Write a commentTHERE won’t be many with less reason to cheer on Down on Saturday evening than Billy-Joe Padden. After all, he’s a Mayo native who plays for Armagh.
True to form, the Belmullet man who lined out for the westerners for a decade before moving to Camlough and throwing his lot in with his adopted Orchard county in 2010 will be rooting for his former team-mate James Horan’s team on Sunday.
Having played against Down in the League this year, he’s objective enough to know that James McCartan’s side have the beating of Mayo, if things go well for them, but he’s giving the Connacht champions the nod at Croke Park.
“I think Mayo are probably slightly the stronger team,” he said.
“They’re coming in from the cold because they haven’t played in a couple of weeks but they should be the team with more confidence – they had a pretty good Championship run last year and this year they’ve beaten what’s been put in front of them, maybe not much, but they still got the job done.
“I think Down will still be a bit sore after the Ulster final because they probably went in thinking they had a good chance and in the end they were well beaten. In saying that, Donegal are probably the best team in Ulster by quite a bit.”
The Down Team has been named for Saturdays Game against Mayo
Brendan McVeigh, Darren O’Hagan, Dan Gordon, Conor Garvey, Niall McParland, Kevin Mc Kernan, Brendan McArdle, Ambrose Rogers, Kalum King, Aidan Carr, Mark Poland, Conor Maginn, Brendan Coulter, Conor Laverty, Eoin McCartan
