SHADOW BOXING Mayo’s second string ready to take on old rivals with a few old faces leading the line
AS they prepare to face their oldest foes tomorrow, Mayo are adopting a similar approach to their keenest rivals of recent times.
Like Dublin, the main Mayo squad are on holiday at the moment and will field a shadow selection against Galway at Machale Park in their opening game in the FBD Insurance Connacht League.
On the back of reaching last year’s All-ireland final, Mayo flew out to Kuala Lumpur last week and will not return until Tuesday though not all members of the panel and management made the trip and some of them should be in action in Castlebar.
Manager Stephen Rochford has remained at home as have key players David Clarke and Andy Moran as well as Barry Moran, and Rochford may well lean on their experience to guide a particularly experimental line-up.
Rochford has called in several players from the 2016 All-ireland under-21 side, Seamus Cunniffe, Michael Hall, Michael Plunkett, Sharoize Akram, Matthew Ruane and Brian Reape among them.
With college teams not taking part this year, the format of the competition has changed with the five Connacht counties only taking part in a round robin, at the end of which the top two teams will play in the final.
It makes for a rather drawn out competition and while the round robin fixtures will be completed on January 21, the fact that the Allianz League starts the weekend after means that the final will not take place until February 18.
There’s a reasonable chance that Mayo and Galway will meet again in the final but, more importantly, they face off in the League seven days earlier in Salthill with Galway back in the top flight for the first time since 2011.
They also meet in a crunch Connacht quarter-final on May 13 as Mayo bid to avoid a third successive Championship loss to Galway, so tomorrow’s encounter is, by a distance, the least relevant meeting they’ll have this year.
However, most inter-county careers invariably start in competitions such as this and with Mayo drawing from the same hard core of players for a number of seasons now, Rochford will hoping that viable alternatives emerge.
Their lack of impact from the bench is arguably the single biggest reason why they’ve failed to get over the line in Allireland finals in recent years.
Galway are already underway in this competition having beaten Sligo by four points on Wednesday night.
“We had maybe six, seven, or eight debutants out there getting a smell of it,” Galway boss Kevin Walsh told GAA. ie. “We will probably change things around during the tournament. Some lads are away on holidays which were booked early on, that happens as well.”
Mayo will likely draw from the same batch of players on Wednesday night at home to Leitrim, while Galway have a bye until next weekend.
Roscommon sit out this weekend after a 14-point win over Leitrim on Wednesday. LEITRIM, who have recent pedigree in this competition having won it in 2013 and ‘14, welcome SLIGO to Ballinamore tomorrow.