By Shaun Casey DOWN made the perfect start to their Division Three promotion push last weekend with a home win over Clare and will look to go two from two against Limerick on Saturday, which won’t be easy, says coach Mickey Donnelly. The Mourne men trailed by five points at half time of their league opener but […]
By Shaun Casey IT’S probably the hardest way possible to kickstart the season, with ties against Armagh and Tyrone coming up in early January, but Down are looking forward to those battles, says coach Mickey Donnelly. The Mourne men haven’t won the McKenna Cup since 2008. This season, they get things up and running against […]
By Shaun Casey DOWN will be favourites when they line out at Brewster Park, Enniskillen on Saturday to take on Fermanagh, but that won’t matter much when the ball is in the air. Mickey Donnelly and the Mourne men have been stung before. Two years ago, when Conor Laverty first took charge of his native county, […]
By Niall Gartland THE Tailteann Cup doesn’t seem to have captured the imagination of the paying public, and Down selector Mickey Donnelly believes the GAA need to look at ways of making the competition more palatable for fans. Plummeting football championship attendances hit a new low a fortnight ago when fewer than 100 spectators watched the […]
By Shaun Casey NO one has to inform Mickey Donnelly of the talent that’s inside the Armagh changing room. He’s got to witness it first-hand having worked closely with a number of their players and even helped develop them as footballers. During his years teaching at St Ronan’s College, Lurgan, he’s got to witness up close […]
By Niall Gartland DOWN coach Mickey Donnelly believes that the process of splitting teams between the All-Ireland series and Tailteann Cup is overly complicated and doesn’t necessarily reward teams who have excelled in the early part of the season. The Mourne County have been left in a precarious position following their Division Three final defeat […]
By Michael McMullan DOWN still have their sights firmly on a place in the league final and a shot at promotion, insists selector Mickey Donnelly. After winning their first three games, the Mourne County host Offaly on Saturday evening at Páirc Esler and Donnelly highlights the importance of winning their home games. Down also have Sligo […]
By Shaun Casey A FEW Down players caught the eye in the McKenna Cup and may well be in with a chance of pulling on a starting red and black jersey in Aughrim this weekend as the Mourne men kick start their Division Three league campaign. Wicklow, managed by Armagh’s All-Ireland winning goal scorer Oisin McConville […]
By Niall Gartland MICKEY Harte has been synonymous with Tyrone football for decades so this week’s news that he’s crossing the frontier into Derry has come as a considerable surprise to many in the GAA world. The appointment came very much out of the blue and prompted wholesale debate over the last few years – […]
By Shaun Casey SINCE the attacking mark was added to the GAA rulebook a few years ago, it probably hasn’t been used and abused as much as Down and Cavan adapted the rule in last week’s Tailteann Cup quarter-final. Both teams utilized the mark very differently. The Mourne men’s adaptation was very much old school, […]
