Republic of Ireland
Mayo League
Super League
Thursday 18th June 2026
Kick Off 19.00 Actual 19.04
Ballyheane 8 Ballinrobe Town 1, attendance 54
13’ 1-0
32’ 2-0
41’ 3-0
55’ 4-0
72’ 5-0
73’ 6-0
75’ 6-1
88’ 7-1
90’ 8-1
@ Pat Quigley Park
Ballyheane Community Centre
off N84
Ballyheane
F23 WP92
No Admission or Programme.
Out on the 0840 Ryanair flight from London Gatwick to Dublin, which left twenty minutes late. Picked up a hire car and headed to the west coast of Ireland for overnight accommodation in Galway, before making the one hour drive north to Ballyheane, where the home town club are based at Pat Quigley Park. The ground is on the right hand side when entering the village from the south, situated adjacent to the Community Centre. There’s a decent sized car park, with a small brick built changing room/clubhouse building, then two parallel pitches running widthways in front, both with seated stands. The near one was hosting kids training, with tonight’s game being played on the further of the two, which has a pair of dugouts on the stand side and is also floodlit. It’s fully enclosed by fencing and has hard standing on all four sides. Despite heavy rain leading up to kick off and light rain and drizzle falling for the entire ninety minutes, the pitch was immaculate.
I’d chosen this out of the two scheduled games in this league tonight, as it looked like it would be the more competitive of the two (the other finished 5-0), but it didn’t turn out that way. It was 5th versus 9th (out of 10), with the visitors just thirteen miles south on the N54. Ballyheane took a thirteenth minute lead with an angled shot that went in off the far post and doubled their lead just after the half hour mark, when a pull back from the right was finished first time into the bottom corner. Four minutes before halftime they added a third and made the points safe, following in an initial shot that was saved by the ‘keeper.
An angled shot off the post made it 4-0 ten minutes into the second half, before a 20 yard free kick increased the lead to 5-0 with eighteen minutes left. A minute later a lob over the ‘keeper from the edge of the box saw them bring up the half dozen, but Ballinrobe hit back with a consolation goal a couple of minutes later, with a powerful shot high into the roof of the net. Two more goals in the last couple of minutes saw Ballyheane round off the scoring, the first from a diagonal cross from wide on the right that eluded everyone on it’s way into the far corner, before a free kick, that hit the stanchion at the back of the goal and rebounded back out, rounded things off as the final whistle blew immediately afterwards.
