TOM MAY LINE OUT..
NEW YORK v SLIGO, BRONX, 8.15PM O’shea doubts Mayo star’s role in Big Apple TEAM NEWS
GAA
The pair started the 2013 All-ireland final for Mayo though Cunniffe has since crossed the Atlantic.
The Castlebar defender quit the Mayo squad a year ago to travel and is part of a surprisingly star-studded New York team.
Cunniffe could yet end up marking O’shea as the winners play Mayo in a fortnight in his home town Castlebar.
But O’shea said: “I’ll only believe it if I see him on the pitch for New York.
“I see his name being bandied about but I don’t know. I know he was only home a couple of weeks ago, one of the lads was meeting him for lunch.
“He obviously played for Mayo and with Castlebar Mitchels so he’s had a lot of experience and I’m sure if he does play he’ll do a decent job for them.”
Cunniffe himself has five Connacht medals, more than any of the Sligo players he will face, while attacker Danny Sutcliffe is a former All-star hurler.
Powerful Conor Mcgraynor has starred in previous Championships for Wicklow while fellow attacker Ross Wherity played for Donegal.
Kerry man David Cul- hane and Armagh’s Eugene Mcverry are highly rated in their counties too.
It’s got the all the ingredients for a big shock as the Exiles attempt to better last year’s narrow loss to Roscommon.
O’shea said: “These are strange kind of games. They are surreal atmospheres, like a carnival. Some people aren’t even watching the game. It’s great craic and you can get rolled into it.
“I find that whenever we got off to a decent start it would usually just fizzle out for them and it’s grand but anytime we’ve had a dodgy start all of a sudden they start feeding on your anxiety around the game and it can become a bit of a banana skin.”
Niall Carew’s Sligo held their own in Division Three of the League, finishing fourth, and should have too much talent for the Exiles.
O’shea agrees and expects to be playing the Yeats County in the quarter-finals.
He said: “I don’t see Sligo slipping up. I think that in Sligo they have a talented U-21 team at the moment. I watched Sligo in the Connacht Championship and their U-21s probably should have won that. I think between that and the more experienced lads they have, they should have enough to get the job done over there.”