Mike Griffin

Last night the Castlebar Mitchels Junior team started another year of competitive football with a home match against Westport. I was picked at centre back where I haven’t played for a really long time, so I was nervous heading out. To add to the nerves I was picked as captain for the game too! That was some honour, I’ve only been playing with the club for a year really and to think that the managers thought I was good enough to be named captain for even one match surprised me.

The weather had been pretty wet during the day but the rain held off for the match. However there was a strong wind, and after losing the toss we played with it in the first half.

We had a decent half, scoring a few two pointers. I was nicely involved even if I did give away the ball from a long kick pass at one stage. We played part of the half with an extra man after a Westport player was black-carded for a body check. Half time came around with us in the lead 0-9 to 1-2.

In the second half, I fully expected Westport to push on hard and reel us in quickly, they got the first point but we quickly hit back. Then we got a few more. Westport seemed to have lost their shape and didn’t have the same movement that they had in the first half.

For the last quarter, I ended up drifting in to full back, marking a guy that was about a head taller than me. Of course the high balls rained in… I was maybe a bit lucky in one instance that could have been seen as a black card by another ref, but it ended up as only a free. Then there was a harsh enough penalty as the ref said I was holding an arm as another high ball came in.

In the end, we rode our luck and finished up winning 0-15 to 1-5