Jo90
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Post by Jo90 on Jul 4, 2017 23:03:06 GMT
Darragh wasnt the only one talking through their backsides about this game, giving Cork a chance when there was absolutely no basis for it. Would any Cork player get on the Kerry team? The young lad Sean Powter stood out, Kerrigan is decent and Ian Maguire gave David plenty of it, left half Clancy was ok. No standouts mind Stephen O'Brien destroyed Powter though, so much so that they had put Colm O'Driscoll on him instead shortly after O'Brien took Powter for 2 points.
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Post by glengael on Jul 5, 2017 9:37:12 GMT
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tpo
Senior Member
Posts: 501
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Post by tpo on Jul 5, 2017 11:14:22 GMT
Have to subscribe. Anybody put up article please
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 5, 2017 11:22:44 GMT
Darragh Ó Sé: Running football the key to this year’s All-Ireland
Darragh Ó Sé about 5 hours ago
Sitting in the crowd in Killarney on Sunday, it was very obvious just how much of a running game football has become. In Kerry, we’d like you to think we’re the last keepers of the flame when it comes to kicking the ball but the reality is any team who tried to get by these days through mainly kicking the ball just wouldn’t last very long. The game is about running now – hard, fast, clever running to break down defences and make space for your scorers. The strongest teams are the ones who can do it best and keep it up longest. Cork weren’t at the races on Sunday at all. The only times they made any inroads into the Kerry defence, it was down to their running game. Paul Kerrigan, Mark Collins and Ian Maguire were able to do it occasionally and Cork made chances off the back of that hard running each time. When I saw them do that – and get joy from it – two thoughts sprang to mind. One, when it’s done right, it’s almost impossible to stop. If a guy is running at you full-pelt with the ball, you have to do a fairly quick bit of thinking to work out what you’re going to do about it. You’re like Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, contemplating the ifs. Possession is ten-tenths of the law. That’s the thinking behind every serious team now If he goes straight for me, how am I going to tackle him? If he goes past me, have I cover in behind? If he goes down, am I getting a black card? Meanwhile, he’s coming at you at top speed and the inside forward is looping out around you for the shot. Lots of luck, gentlemen. And two, Cork don’t have the fitness to do it well enough for long enough. That was obvious to everyone who was in Killarney on Sunday. Whatever Cork have been doing since they came together at the end of last year, they either haven’t done enough of it or it hasn’t been geared towards this style of football. You could see a visible difference between the shape of some of them and the Kerry players. They haven’t been built for this kind of game.
Possession is ten-tenths of the law. That’s the thinking behind every serious team now. Since every team gets men behind the ball when they lose it, kicking it into a forest of bodies usually just isn’t a clever strategy. You have to be so accurate – it makes more sense to hold onto it and move it around until the space opens up inside. Watch how Dublin and Kerry move the ball. It’s all fist-passing around the middle third until someone comes onto it at pace, almost running a rugby line. Be that Jack McCaffrey or James McCarthy for Dublin, or Peter Crowley or Mikey Geaney for Kerry – that injection of pace comes from behind and they pop it off to a James O’Donoghue or a Paul Mannion when they draw the opposition defence. The reason it works so well is there’s not a lot that defences can do about it. If Jack McCaffrey is running in at pace, you can’t wave him through and you can’t stick to your man. He’ll go from the 45 to the penalty spot in under three seconds – you have an on-the-spot decision to make. You have to either go to him or be 100 per cent sure that someone has him covered. While you’re making up your mind, the guy you’re marking has moved into position. I was sitting there watching Kieran Donaghy on Sunday full sure he wouldn’t make it 70 minutes in that heat Kerry’s first three points on Sunday were scored without Cork getting a hand on the ball at any stage. For their first, David Moran caught the throw-in and ran right through the heart of the defence and laid off a handpass to O’Donoghue on the loop. For the next two, the Kerry inside forwards just tapped the initial ball down to a Kerry player sprinting past without even catching it. For the first, Mikey Geaney stuck it over from 30 yards out. For the second, Mark Griffin put O’Donoghue in again.
Related Éamonn Fitzmaurice ready to bring Kerry to a higher level Kerry stick to the ritual by brushing aside Cork Cork didn’t know where to look. There wasn’t even three minutes gone and Kerry were just completely rampant. And it was all based on a fast running game, on and off the ball. People were telling me afterwards they thought Donnchadh Walsh had a poor game. I said they mustn’t have been in the stadium if they thought that. The amount of running he did off the ball to make space for Paul Geaney and O’Donoghue inside was outrageous. Over and back and up and down, always with the purpose of drawing the Cork defence one way and leaving room for the scorers. If you do that well enough, it makes room for successful kick-passing into the forwards. For Kerry’s fourth point, they turned Cork over on their own 20-metre line. Kerry had eight or nine fellas back – Donnchadh was one of them. As soon as it was turned over, he turned and sprinted back up the pitch towards his usual wing forward position. But when Kerry picked him out five or six passes later, he was at centre forward. He had run in an arc to leave the whole of the right wing of Kerry wide open, so that Kevin McCarthy had room to play a ball in to Paul Geaney out in front of his man. Only one result there. How often between now and September will Geaney get that room one-on-one inside? That was all down to Donnchadh Walsh’s intelligent running. I know it’s no big insight to say the pace of the game now is ferocious but you can’t really talk about the sport without touching on it. I look at the bigger guys now and wonder how they find a place in it. I was sitting there watching Kieran Donaghy on Sunday full sure he wouldn’t make it 70 minutes in that heat.
But even someone like him is built slightly differently now than he was when I was playing. He moves out and around and back in to the edge of the square constantly, keeping defenders on their toes and moving them with him, again to make space for the other pair. And when it came right down to it, he was there to draw a couple of defenders under a high ball and set up the goal. Or look at Aidan O’Shea playing for Mayo on Saturday night. Another huge man, another guy you’d think this sort of game would pass by. But he was Mayo’s best player the other night, a calm head when they needed one, the one guy who seemed to be able to do the right thing when it looked like Mayo might be going out. And he looked in great shape for a player who was supposed to be carrying a groin injury. I ran into the hurling legend Eamonn Cregan one of the nights recently and he was saying he was disappointed with the standard in football and hurling these days That Mayo v Derry game was a perfect example of what I’m talking about. This running game takes so much out of you that when a team who is well versed in playing it in big games comes up against a team who is new to that level, fitness becomes a decisive factor. Derry just haven’t played games at that intensity in recent years and on a day when Mayo’s shooting was so bad it deserved to put an end to their summer, it was their fitness that got them through. Go back to Chrissy McKaigue’s shot with two minutes left in normal time for Derry. It went narrowly wide and as the Mayo goalie David Clarke went to kick out the ball, there was a Derry player down in front of the goal stretching out his calf. Lee Keegan collected a short kick-out and when he did, every Derry player was between him and the goal at the far end of the pitch. Derry shouldn’t under any circumstances have conceded a goal from there.
But they were wrecked. They had four fellas within 30 yards of the Mayo goal and none of them were pressing up on the kick-out. Seamie O’Shea ran 40 yards with the ball up the right sideline – again, nobody near him – and played a one-two with Diarmuid O’Connor before kicking the ball as he crossed the Derry 45. It was a low ball into Cillian O’Connor, who flicked a pass to Conor Loftus for a great finish. You have to hand it to Mayo, they pulled a goal out of the top drawer when nothing else would do. It was perfectly put together thanks to hard running by Seamie O’Shea especially and clever movement from Loftus, who left his man for dead to collect O’Connor’s pass. But they were able to do that because Derry were out on their feet. Not one Mayo player felt a Derry hand on him during the whole move. Fellas were going down with cramp, fellas were jogging back with their hands on their hips. They were in the red, with their lights flashing and steam coming out the sides. They came back and got a goal soon after with a high ball into the square and you have to commend them for their courage. But Mayo are just more suited to this game right now than Derry, even with all their shooting problems. On that, I saw a stat the other day that said Cillian O’Connor took 21 shots over the course of the game and that no other Mayo player took more than four. That’s fine if he’s scoring them but Mayo must know they need more variety than that. Yes, he’s their best kicker but he’s not 17 shots a game better than the next fella. Mayo need to work better shooting positions for more of their forwards if they’re going to still be going in August.
But they have been there before and they’re in the right shape to be there again. That’s so important. That’s why all the top teams are coming down with GPS data, video analysis, Pilates instructors and all the rest of it. Every Kerry player who came off the pitch the last day was handed a concoction to drink as he went up the steps to the stand. Everything is planned and nailed down to the last degree and it’s all there to feed into this running game. I ran into the hurling legend Eamonn Cregan one of the nights recently and he was saying he was disappointed with the standard in football and hurling these days. But to me, football is really interesting at the minute. I think what Tyrone are doing is fascinating in a way. They’re all about running, from all players and from all angles. Personally, I would imagine they might fall short on a day when all the shots don’t sail over the way they did against Donegal but who knows? One way or the other, running football will be a huge part of winning the All-Ireland this year.
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fitz
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Red sky at night get off my land
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Post by fitz on Jul 5, 2017 15:25:55 GMT
Conveniently, bypassing his previous week's tip
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Joxer
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Post by Joxer on Jul 5, 2017 15:43:27 GMT
Conveniently, bypassing his previous week's tip Were you expecting anything different!
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fitz
Fanatical Member
Red sky at night get off my land
Posts: 1,719
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Post by fitz on Jul 5, 2017 17:37:40 GMT
Conveniently, bypassing his previous week's tip Were you expecting anything different! Fair point
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Post by kerrygold on Jul 6, 2017 19:42:40 GMT
Reading Darragh's piece you would wonder what are the limits the modern running game can be brought to and how fitter the players can become. There is a noticeable increase in fitness of the players over the last few years.
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Post by buck02 on Jul 26, 2017 9:30:24 GMT
When you get to this time of year, you can generally split the teams into two categories. Teams who are looking to win the All-Ireland and teams who are waiting to be knocked out. The latter might be telling themselves they’re all out for Sam Maguire but in reality, their days are numbered. If you look at the eight teams playing this weekend, you can safely put Kerry in the first category and pretty much all the rest of them in the second one. All of them, except Mayo. They could be in one category, they could be in the other. This year, more than ever, it’s very hard to be certain. Without a doubt, we know for sure they’re aiming for an All-Ireland. But watching them only just getting through these qualifier games, you wouldn’t be surprised if their road was nearly at an end. They are the exception.
That’s what makes them so much fun to watch. If this was any other team, you would look at their games and go: “Right, well, that was exciting but really, so what? They’re only prolonging the agony. They’ll be gone soon”. But because it’s Mayo, because we know what they’re capable of when they get to Croke Park, you can’t look away. You get wrapped up in the story and wonder where it’s going to go next. At times, they seem to be a bit all over the shop. Still leaking bad goals at the wrong time, the same thing that has killed them in years gone by. But in the middle of it, they go and put in a shooting performance on Saturday against Cork that only a serious team is capable of. That was outstanding, the kind of display that should have had them out the gap and on the bus home long before the end.
But they weren’t so you have those doubts. Some of their players are in ordinary enough form. Big players, the likes of Lee Keegan and Keith Higgins. Keegan walked for a silly black card against Cork, Higgins got turned for the first goal and was caught out of position for the second. That spells trouble – and not just for the basic reason of them not playing well. If a player of middling ability isn’t going great, it’s not a crippling loss. You will usually have someone of similar standard on the bench to replace him and the pair of them will compete for the jersey the next day. Hopefully, they will both improve along the way. But if one of your exceptional players is off form, not only do you have nobody to replace him with – nobody as good, anyway – but the player himself will be in danger of trying to force it. He can lose a bit of focus and try to impose himself on the game in other ways. Imposing order I’d say that’s what happened with Keegan’s black card the other night. He was getting frustrated with how he was playing, first and foremost. He was belting forward to get involved in the game a bit more and when the Cork player started dragging out of him, he snapped and stuck out his boot to trip him. It was an obvious black card.
Keegan is getting a taste of what it’s like to be on the other side of the coin. That’s a few black cards and red cards he’s picked up over the past few years in big games and it’s something he needs to sort out. No more than how he has played Diarmuid Connolly in the past, players in other teams now suspect that he can be picked at and dragged out of and that he might react. He is in that bracket now and he has to learn to deal with it. If you are going to play a physical game, your first job is to work out where the boundaries are. When I was playing, you could get away with more than you can in today’s game. There was no black card back then. And even with a yellow card, you could maybe talk your way out of one early in a game. I never went out to be dirty but I knew that to win games, there had to be an element of physicality involved. There had to be a certain amount of throwing yourself about and imposing order. You knew you were going to have to crash into fellas. That was a given. They key was knowing what way to crash into them that was within the boundaries of what the referee would allow but would still leave your mark.
Those boundaries have changed since I retired but the same rule is still in place. You have to know where you can push it and where you can’t. If you want to impose yourself on another player physically, you have to know what you can do. You have to know the tastes of the referee of the day. And you have to know what people think of you.
Lee Keegan has to know at this stage that his days of getting away with a silly trip like that are over and gone. He’s been involved in too many battles and lived too long on the edge. Someone like Paddy Durcan might get the benefit of the doubt in a situation like that but Keegan won’t. Even maybe a Bernard Brogan, one of the whiter-than-white type of lads, maybe they could get a pass. But sorry Lee, those days are gone.
So he has to act accordingly. That’s his job now. Look at Seán Cavanagh getting his nipple twisted in the Ulster final. No reaction. That’s a great sign of a fella, to hold his head like that. Cavanagh has learned. Don’t react, don’t get involved. Otherwise, you’re a liability. And I think that’s where Keegan is in danger of finding himself at the moment. Brutal punishment He actually doesn’t even have to look as far as Cavanagh for his example here. Aidan O’Shea is taking a world of punishment in every game and he’s probably Mayo’s player of the season so far. O’Shea is like Michael Murphy in these games – he’s paying a Big Man tax every time he gets the ball. He has to get hit twice has hard to get half the frees. If he was in the wrong headspace, he’d be throwing his hat at it or letting it affect his game. But he never loses his temper. There must have been at least half a dozen times in that Cork game where he came back into his own half to collect the ball, carried it into traffic, shipped two or three tackles and laid the ball off to a team-mate who was able to run into the space he had made. He was basically used as a battering ram to free up the other players. He took brutal punishment and kept on trucking.
You can usually take Mayo’s temperature by taking Aidan O’Shea’s. He was in and out of the team when they were in and out of sorts. He is growing as the summer has gone along and he’s finding his best form coming into Croke Park. We don’t know for sure yet but I suspect the same is true for Mayo as a whole. You can see that Roscommon fancy having a right cut off Mayo on Sunday and I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw them tipped in a few places to beat them. But anyone doing that is ignoring the Croke Park factor. Mayo are coming to a place where they feel at home and where they have had success. Roscommon are new to it all. That gives Mayo a massive advantage.
Qualifiers are for winning. You get through them as best you can. They are means to an end – and that end is to be on the bus coming down Clonliffe Road with a Garda escort looking at supporters out the window. Again, you get to this time of year and you split the teams in two – the ones that are delighted with themselves for reaching Croke Park and the ones who are here on business. When Kerry struggled through the qualifiers in 2009, it was the sight of Croke Park that woke us up. We went up there with the attitude of: “Listen, everything up to now was only shadow boxing”. And it was. When you’re playing in the qualifiers, half the games aren’t on the TV. Or if they are, the viewing figures aren’t hectic. The crowds are generally small – anything over 10,000 is a massive crowd at a qualifier. So in a way, you kind of feel you are playing these games half in secret.
Biggest days I remember thinking that in 2009. We were getting through games that people weren’t watching because they presumed we’d walk them. Longford, Sligo, Antrim, teams everyone thought we’d hammer. So when we were going to Croke Park, I was saying: “You know what? People have no idea how bad we’ve been. They’ve only seen highlights or heard reports. This is Croke Park – there’s no hiding it here if we don’t turn this thing around.”
What you do in Croke Park depends so much on what Croke Park means to you. For Kerry players, it means you’re counting down the games it will take to win an All-Ireland. Three. Two. One. For plenty of teams, it’s an end in itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what Roscommon are thinking in their heart of hearts. Their Connacht title is in the bag – that might be enough for 2017. What does Croke Park mean to this Mayo team? It means some of the biggest days of their lives. It means the time when they felt most alive, the games when they had to be at their emotional and physical peak. They have been beaten in Croke Park but when’s the last time they let themselves down? They don’t do that in recent history. They see Croke Park and they perform. So let’s go back to the start. Which box do you put them in? The All-Ireland box or the waiting-to-be-knocked out box? For what it’s worth, I reckon they will take Roscommon on Sunday and sure then they’re only two games away. Mayo being Mayo, we probably won’t know for sure which box they belong to until they’re walking up the steps of the Hogan Stand.
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Post by kerrygold on Aug 4, 2017 7:41:32 GMT
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Post by kerrygold on Aug 23, 2017 8:32:07 GMT
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Post by kerrygold on Aug 30, 2017 7:48:23 GMT
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Post by An Ciarraíoch Taistealaíoch on Aug 30, 2017 8:04:05 GMT
Actual analysis from Darragh!! Not a mention of Paidi or "when I was playing...". And it's good analysis
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Post by buck02 on Aug 30, 2017 8:54:05 GMT
I find he has replaced Paidi stories with pop culture references. Dara Cinneide must have given him one of those 1000 TV Shows/Films to see before you die books for Christmas.
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Post by Ballyfireside on Aug 30, 2017 13:47:55 GMT
This article is v good analysis - ok I wonder why he didn't talk about our own game, was it IT instruction as it was strange.
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Post by champer on Aug 30, 2017 14:25:47 GMT
A rare moment of lucidity from Darragh after a summer of yarns This article is v good analysis - ok I wonder why he didn't talk about our own game, was it IT instruction as it was strange. Showing his potential for a career in politics by avoiding the questions we want answered and answering his own. Cute hoorism at its best. He won't be the one to stick the knife in his buddy.
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 30, 2017 16:25:51 GMT
Or maybe he thinks there might be a vacancy and he can talk tactics with the best of them. Looking for the agenda in his articles is about the only reason to read them.
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 6, 2017 13:26:09 GMT
A good read as usually usual, most might feel it is Dublin's to lose but after reading this you may reconsider and that Darragh has such experience will have the auld head spinning, not meaning to ruin it for you but I think his referring to the odds on Mayo says it all - he has me almost thinking it is Mayo's to lose.
Darragh Ó Sé: Forget Dad’s Army, Mayo are more like The Dirty Dozen
Ten days out from the football final, one interesting thing we should look at is the age profile of the two teams.
In general, Mayo are old and getting older and the Dubs are young and getting younger. I don’t say that to make out that either team has an advantage – I just think it’s interesting in that it shows there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
People like to say about Mayo that they’re still relying on the same fellas they have been for years, making out that it’s a sign of their lack of strength in depth. I suppose you could look at it that way alright. But my argument would be this – if they had a load of strength in depth and a heap of young fellas to come in and replace what they have, who would you be sending to sit on the bench?
Mayo are a team that gets scrutinised nearly more than any other in the country and the upshot of that is that every one of them have had days when the pundits and everyone else has them boxed off and sent to the scrapheap.
How many times have you heard Seamie O’Shea written off? Or Andy Moran? Or Jason Doherty? Hundreds. Thousands, maybe.
But they’re still here and still coming back for more. Seamie O’Shea had one of his best ever games in a Mayo jersey against Kerry in the replay. Moran is in the running for Footballer of the Year. Doherty has been massive for them this summer. Whether their year ends with Sam Maguire or not, they have played some of the football of their lives.
In a way, yes, they’re still relying on the same fellas. But that would only be a problem if these lads were the same players as they were back in 2011 at the start of James Horan’s time. Anyone see that that’s not the case. Every last one of them is a better player now than they were then. Every one of them is fitter, stronger, cuter and more skilful.
I’ve never seen a Mayo team in better shape. This isn’t Dad’s Army, trying to keep the whole show on the road even though the wheels are falling off. They’re more like The Dirty Dozen – battle-hardened gunslingers who have no time for nonsense and no notion for playing nice. They pack the hardest punch in the game at the minute and that’s because everything they do carries years of experience.
Dublin are going a different way about it. They can afford to do that because they have a deeper panel but, as well as that, Jim Gavin is playing for more than just this All-Ireland. Dublin want to dominate like Kilkenny did in hurling. And how did Brian Cody do that? Constant turnover and regeneration. Kilkenny were never going to run out of hurlers, the Dubs won’t run out of footballers.
Moving train So Gavin keeps injecting young guys into the team and over the past 18 months, he has started moving the older players onto the bench. His message to the likes of Bernard Brogan and Michael Darragh Macauley and Paul Flynn and all these fellas is simple – this is a moving train and you can be on it on my terms or you can stand on the platform on yours.
They’re hanging in because there’s a chance at another All-Ireland but they’ll only do it for so long. Gavin isn’t just planning for when after they go, he’s bringing that time forward whether they like it or not.
The beauty of this final is that neither way is 100 per cent right or 100 per cent wrong. Gavin has earned the right to play whatever team he likes, young or old. Mayo are a bit more restricted but this is still the best team they’ve had and they’re going into the final in the best shape they’ve been.
Not that you’d know it sometimes, the way people talk about them. The funny thing with Mayo is that they get credit for how brave they are but almost never for how good they are. You’d think by now, after all these years, people would be wise to the quality they have. But no. It’s always guts and character and all that kind of thing that people go to first.
Jim Gavin: the Dublin manager is planning for more than just this All-Ireland. Dublin want to dominate like Kilkenny did in hurling.
Think of how their season has been seen. When they dug it out in extra-time against Derry, people were shaking their heads at the horror of it. Extra-time against Derry! The shame! And then they had to do the same against Cork and you even heard people going, “Ah would somebody not put them out of their misery?”
When they drew with Roscommon, that was it, they were definitely gone. And when they hammered them in the replay, well sure that was one of the worst Roscommon teams ever to play in Croke Park.
They were underdogs against Kerry for the semi-final and then, even though they were by far the better team in the drawn game, they were still 2/1 outsiders in the replay. And again, all the talk since they beat Kerry out the gate is that Eamonn Fitzmaurice has no players at all down in Kerry. Nothing to do with Mayo being a superior team.
So basically Mayo have got to the final as an invisible team. They’re the worst team out there, apart from all the other teams who are worse again. And all the other teams who have been worse than them over the past five or six years. They’re 3/1 for the final against a team who only beat them by a point after a replay last year. Tyrone were only 5/2 for the semi-final – that’s how little credit Mayo get.
If anyone thinks this final will be anything other than a close battle, they haven’t been paying attention. Mayo are at a point in their lives now where experience is one of the greatest weapons they have. They never panic. They know better than to panic.
Even go back to their goal against Derry away back in that qualifier when they were dead and gone. They ran the ball from their own endline and laced together a brilliant move. Nobody panicked. Seamie O’Shea made a 40-yard run down the sideline and never once did it cross his mind to lump a high ball in and hope for the best. He played a one-two with Diarmuid O’Connor and kept his head up to see where the run was coming from inside. Cillian O’Connor came out for him, O’Shea’s ball in was on the money and Conor Loftus timed his run perfectly.
Real character People talk about guts and character all the time but I often think they’re talking about the wrong thing. They talk about keeping going and not letting the heads drop but that’s only a small part of it. Real character is still being brave with the ball, trying to pick the right passes instead of just moving it on.
You want guys who are still trying to make the intelligent runs rather than chasing around the place so that people see them making an effort. A fella who comes screaming out making a big show of looking for a ball can be worse than the lad whose head has dropped. At least you can ignore the guy whose head is down. In the heat of battle, the first guy can cause you to make a snap decision and give him the ball. Next thing you know, he’s turned over and you’re in trouble again.
It takes way more character to stay calm. And the best way to cultivate that is through experience. During the 2000 All-Ireland campaign, Kerry drew twice with Armagh and we needed a replay to get over Galway in the final as well. We were a different team by the end of the year than we were at the start. Never mind that, we were a different team at the start of October than we were at the end of August. Mayo’s Aidan O’Shea celebrates at the final whistle after the semi-final victory over Kerry. These Mayo players have a wealth of big-game experience. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho Mayo’s Aidan O’Shea celebrates at the final whistle after the semi-final victory over Kerry. These Mayo players have a wealth of big-game experience. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho You learn so much as you go on. In the drawn game against Armagh, Cathal O’Rourke kept taking me out of it with third-man tackles on kick-outs. Any ball that came our way, I’d go for it but my run would be checked by O’Rourke. So at half-time, Páidí said to Killian Burns that he was to take care of that problem. But it kept happening.
The game ended in a draw and Páidí had his mind made up for the replay. That wasn’t happening again. Killian was dropped and Tomás Ó Sé came in for the replay with the firm instruction the first time O’Rourke did it, he was to be brained. No ifs, ands or buts. No excuses. And that’s what happened. Job done. It was tough on Killian to be dropped but that’s how the team evolved, learning on the run.
In those games and the games against Galway, we got gradually better. We stopped conceding goals. We kept our head when the games got close. We found our men and stuck to our plan because we knew that we could come through in tight spots. We had comfort in games that went to extra-time because we had been there before. If we went behind and there were 10 minutes left on the clock, our attitude wasn’t, “*, time is running out.” It was, “Here, there’s 10 minutes left in this. Plenty of time.”
You can see that same attitude in Mayo. Go back to the drawn game against Kerry when they were behind in injury-time. The board went up saying there was going to be five minutes played. It was a dead cert that Mayo were going to carve out a chance for themselves in those five minutes.
Even the way they did it was so calm and collected. As Keith Higgins came up the pitch soloing the ball, he had his head up all the time. Paddy Durcan came sprinting off his shoulder and passed four Kerry players in the blink of an eye and dished out a ball to Donal Vaughan 25 yards out from goal out on the left.
In a less experienced, less composed team, Vaughan would have taken on the shot there. He had a look at the posts so it definitely crossed his mind. But instead, he carried a few steps to draw a defender, left space for Durcan behind him and then turned to put him away. Durcan came running onto the ball and kicked from a perfect shooting position – on the 20-metre line, on the edge of the D. You can’t ask for a better put-together score under time pressure than that.
All of this is my way of saying that any time you hear somebody talk about miles on the clock when it comes to Mayo over the next week and a half, don’t let anyone tell you it’s a bad thing. Those miles aren’t a hindrance to Mayo in this final. I’d say it’s closer to the truth to say that they’re what has got them here.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 6, 2017 16:07:14 GMT
Killian Burns is the one stratching his head this week. And in case Darragh hadnt noticed, KK lost both their championship games this year so they have run out of players....top players.
I would have thought too that most kerry supporters gave Mayo credit for being superiour than us at the moment.
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Post by kerrygold on Sept 6, 2017 16:50:01 GMT
I don't fully subscribe to the notion that Mayo are superior to Kerry at the moment. Kerry were ahead into injury time and had a further free to win the drawn game deep into injury time.
The quarter final was the game to get Mayo in and I believe Kerry would have beaten them.
Personally, I'd love to be going up the road on Sunday week with my ticket in my back pocket to play the Dubs in the final coming off the back of a poor semi final performance and with the Dubs having hosed everyone in front of them.
A good way to be going into a final from a Kerry perspective. We have seen those tables turned before.
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 7, 2017 1:27:07 GMT
I don't fully subscribe to the notion that Mayo are superior to Kerry at the moment. Kerry were ahead into injury time and had a further free to win the drawn game deep into injury time. The quarter final was the game to get Mayo in and I believe Kerry would have beaten them. Personally, I'd love to be going up the road on Sunday week with my ticket in my back pocket to play the Dubs in the final coming off the back of a poor semi final performance and with the Dubs having hosed everyone in front of them. A good way to be going into a final from a Kerry perspective. We have seen those tables turned before. Stranger things have happened but look at what Dubs did to Mickey Harte's Tyrone team that many of us thought could put it up to them - is it that Mayo are better than last year but Dubs have improved even more? The saving grace is that there is no certainty and sure all we can hope for is a brill game. As for ourselves if we can get say 4 from each minor champs then that should fill the funnel - equates to a panel of say 28 with an average senior playing career of 7 years. Less than 4 and you are struggling, more and you are climbing Hogan - my numbers are open to correction but the principle is what I am trying to communicate. Now what do you think of that Joe Brolly?
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Post by kerrygold on Sept 13, 2017 8:46:32 GMT
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 13, 2017 10:05:38 GMT
It was the 4th 5th and 6th sub that swung it for Dublin in the replay last year if memory serves me correctly.... MDMA, BB and Costello.
It will probably end up similar in 2017
Cutting panels and allowing 3 subs would level things up to an extent .......but maybe it is official GAA policy that the teams with the biggest pick and accordingly the strongest panels are to prevail
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 13, 2017 10:40:10 GMT
While the extended panel may be part of the deciding factor, it may be over shadowed by other events. Someone said lately that the better team on the day will win and it is only a question of how - chicken 'n' egg you may say, Dublin Chicken or Egg Mayo? McGuinness thinks Mayo can do it and nobody is saying they can't defy the odds and which are inflated in Dublin's case owing to the bigger population and neutral favourite backers. My guess is that if Mayo see this as do or die and match that by taking their performance to the next level while getting tactics right, then we could be in for a right game, or maybe two. AO'6 will have to shuttle from 6 to 14 while there is no room for any under performance due to a comparatively weaker bench.
As a side issue I wonder how much of the Mayo capability is down to Donie Buckley? Could he outsmart his opposite numbers?
And good luck to our minors, looking forward to seeing Clifford in full flight again.
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maryo
Full Member
Posts: 56
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Post by maryo on Sept 20, 2017 9:26:36 GMT
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 20, 2017 16:15:27 GMT
He absolutely nails it this week - he thought it through since Sunday and hey presto produces the best account of the outcome I have heard.
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Post by OnTheForty on Sept 21, 2017 9:22:05 GMT
www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/darragh-%C3%B3-s%C3%A9-dublin-wouldn-t-be-dublin-without-mayo-1.3226974It’s very rare that you come away from an All-Ireland final with mixed feelings. As long as I’ve been going to them, the best team wins the All-Ireland and everyone else goes home for the winter a forgotten team. But after that final, which has to be one of the best I can remember, you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t come away thinking of both teams, the winners and the losers. In saying that, I am conscious of trying not to take anything away from Dublin’s achievement. There’s always a danger that if you spend too much time going on about Mayo, you overlook what Dublin have done. Or you don’t give it the due it deserves. I was thinking about this over the last couple of days when I was trying to come up with a way of talking about both teams in this column. In the end, it’s actually fairly straightforward. Dublin have shown that they are the best team of the last 30 years by beating the second best team of the last 30 years. Forget Kerry, forget Tyrone or Meath or Donegal or whoever else. This Mayo team is playing to a higher level than all of them. They’ve just have the rotten bad luck to be around at the same time as Dublin. It’s like the old story about one of the singers in the ’50s and ’60s, around the time when Frank Sinatra was the biggest star in the world. One of the lads whose shows weren’t selling like Frank’s was left down in the dumps one night when only half his seats were filled. “I know Frank is the voice of a generation,” he said, “but why does it have to be my generation?” In just about any other era, Mayo would have at least one All-Ireland. That’s why you can’t talk about how good Dublin are without talking about Mayo. If we didn’t have Mayo, we wouldn’t have any idea what Dublin are capable of. I have always said that to win an All-Ireland final you need at least 10 or 11 of your players to have one of their best games of the year. Tactics, game plans, everything else is all fine and well but basically the team that wins is the team who had the most players playing up to their mark. Mayo had at least 12 players on Sunday who couldn’t have done any more. I was watching Tom Parsons playing with reckless abandon at times on Sunday and feeling a small bit jealous, remembering back to All-Ireland finals where I was too cautious in myself. I never played a game in a final like he did the last day. I sometimes treated finals as though they were nearly too sacred and I was too afraid to make a mistake. Parsons had none of that mindset on Sunday and he had a game for the ages because of it. This is what Dublin had to beat. That’s why we can say for sure that they’re the best we’ve seen in so long. People say they’ve only won these finals by a point – as if it’s a bad thing. Ten times out of 10, winning by a point is enough. When you’re on the bus on the way back to the hotel and Sam Maguire is sitting there in the front window for everyone to see, a point is more than plenty. To be a point better than this Mayo team is nothing for the Dubs to be one bit embarrassed about. Especially when they did it the way they did it. They outscored Mayo 0-4 to 0-1 after the 63rd minute at a time when they were behind by two points in an All-Ireland final. They kept doing the right thing over and over again and driving forward. They weren’t playing safe. Nobody was hiding. Nobody was making a run to be seen to make a run. Everyone wanted the ball. I’ve heard a few grumbles in the past few days about James McCarthy getting man of the match. I see where they’re coming from to some extent. He definitely wasn’t anywhere near the best performer in the first half when Aidan O’Shea was having a massive game. But the reason I would say he deserves the award is that when the game was there to be won, it was McCarthy who did the winning. No other county would have lived with Mayo on Sunday. No team from the last five years other than Dublin would have lived with them. Just after Cillian O’Connor’s free put Mayo two ahead, there were seven minutes for Dublin to rescue it. Stephen Cluxton took a short kick-out to Mick Fitzsimons and then when he got the return pass, who was coming short looking for it? James McCarthy. When you’re playing in a close game and there’s nothing between the teams, your first thought is to always get the ball into the hands of the guys everyone trusts. With Kerry, I always looked to see where Paul Galvin was or where Colm Cooper was. Not only was that ball going to a good place, you could be sure that it was going onwards to a good place too. The right fellas would do the right thing with the ball. Cluxton was going to play that ball onto whoever came to meet him at that stage in the game but I’d be 100 per cent sure that when he looked up and saw it was McCarthy coming to him, he’d have thought, “Yeah, the right man has it”. A big leader on the team coming at you saying, “Right, let’s do this.” That’s what you want. Dublin got the ball up the other end of the pitch to Paul Mannion for a point in that move and McCarthy was the only man involved twice. He made ground both times, driving on and using the ball. Mannion had plenty to do when he got the ball at the end of the move and most of the credit for the score goes to him but McCarthy was at the heart of it. Wiped out From the kick-out, Brian Fenton went up to challenge in the air but when Dublin won the break, it was McCarthy who got them moving again. He played it forward to Mannion and kept running so that when Bernard Brogan got on the end of Mannion’s pass, McCarthy was there as an option. And then he was bold enough to draw a brilliant shot in from outside the right-hand post. So basically in two minutes Mayo’s lead was wiped out. In that two-minute spell, the only Mayo player who got a touch of the ball was David Clarke to take the kick-out. Mannion played a big part, getting on the ball twice, scoring a point and playing a good ball into Brogan for him to set McCarthy up for the second one. Fenton was important too. But McCarthy was on the ball four times in those two minutes, from taking the ball from Cluxton to kicking the equaliser. Everything he did in that spell was positive and pushed Dublin forward. That’s why he won man of the match. You dream of being able to be that player in the closing minutes of an All-Ireland final. On the flipside, you have the nightmare scenario of what Donie Vaughan did. Christ, you could take no pleasure in that. That’s a life-changing event, a rush of blood to the head that he’ll never forget. I’ve seen Mikey Sheehy, one of the all-time greats, stopped in the street by fellas reminding him that he missed the penalty against Offaly in 1982. Vaughan could be in New York 30 years from now and somebody will bring up his red card against Dublin. Cruel stuff. I was talking to a fella from Mayo after the game and I said, ‘How in the name of God are ye going to come back from this?’ And he told me that he worked in Japan for three years and China for another two and he’s been working in San Francisco for the last few. Over the years, he reckons he’s spent over €30,000 coming home for Mayo All-Ireland finals and semi-finals and replays and all the rest of it. “And I’ll do it again next year,” he says. “We’re not going away.” Are Mayo gone? No, they’re not, the more I think of it. Why would they be? People think if they keep saying Mayo can’t come back, one day it will turn out that they’re right. And look, their bodies will go eventually. But I don’t see any really good reason it should be next year. No other county would have lived with them on Sunday. No team from the last five years other than Dublin would have lived with them on Sunday. And if the argument is that they can’t keep coming back mentally, well, they’ve kept coming back so far – why would next year be any different? The one thing we know about them above all is that they’re mentally strong. Maybe it’s just human nature and we presume they can’t keep being that strong. But that’s just a guessing game. The evidence so far has shown they can. As it is, they are the ultimate tribute to Dublin. They’re Frazier to Ali, pushing them on to do things you never would have thought a Dublin team was capable of. I think you can see the Dublin players know it too. You know the way you can see it in two boxers after a big fight when they drop all the pretence and all the mind games and just embrace each other? The Dublin players looked like that afterwards. We’ve all heard a million of those captain’s speeches where the opposition are left till last and the same old things are said and it all ends with half-hearted three cheers. Cluxton didn’t do that on Sunday. He started his speech by talking about his respect for Mayo and he didn’t insult them with the old hip-hip-hooray carry-on. Nobody knows better than Dublin how good Mayo are. The best thing you can say about Dublin is that time after time after time, they’ve been that small bit better. They have Sam Maguire for the winter and hats off to them. They’ve more than earned their place in history.
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Post by OnTheForty on Sept 21, 2017 9:52:49 GMT
With all due respect, Darragh has lost the plot this week. There is a claim for Dublin as one of the best teams of the last 30 years, but Mayo on the same pedestal as Kerry or Tyrone in the 00's? No chance. Good teams win All-Irelands, great teams win more than one. Saying Mayo are unlucky to play in the same era as Dublin is no excuse, there is always opposition. Like saying Kerry would have won 6 in a row only for Tyrone, but actually Tyrone made Kerry greater because of the rivalry.
Take the Kerry team of 04-09: battle hardened defenders like Marc and Tomas, Mike McCarthy, Tom Sullivan, Moynihan, OMahony, Killian; Darragh dominating midfield with various partners; scoring forwards like Gooch, Declan, Star, Galvin, Mike Frank, Eoin Brosnan, Darren, Sheehan, Cinneide. How many Mayo players would get in that team? You could make a case for Higgins, Keegan, maybe Aidan OShea, Cillian OConnor. Reality is Mayo are not a great team because they don't have forwards that can put the ball over the bar when it matters, and can't close out games they should have won.
A better debate is to compare the Kerry team of mid 00's to Dublin of 11-17. That would be a serious match-up. My take is if Kerry had those players, and today's training and preparation methods, Kerry would be too strong for the Dubs.
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Post by Control5 on May 9, 2018 9:10:08 GMT
Bumping this thread up
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Post by kerrygold on May 9, 2018 9:44:28 GMT
The old saying about the championship not starting until the quarter-finals has never been more true than this year. Even with Mayo and Galway playing on Sunday, it must be in their heads that whatever the result, all that matters is being at the starting line in the middle of July. You have one job – get through the first two months and arrive at the last eight in the shape you need to be.
Winning your province now is about getting a short-cut to the Super Eights and not a whole lot more. That’s the long and short of it. When the end of the year comes and all the assessments are made, you won’t be able to smooth over a bad performance in the Super Eights by pointing to your provincial title. Performing there is the be-all and end-all for all the best teams from here on out.
I think it’s a fine change. I know people will give out but those same people gave out about the qualifiers when they came in and, if all came to all, they’d have us back in the days where you trained for nine months for one game. It’s like the old story about the American tourists who came across a Cork team running up sand dunes on a beach in November. “When’s the big game, guys?” they asked, as the lads were there bent double with their hands on their knees. “Next June!” came the reply.
Down here in Kerry, I’d say there’s quite a few fellas who could do without the system changing. We’re big supporters of any system that we win in. Playing quarter-finals against a team coming up through the qualifiers has historically been no big hardship for Kerry, let’s put it that way.
But we won’t complain. Or at least we won’t complain until we find ourselves in trouble in it. You would often hear in Kerry that there is a way to win and a way to lose – well, there is also a way to complain. And so when we do complain – if we have to, regrettably – we will complain out of a high-minded concern for others. The relentless pressure on those involved, the need for player welfare and so on. Kerry will look out for ye, lads. Don’t worry about that.
Primed Managers getting ready for the Super Eights are going to have to be like Aidan O’Brien. It’s going to be a matter of having your horses wound up and primed for the day that matters. I know people are making a big deal out of Galway playing Mayo on Sunday but it’s still only a Connacht quarter-final. It would be handy to win it and take the lift rather than the stairs. But I’d be confident they’ll both be there when the really serious stuff starts. That’s what they’re both aiming at.
There’s no point being a hero for a provincial game anymore. Nobody will thank you for it or even remember it come July It’s what everyone is aiming at. In Kerry, the approach this year has been totally different to 2017. Last year, they threw everything at the league and beat Dublin in the final but weren’t able to carry any bit of that form through to the summer. Their best performance in the championship was the Munster final against Cork but even that turned out not to be worth a whole pile.
They were okay against Galway and poor against Mayo – twice. They were very average as they went along and a few fellas lost form. By the end, you were looking at them and wondering how they beat Dublin in the first place. So much for a league title.
This time around, it’s been the opposite. The league was hit and miss and there were so many injuries and so many fellas trying to find form. Kerry played a lot of young guys and it meant there was a lot of pressure on them from the start. The injuries probably forced it on them to a certain extent but it wasn’t ideal.
There’s nothing wrong with playing young lads in the right situation. Con O’Callaghan made a huge impact for Dublin last year but look at the forward line he was coming into. For his first game, the other five forwards were Diarmuid Connolly, Ciarán Kilkenny, Paul Mannion, Kevin McManamon and Dean Rock. For the All-Ireland final, he had Eoghan O’Gara and Paddy Andrews there. Go back and watch his goal in that game and you’ll see the little body check O’Gara gives Colm Boyle and the decoy runs Andrews and Rock make to take their markers away from goal. O’Callaghan scored the goal but experience made it.
The likes of Kerry’s Micheál Burns could do with a few experienced heads around them to ease some of the pressure on them. For Kerry now, the likes of David Clifford, Seán O’Shea and Micheál Burns and are being thrown into a situation where they’re not only being asked to play, they’re being asked to lead. That’s tough on guys who are either still in their teens or not long out of them. It’s possible that Kerry could start Clifford, Burns and O’Shea together in the championship. And maybe Jason Foley and Tom O’Sullivan too.
That’s a lot of inexperience to be throwing in all at the one time. I wouldn’t be worried about whether or not they’re up to playing inter-county, I would just rather they had a group of older lads around them to see them through it. When Colm Cooper came on board back in 2002, we were experienced and primed and ready to add him as another piece of the jigsaw. That’s not the case here.
The upside for Kerry is that they have a big squad now. Even though last year’s team didn’t put up a great show, they were still a kick of a ball away from an All-Ireland final. You have a panel made up of those guys and fresh blood coming in to make them up their game. That’s not a bad combination.
Most of all, it means that they are set up for the demands of the Super Eights and beyond. To make an All-Ireland final, you will have to play three Super Eights games in four weekends and then follow up possibly six days later with an All-Ireland semi-final. Making do with your first-choice 15 and the usual four or five lads you can trust off the bench isn’t going to cut it. You are going to need serious contributions from your 23rd and 24th men – not just five or 10 minutes here and there.
That’s what the Super Eights is going to mean. The teams with the deepest panels are the ones who are going to survive the longest. That’s why I look at a team like Monaghan, who can mix it with the best when they have to, and worry about what sort of shape they’ll be in by the time they get to the third game. I know they’ve used a fair few players themselves through the league but are they going to rely on them when it comes right down to it? It would be a big change for them if they do.
Relentless Ultimately the Super Eights are going to suit the biggest teams with the biggest squads and the most options. Dublin, Kerry, Mayo, Tyrone and then whoever else you’re having yourself. It’s going to be relentless and hectic and everyone watching is going to love it. The Dubs have the biggest and best panel so it’s going to suit them down to the ground. But sure then again, what system wouldn’t suit them?
If you’re a player, it’s probably hard to know what to think of it. It’s going to need a change in mentality, that’s for sure. You would want to be feeling fairly fresh sitting here at the start of May, for one thing. If you have a niggle, now’s the time to rest it and rehab it and get it right. There’s no point being a hero for a provincial game anymore. Nobody will thank you for it or even remember it come July.
That’s why I’m not so sure this Mayo v Galway game is going to be such an earth-shattering event as everyone is making it out to be. Will Kevin Walsh or Stephen Rochford really be using too many fellas who are only moving at 80 or 90 per cent? Surely it’s way too early in the year for that kind of carry-on.
For what it’s worth, I fancy Galway on Sunday. Lee Keegan is a huge loss for Mayo. Even saying that, I wouldn’t be rushing Cillian O’Connor back if he isn’t right. Apart from the fact that Mayo are going to need him more later down the line, O’Connor is one of those players who gets cranky when things aren’t going his way. If he’s playing hurt, he’s less effective. If he’s less effective, he starts niggling. His sending off against Galway in the league was a long time coming and you could tell it was out of pure frustration. If he’s only 80 per cent for Sunday, I’d leave him be and tell him to get ready for mid-July.
That’s when the big players are going to be most needed. Everything before then is shadow boxing. Now, more than ever.
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