MAYO INJURIES MOUNT
O’Shea out of League as Rochford goes in search of new faces
THERE was no thaw in Mayo’s pre-season yesterday after it was confirmed that Séamus O’Shea has become the latest county star to be ruled out of this season’s Allianz League.
Their opening round FBD League fixture against Galway fell victim to the cold snap after the frozen MacHale Park pitch was deemed unplayable by match referee Paddy Neilan.
Over 1,500 people were already in the ground when the decision was made, and the late call left Galway manager Kevin Walsh less than impressed.
‘We’d be very disappointed. We left Loughgeorge at 11.30am, you would expect to get that call before we left. It’s not that there is a 12-hour day of sunlight at this time of year,’ blasted Walsh.
However, it is likely to be a minor irritation for Mayo manager Stephen Rochford who is facing an evergrowing casualty list ahead of his team’s National League opener against Monaghan at the end of the month.
‘We will be without Séamie O’Shea with a knee injury for the vast majority, if not all of the league,’ Rochford said yesterday.
O’Shea is the latest to be ruled out for the spring campaign with Donal Vaughan (knee) and Lee Keegan, who is recovering from double hip surgery, both sidelined.
Chris Barrett will also miss a minimum of four games after undergoing knee surgery on an injury sustained during Ireland’s International Rules tour in Australia in November.
In truth, the absence of O’Shea, who has been dogged by injuries in recent seasons, is as much an opportunity as it is a blow for Rochford who begins the business of trawling for talent to beef up a squad that at times appeared threadbare last year. Kevin Keane, Alan Freeman and Jason Gibbons – the latter named to start – had been set to make their return yesterday. With the first-choice panel currently holidaying in Malaysia, the All-Ireland under-21-winning quartet of Michael Hall, Sharoize Akram, Matthew Ruane and Brian Reape had been named on a third-string selection. The expectation is that Rochford will seek to turn up the heat on his established players by blooding new talent this spring, but he insists that there will be no change just for the sake of it. ‘We’ll find the players that are there,’ Rochford said. ‘We’re always of a mind that there’s good quality footballers in Mayo and good youthful footballers and if they’re good enough, they’ll be in the squad and might push out somebody that was there last year.’ The Mayo manager will hold off until the end of this month before deciding on the size of his panel and on the team captaincy, which has been Cillian O’Connor’s honour in Rochford’s two-year reign. That may still apply, but with Galway – who have knocked Mayo out of the Connacht Championship in the last two seasons – already in his sights ahead of their championship clash on May 13, Rochford knows that his team will have to bring something
4 The number of games Mayo’s defensive linchpin Chris Barrett is expected to miss after undergoing knee surgery for an injury he picked up during Ireland’s International Rules tour in Australia.
different this summer. The build-up to that game has already hit a logistical barrier. A condensed summer calendar has seen Mayo’s plans for a prechampionship training camp scrapped.
An erroneous report, emanating from a county board official, that Rochford had intended to go ahead with a hot weather training camp in April – a month reserved exclusively for club activity – still angers the Mayo boss.
‘What I would be firstly disappointed with is our preparations got discussed on airwaves, TV, back pages. That should have really remained in-house.
‘I think there were people just jumping on a bandwagon without knowing the full information. There was never going to be a summer camp. There was never going to be an impact on club fixtures and there was never a case of it being abroad. That hasn’t changed.
‘We’ve got preparations to make for Championship and we’ve got to respect also what’s happening in the club scene and that the
calendar is a more complex situation than it even was last year. This management team has totally respected the club side. People just need to look at last year where the club players played four out of five weeks after the National League. Where we can continue to have that sort of a relationship with the clubs, we will do,’ added Rochford.
Meanwhile, Galway boss Walsh confirmed that veteran forward Gary Sice has retired from the inter-county game.
The Corofin ace has been a member of the Galway panel since 2007, but opted out under the tenure of previous team manager Alan Mulholland, before returning when Walsh took the helm in 2015.