BY KEVIN CARNEY
So much for the Dr. McKenna Cup being a planet removed from mother Earth.
Football’s bluebloods have all but finished swatting each other in this season’s Ulster’s subsidiary competition and, already, it’s clear that the cream has risen to the top.
By dint of their handsome 2-12 to 1-4 semi-final win last weekend, Tyrone can now prepare for their eighth McKenna Cup final inside the last ten years.
Meanwhile, holders Derry are now just 70 minutes away from back-to-back titles, having overcome Down by 0-11 to 0-9 in their penultimate round …

By Colm Shalvey
Just nine days remain until Monaghan begin their Allianz National Football League Division Two campaign, with a high-profile trip to Navan first up for the Farney men.
Monaghan manager Eamon McEneaney has been forced to field teams missing some of his regular first-choice players in recent weeks with college commitments the main reason for absentees. McEneaney wasn’t happy at being so short of full-strength throughout January, but it did give him the opportunity to try out more new players in the ongoing quest to build a strong panel.
Monaghan won …

By John Graham
In their opening game against Armagh, Down demonstrated their intent for the coming season with a resounding performance and victory and they sent out another message in Clones on Sunday last as they powered to victory over a disappointing if considerably under strength Monaghan side in this largely one-way contest that attracted an attendance of just over 2000 people.
Down laid the foundation for this victory with two scintillating periods either side of half-time, the first that yielded 2-4 in the final 10 minutes of the first half and …

By John Graham
For Monaghan the Dr McKenna Cup game against Doown was a game where nothing went the way they had planned or the way they hoped. Mark Keogh was beaten four times but did well with a couple of other efforts although his positioning was partly responsible for one of the goals.
Dermot Malone was the pick of the Monaghan defence while Carl O’Connell and Ronan McNally tried hard along with Vinny Corey but it was an area that was under severe pressure at times.
Carl O’Connell was particularly unlucky …

By Kevin Carney
Trying to extrapolate championship results this coming summer on the basis of Dr.McKenna Cup results is a fool’s occupation. However the opening round results from this year’s subsidiary provincial competition do, at least, suggest that team-managers have now all got the ‘nothing beats winning’ theory firmly encoded in their brain cells and the vim and vigour shown by their charges last weekend said as much.
On the basis of last Sunday’s results, it appears that the provincial powerbrokers are determined to give the students a right ‘oul lesson.
Competitive victories …

St Mary’s manager Paddy Tally possibly summed it up best when he said that the McKenna Cup particularly in the opening game was about performance more than anything else. His Monaghan counterpart agreed with that and was pleased that his side got off to a winning start this year as opposed to a very disappointing opening in 2011. Carl O’Connell Tyholland, Tommy O’Neill, Ballybay and Ciaran Daly, Donaghmoyne had their first senior inter county outing on Sunday last while James Bellew, Emyvale, Ronan McNally, Tyholland, and David …

By JOHN GRAHAM
This Sunday Monaghan will get their competitive season under way when they meet St Mary’s University College from Belfast in the Dr McKenna Cup in Clones at 2pm.
Since the reintroduction of the McKenna Cup in 2003 and the closed period for the training of inter county squads, although in some cases that is honoured more in the breach than in the acceptance, the McKenna Cup has taken on a new importance with counties using the competition to run the rule over prospective players for the upcoming National Football …

CAVAN 1-15
MONAGHAN 1-08
JOHN GRAHAM reports
Cavan full forward Kevin Mulvaney put on an exhibition of point scoring from both play and frees that helped catapult Cavan through to the final of the Ulster Bank Vocational Schools inter county championship at the expense of Monaghan in this keenly contested and at times hard-hitting contest that was played in blustery and bitterly cold conditions in Cloghan on Thursday afternoon last. Overall Cavan’s play was that …

By COLM SHALVEY
A number of Monaghan clubs will be taking time out from the Christmas celebrations to do their bit for some worthy charities.
Monaghan Harps stage a charity match at their Gavan Duffy Park home on Monday, January 2 at 2.30pm.
The brainchild of Harps Hurling Club Chairman Owen Connell, the game is set to feature footballers, hurlers, ladies, supporters and former players from the county-town club and it will be raising funds for local charities. The last Harps charity match took in over €3,000.
Scotstown ‘Wreckreationals’ make the short trip over …

County Convention is the annual formal assembly of the GAA in Monaghan when the officers and club delegates gather in plenary session to decide on matters of governance and policy making for the coming year and to review the year just finished. Over the years the business of convention has changed dramatically from where it sometimes took two day-long sessions to complete it is now wrapped up in a matter of hours.
That is the result of the fine tuning of the rules where the bulk of business is handled …