Westport United hunting for new manager

United hunting for new boss


Daniel Carey

WESTPORT United are on the hunt for a new manager after Barry Kilgannon stood down following their defeat by Oranmore in last Sunday’s Connacht Cup quarter-final. Kieran Mulchrone, who has been Kilgannon’s assistant, will “hold the fort for the near future”, according to club chairman Frank Gillivan.
“We’ll try and appoint somebody in the near future,” Gillivan told The Mayo News. “We’re not going to rush into it. I know the league is starting next Sunday, but the boys have been training all winter. The system is there, Kieran has been there, so we’ll continue on and we’ll put the position ‘out to tender’, and see where we go from there.”
Kilgannon agreed to take the job for a year, and promised to see out the Connacht Cup campaign. But due to work commitments, the secondary school principal said he wouldn’t be able to go beyond that.
“I know I’ll miss it, but it does take up an awful lot of time, and I just need to take a break from it,” he told The Mayo News. “But it’s been brilliant.”
Gillivan said the club had “nothing but great compliments for Barry and the work he’s done”, and said the door would be “always open” to him to return to Westport United “in an underage capacity or any capacity”. Saying that he was “very unlucky” not to win a trophy during his time, Gillivan praised Kilgannon’s success in “bringing on young players” into the first team.
Having spent much of his footballing adult life in Limerick, Ballina native Kilgannon said soccer facilities were “excellent” in Mayo. Professionalism was “on a par or maybe even better” than what he had experienced in Limerick, but the “overall standard” was down on Limerick junior football, where there’s a “more even spread” of quality teams.