper is set to return in his ‘Guvnor’ role at centre-back on Monday. Keith Higgins showed last September that pace and sleight of hand can cause Brennan problems, so ‘Dougie’ looks the most likely Mitchels man to roam far and wide from 11. TOM KING > MICHAEL CONCARR MITCHELS will probably need at least one goal to have any chance of winning this match, and that’s where ‘Kinger’ comes in. The will-o-the-wisp corner-forward showed against Crokes that he has the instinct, pace and ability to fi nd space, and the back of the net. Temperament won’t be an issue either. Vincent’s will probably ask the versatile and speedy Concarr to keep tabs on King, but Castlebar need him to shine.
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