Moycullen facing rise in class for battle with Mayo men

MOYCULLEN’S footballers face the biggest challenge of their season to date when they take on All-Ireland club title favourites Hollymount/Carramore in a mouth-watering Connacht intermediate decider at Pearse Stadium on Sunday (2pm).

However, Moycullen manager Michael Donnellan will be buoyed by the fact that his squad has a clean bill of health going into the game with their primary concern, dual player Mark Lydon, responding well to treatment for a hamstring injury he sustained with the parish’s hurlers in the intermediate final.

On the back of their 1-10 to 0-9 win over Athenry in the county football showpiece, Moycullen’s intermediates made short work of Roscommon champions, Michael Glavey’s in the Connacht semi-final a fortnight ago, winning 2-16 to 2-7.

Given many of his players were involved in the hurling final the previous day, boss Donnellan was delighted to get over that one. “We were happy. Obviously, we had a disjointed build-up to it because of the fact that the hurlers were going so well at the time and they rightly took priority for the couple of weeks beforehand,” he began.

“The guys who just played football in the club though kept working away in the background and we went down to Glavey’s and we played reasonably well. We didn’t play wonderfully well but good enough to get a result.

“So, it was good considering we had a number of guys who played in the hurling final the day before. It is just a compliment to the character of those guys involved, that they played the hurling match on the Saturday. They were very disappointed to be beaten in that but 13 of them went into a pool session immediately afterwards.”

At any rate, they will look to Seamus Friel, Matt Donoghue, David Wynne, Gareth Bradshaw, Peter Cooke, Sean Kelly, Conor Bohan and the Lydons to lead the charge in this one.

Meanwhile, Hollymount/Carramore’s victory over The Neale in the Mayo intermediate final was the club’s first significant trophy at adult level since their amalgamation four years ago – having lost out to Ballyhaunis in the decider last year.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.