Green and Red

Owning the first ten minutes
Sunday's t-shirt competition: the result
The return of the All-Ireland t-shirt competition

Posted: 15 Sep 2013 03:12 PM PDT

There are many issues to be factored in as we plan our tactics for this year's All-Ireland final but, as Nigel Quinn argues in his first guest post on the site, staying alive in the first ten minutes has to feature high on this list.

Our fourth All-Ireland final in nine years is merely days away. The most striking element of the last three finals, other than the bleeding obvious that we lost all three, is that they were all effectively over after ten minutes due to our being put to the sword quickly by Kerry and Donegal with those devastating early killer goals.

There was a strong feeling amongst Mayo supporters in the lead up to the final last year that we needed to settle early and be still in the game after 3.40pm which of course came from the raw fear that we were still carrying over from the '04 and '06 finals.

Unfortunately, as we very quickly found out again, this wasn't to be and although we fought a brave fight after the catastrophic start, the iceberg was hit hard and too much water was taken onboard too quickly to raise the green and red ship to victory.

It's in my humble opinion that we cannot as a team and as supporters of our great county go into All-Ireland final of 2013 with this fear attached to us again.

We must go out and own the first ten minutes in Game Six. We should launch ourselves into this period like a pack of rabid dogs, attacking the O'Neills size 5 and anything else that isn't donning the green and red, in a similar manner to the Donegal game.

The fear and nerves spilling from the stands could then be numbed by the massive injection of confidence emanating from the hallowed turf of Croke Park from our heroes. This would then secure us a steady platform both on and off the pitch to build on through the next sixty minutes resulting in what will hopefully mean that Mayo GAA and its county's great people will finally, after 62 long and painful years, climb those Hogan Stand steps to the promised land of All-Ireland glory on September 22nd.

Nigel Quinn is on Twitter @Maigheoforsam.

Sunday's t-shirt competition: the result

Posted: 15 Sep 2013 12:07 PM PDT

Okay: the lines are closed, the correct answers – all 65 of them, i.e. all those who correctly answered that Robbie Hennelly and Aidan O'Shea are the two players that started against Tyrone in this year's senior semi-final and the 2008 minor final – have been stuffed into the hat and the names of three lucky winners have been plucked from same location. They are Joe Morley, Michael Naughton and Maurice O'Keeffe.

Congrats to today's three winners, all of whom I'll be contacting shortly to get details of vital statistics and delivery addresses for their t-shirts, which will come courtesy of those nice people in T-Rex Clothing.

Thanks to all who took part and commiserations to the many who didn't get lucky in today's competition. There'll be another three t-shirts up for grabs tomorrow so if you lost out today there'll be another shot at them then.

The return of the All-Ireland t-shirt competition

Posted: 15 Sep 2013 03:28 AM PDT

Right, just a week to go now to the big day so it's time to crank up the hype machine a few notches. Those of you who wandered around this neighbourhood twelve months ago will recall the competition that was running here for some limited edition Mayo GAA Blog All-Ireland final 2012 t-shirts (nice they were too). Well, thanks to those good people at T-Rex Clothing (in particular Mark) I'm delighted to unveil the 2013 edition and to announce details of how to get your hands on one.

Here's the 2013 design:

And here's the detail that's on the arm:

As I mentioned, this is all thanks to T-Rex Clothing, who are based in the Retail Business Park on the Breaffy Road in Castlebar. T-Rex are the Mayo agents for the premium sports brand JAKO and Kooga and they customise other top quality clothing brands including Regatta, Lotto, Finden & Hales and Russell as well as producing their own range of T-Rex Sportswear. The company is involved with such Mayo sports clubs as Breaffy GAA, Ballintubber GAA, Knock Kiltimagh FC, Bangor Hibs FC, Moy Davitts GAA, The Neale GAA, Ballycastle GAA and West Mayo GAA.

There'll be three of these bespoke t-shirts up for grabs every day for the next three days and to be in with a chance to win one of them all you need to do is to provide the correct answer to a bespoke Mayo GAA question. The one for today is as follows:

Two of the team that started in this year's All-Ireland semi-final against Tyrone also played in the 2008 All-Ireland minor final against the same opposition. Can you name both of these players?

Entries please to mayogaablog@ymail.com by 7pm this evening, following which the first three correct entries out of the hat will win the first three t-shirts.

I'll do an update later on this evening announcing the first trio of winners. Best of luck to all who take part.