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Post by Chinatown on Aug 29, 2015 12:07:10 GMT
A bigmouth fueled by hatred & bitterness will in time reveal it's poison for all to see. Good God, women and children first the apocalypse is nigh
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Post by norman on Aug 29, 2015 19:50:49 GMT
A bigmouth fueled by hatred & bitterness will in time reveal it's poison for all to see. Good God, women and children first the apocalypse is nigh Better believe it....
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Post by baurtregaum on Aug 29, 2015 20:05:29 GMT
Two Kerry games this year he has trashed the referee. I think he was seriously put out that Kerry had beaten Donegal last year and Donaghy really rubbed his nose in it - plus hamaz and he had a go on Twitter. Are these linked or am I paranoid? I know nobody here takes him that seriously but alt of people out there take heed of him. How long more can RTE be happy with this circus? Especially when they have used the likes of O' Cinneaide A. Kernan, B. McGuigan and any number of good analysts that could freshen up the format. As has been mentioned, the night time version of the show is much better, or at least was last Sunday anyway.
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Post by norman on Aug 29, 2015 20:16:38 GMT
It's all a free-state conspiracy that Kerry are in the final in joes little mind.
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Post by thechosenone on Sept 2, 2015 12:44:31 GMT
Darragh Ó Sé: Last person players care about is referee 2 September 2015
Watching Dublin versus Mayo on Sunday, I was trying to think was there any worse job in the world than being a referee. I couldn’t come up with one. I’d say Joe McQuillan needed to go and lie down in a dark room after it.
We’re killing these referees, plain and simple. First off, we’re giving them an impossible job to do because nobody else will do it. Then we’re watching them like hawks the whole time, mad to get picking up on any mistake. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, we’re lambasting them at every turn when the game is over.
Honestly, can you think of another group of people that the association is as happy to hang out to dry as referees? Players try to hoodwink them. Managers plámás them beforehand to try to get an advantage and blackguard them then in the press afterwards when it doesn’t go their way.
I’ve had players and managers ring me plenty of times before a game to get the lowdown on one referee or another. What does he go hard on? What does he leave go? What sort of chat does he respond to? Big brother is watching them from long before they step on the pitch.
And then everybody – and do I mean everybody – spends the whole game giving out to them, roaring abuse at them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a player, a manager, a county board official, a supporter, a ball boy or the team chaplain – you’ll tear strips off the ref if you think the situation demands it.
Referees are treated as the lowest of the low. They’re like the traffic warden in the back of the getaway van in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. When the time comes to dish out a beating, everyone remembers how much they hate referees and they all pile in with fists flying. McQuillan has been getting it from all sides since Sunday, even though he got 99 per cent of the calls right.
How would you referee a game like that last Sunday? Where would you start? I heard people giving out afterwards about McQuillan missing a double hop in the lead-up to a point from Kevin McManamon. A double hop! That’s like missing a pickpocket in the middle of a full-scale riot.
You can argue away about the two penalties if you like. But does that not just prove the point of what a ridiculous standard we’re expecting from these guys?
The Sunday Game lads had six or seven hours to go through tapes in slow motion after the match and I still don’t think they proved the case for or against in either incident. And yet we’re giving Joe McQuillan a hosing because he did the only thing we can reasonably ask for – make a snap decision using his best judgment in real time.
Players don’t help referees either. Frank Murphy said in a rules committee meeting that I was at in Croke Park recently that there are 86 different rules in Gaelic football. You can be guaranteed that the players don’t know them all. But they know the ones they can get around and the ones that they can push the referee on.
Players don’t care
It’s simple. Players don’t care. This isn’t a scenario where we’re all in the same GAA boat, helping each other out.
This is more like, there’s one boat getting to dry land and I’m making sure I’m on it.
That’s what really struck home on Sunday. Here you have two teams made up of incredible physical specimens all trying to find their own way to get to dry land. You only need to look at them close up to see how much of their lives go into this. There isn’t a loose bit of skin on any of them, not a drop of sweat wasted. You really think they’re going to go through all that and think twice about a referee? Not a hope.
I didn’t like seeing Aidan O’Shea going cribbing to the press that he got a headbutt. I know he was only answering a direct question but he could have dodged it easily enough.
It doesn’t matter whether he did or he didn’t get headbutted, the game was over and there’s a replay to come. My feeling was always that you don’t go on with that kind of talk. I never felt you would get any luck out of it.
Mind you, luck has a mind of its own most of the time. I was playing in a club game with a Cork referee one time and we were well out the gate long before the finish. The man I was marking was getting ratty as the whole thing petered out and decided to take one last scalp at me before the final whistle.
The ref blew for a free and came walking over reaching for his book, looking to put manners on my man and give him the line. “Tis grand, ref,” I said. “There was nothing in it. I made a meal of it.” The ref put his book away and just gave him a talking to. Then he said to me, “Well done, Darragh. That’ll stand to you.”
Spared the holly
A few months later, we were playing a league semi-final above in Limerick with the same referee. We had some fairly tasty clashes with Limerick around them and this was one of them. I had John Quane and John Galvin to contend with and neither of the boys spared the holly so I didn’t either.
I had a coming together with Galvin at one point anyway – I must have mistimed a run or something and caught him – and as the ref came scuttling over I was thinking, “I’ll get away with a yellow here, I have a Get Out Of Jail Free card with this chap.” Sadly, my referee seemed to have a short memory and out came the straight red!
The moral of the story is, you can’t afford to care. As a player, you have a responsibility to yourself and your team. The referee comes way, way down the list. Above all else, that’s what makes life so hard for the likes of Joe McQuillan. Everybody is dictated to by their own self-interest.
You take somebody like Paul Flynn last Sunday. I’ve said plenty of times that he’d be the first name on my list if there was a transfer system in Gaelic football but we can all agree that he’s going through a rough spell at the minute. He’s struggling for form, which happens to everybody from time to time.
Flynn’s big problem though is that he’s not just some bit-part player for Dublin. He’s won four All Stars back-to-back. He’s a go-to guy, one of the players that the whole squad look to when they need to be dug out of a hole. When you’re that guy, you feel a loss of form far more intensely than some of the others.
You know that everyone is looking to you. You know that people expect more from you than they do from some of the others. You know that every time you get on the ball, people watching are going to be looking a bit closer to see are you getting your form back. That ramps up the pressure on you no end. The game stops being about enjoyment and more about survival.
Watching from afar, I think that explains some of the stuff Paul Flynn was doing on Sunday. He’s a different player this summer. He goes around looking to dominate fellas physically more so than with his football. He’s turned into one of these guys who is never far from a flashpoint, which was never his way of carrying on before.
To me, that’s directly linked to his form. It’s not that he’s a more bad-tempered fella than he was before. He’s just under more pressure because he can feel so much being expected of him. And he’s such a physical beast now that he can compensate with a bit of bullying when his football lets him down.
Problems and baggage
He’s just one player. Aidan O’Shea is just another. McQuillan had 30 of these guys to try to keep in line on Sunday, each of them with their own problems and baggage in the backs of their heads. They were pumped to the eyeballs by the occasion and nobody was taking a backward step.
All the while, you have a referee who can’t measure up to the players physically no matter how fit he gets, who has no TMO to help him out with tough decisions, and whose main help is from linesmen who only pick up half of what’s going on and umpires who are just along for the ride and maybe a few pints of porter on the way home. What an impossible job. I hope Eddie Kinsella has his prayers said before Saturday.
As for how it will go, I just think the Dubs have more scope for improvement. Stephen Cluxton can’t play as badly again and as long as he gets into the right frame of mind and doesn’t get rattled as easily as he was last Sunday, he can control the game better for Dublin. Mayo will improve too but I still think Dublin have more scoring in them.
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G_S_J
Senior Member
With greatness already assured, history now awaits.
Posts: 647
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Post by G_S_J on Sept 2, 2015 13:20:38 GMT
Darragh Ó Sé: Last person players care umpires who are just along for the ride and maybe a few pints of porter on the way home. Darragh wouldnt be a stranger to a few pints of porter on the way home himself...
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Jo90
Fanatical Member
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Post by Jo90 on Sept 2, 2015 13:30:42 GMT
Darragh Ó Sé: Last person players care umpires who are just along for the ride and maybe a few pints of porter on the way home. Darragh wouldnt be a stranger to a few pints of porter on the way home himself... Also liked his diplomatic description "I must have mistimed a run or something and caught him"
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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 Sept 3, 2015 22:27:13 GMT
mistiming a run is an accident
"or something" is not an accident
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Post by tommynk on Sept 4, 2015 11:52:20 GMT
I read somewhere earlier in the year that Paul Flynn has that groin injury ostiopubis, not sure of the spelling. Donncha Walsh had the same thing a few years back. It's painful but not debilitating.
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Post by jackiel on Sept 9, 2015 9:20:03 GMT
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Post by buck02 on Sept 9, 2015 9:31:09 GMT
Darragh not towing the party line of "Poor Mayo". That's probably the difference between somebody who has won 6 All Irelands in the modern era and the rest of the PC pundits out there.
If Dublin get a goal in the final, the first thing that should happen is that one of our forwards who hasn't already been booked should get in a tangle with his man, bring him down to the ground and start a wresting match which will result on 8 or 9 other players coming in to drag opposition fellas out of it and make the ref have a chat with his linesman and umpires before he issues a few yellow cards. Take the sting out of Dublin and the crowd.
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Post by Tadhgeen on Sept 9, 2015 12:14:24 GMT
Very good article by Darragh. I dare say he could have focussed similarly on one or two other Mayo players between their goal and the beginning of their eventual collapse i.e. Dublin's goal.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Sept 16, 2015 8:12:08 GMT
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Post by buck02 on Sept 16, 2015 9:07:35 GMT
"Theres that aul streak in him" says Darragh about Marc when mentioning Marc's black card against Kildare as Darragh remembered it. Maurice Fitz trying to bite his lip after that comment was funny.
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Post by inforthebreaks on Sept 16, 2015 10:34:27 GMT
That video was recorded before Terrace talk lvie in the sea lodge hotel in Waterville on Monday night. Twas a lovely evening with some great guests talking about the match. Co presented by Maurice and Weeshie there were some great insights and a few war stories from bygone days.
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Post by wayupnorth on Sept 16, 2015 18:59:27 GMT
"Theres that aul streak in him" says Darragh about Marc when mentioning Marc's black card against Kildare as Darragh remembered it. Maurice Fitz trying to bite his lip after that comment was funny. Wasn't it against Tyrone?
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Post by wayupnorth on Sept 16, 2015 19:05:25 GMT
That video was recorded before Terrace talk lvie in the sea lodge hotel in Waterville on Monday night. Twas a lovely evening with some great guests talking about the match. Co presented by Maurice and Weeshie there were some great insights and a few war stories from bygone days.
Terrace talk podcast
media.radiokerry.ie/mediamanager/embed/player/podcasts/10/item/45532
Great listening and Maurice is a serious contender for Weeshie's job!
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Post by thechosenone on Sept 23, 2015 19:59:08 GMT
Darragh's article from today.
I was standing in the tunnel at one stage on Sunday as the Kerry players walked past me. Some of them were guys I had played with, won with, lost with. It was hard to watch them, knowing what they were feeling and what they had ahead of them. I felt for them.
Whatever anybody says in the post-mortem, none of them came to the All-Ireland final with that performance in mind. I felt for Éamonn Fitzmaurice too. My over-riding thought about Fitzy afterwards was, “Who’d be a manager?”. One minute you’re a genius, the next you’re a fool. Did Éamonn Fitzmaurice cost Kerry the All-Ireland? No way. But people always look to the line and the judgment on how they performed never goes much further than what the result said. Kerry lost, so Éamonn, Mikey Sheehy, Cian O’Neill and Diarmuid Murphy are in the firing line.
Dublin have developed a more defensive system this season but as they struggled in the All-Ireland semi-final replay, James McCarthy attacked the Mayo rearguard with gusto. Photograph: Tommy Grealy/InphoDublin are more streetwise but are they still too nice?
Here’s the simple truth of it – Dublin were better. More of their players performed to a level somewhere close to their best. You’ll never have 15 players performing in an All-Ireland final but if you can get 10 or 11 going well, you’re in with a shout. Dublin had that. Can Kerry say they had three? Four at a push? Dublin are the best team in the country and they played accordingly. Kerry didn’t measure up, apart from a few spells in the first 25 minutes. For those periods when Kerry owned the ball, they didn’t make enough use of it. They kicked a string of wides and never got Dublin out of their comfort zone.
Panicked
Dublin never had anything to get panicked about – talk about a dream scenario in an All-Ireland final. You go into an All-Ireland final checking and double-checking that you have all eventualities covered. The whole idea is that you’re training your mind for when the squeeze comes on. You’re getting yourself into the right mindset so that you can react under pressure. But Dublin never had to worry about any of that.
The moment I knew Kerry’s goose was probably cooked was Philly McMahon’s point. He’s been scoring points all year but you wouldn’t worry too much about that on its own. What was really significant was that he sidestepped the Gooch. First of all, the very fact the Gooch was back there playing as a defender told you Kerry’s gameplan wasn’t working. Colm was probably always going to have to do a bit of tracking back but this was different. This was him having to face up one-on-one to a guy who was full of confidence and fancied himself for a score. That’s no place for one of our greatest ever forwards to be.
Secondly, and more importantly, it told you that McMahon had been allowed to become a big factor in the game. That was a serious mistake from Kerry. Throughout the two Mayo games, McMahon was growing in confidence and influence. We all know the sort of player he is and the sort of persona he has for himself. He plays better when he’s getting under the opposition’s skin, scamping and bullying his way around the place.
This is not new information. There’s nothing in the way Philly McMahon plays that is designed to surprise you. He doesn’t hide it and he doesn’t apologise for it. And good luck to him. He puts it up to you – what are you going to do about it? Kerry needed someone who was going to bully him back. Somebody who was going to be just as much of a needler of McMahon as he is of others. Fight fire with fire. Kerry didn’t do that. It isn’t Colm’s game and nobody else took it upon themselves. I felt that was a mistake.
It wasn’t the main reason Dublin won but it played its part. So many of their players stood up and were counted. I was down at pitch level for a lot of the game and something that really struck me was how important Cian O’Sullivan was in organising the Dubs’ defence.
I’ll be honest here – I didn’t think he was having much of a season. I felt Dublin weren’t getting his best performances out of him. But what he did on Sunday was sacrifice his game for the greater good and I thought he was very effective. He sat in and gave Rory O’Carroll cover at full back, as well as constantly organising the other defenders around him. To do that on the back of a serious injury was seriously impressive.
A hammering
An All-Ireland final is a day for standing up. I know a lot of people have been giving Stephen Cluxton a hammering because he got rattled with some of his kick-outs but, to me, that’s looking at it the wrong way.
Cluxton is like one of those Olympic divers – the guys who get the medals are the ones who attempt the dives with the highest degree of difficulty. The easiest thing in the world for him to have done on Sunday would have been to lamp every ball straight down the middle and let it be someone else’s problem. But he kept trying to get his team the advantage.
That’s standing up.
On top of that, he came up and kicked a free in the first half from 48 metres on an angle. This was just around the period when Kerry had a lot of possession but were struggling to make it count. Cluxton came up to take it, and even though he had turned over the ball with four of his first five kick-outs and even though he hadn’t been kicking the frees all year, he stroked it over as if it was a Leinster quarter-final match in June.
That’s one thing you have to say about this Dublin team. They’re ballsy out. They have to learn on the job when it comes to All-Ireland semi-finals and finals because the Leinster championship offers them no adversity to overcome. They were dead and buried against Mayo but they found their way back.
They don’t let mistakes affect them. Bernard Brogan was having a bad day at the office in the conditions but when a greasy ball skidded his way after about half an hour, he turned and shot in one movement without even looking at the posts.
Shane Enright was one of the better Kerry players on the day but Brogan gave him no chink of light there, even in adversity. Bernard shook himself out of a poor performance when it was needed most. You have to admire that.
Getting ratty
The worst thing from Kerry’s point of view is that they actually did have some success in targeting Dublin’s strengths but just never answered with any of their own. They disrupted Cluxton’s kick-outs to the point where he starting flapping and getting ratty with his own players and kicking balls out of over the sideline. That was Job One.
Job Two was not to concede a goal, which they achieved. They didn’t even give up that many chances – at least compared to the amount of chances Dublin normally have in a game.
Job Three was to keep them to a manageable total of points, which you’d have to say they did. Nobody would have worried beforehand had they been told Dublin would only score 12 points.
So they did all of that, reducing Dublin’s effectiveness as much as any team have done during Jim Gavin’s time. And still they didn’t come close to winning. It was three points in the end but nobody in Kerry is under any illusions that it was close. The post-mortems are rumbling away down here but nobody’s claiming that we were hard done by. We just didn’t turn up.
Ah look, it’s all a matter of talk for the winter now. Summer’s over, the harvest was bad, the hay was wet and the spuds will be poor. You can do nothing more about it other than to knuckle down and come back. Kerry will beat Dublin in the championship again some day. They have to.
Until then, congratulations to Dublin on a well-deserved All-Ireland.
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Post by ballynamona on Sept 23, 2015 21:46:38 GMT
One of Darragh's better efforts.
I think I have read about all I am going to read about the game now. It won't be one to look back on and think "what if" which means it's easier to get over.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2015 22:26:58 GMT
Daragh is a lot kinder to eamonn than he was to jack back in 2011.
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Post by glengael on Sept 24, 2015 14:52:14 GMT
I agree but to be fair, more people than Jack got a flaking in 2011.
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Post by kerrygold on Sept 24, 2015 17:21:18 GMT
The Kerry culling in 2011 was much more dramatic and instant in nature, thus a greater shock value and stirring of emotions. Last Sunday was a slow 45 minute death with time to sink in and couldn't be halted. Shock versus acceptance.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2015 20:08:34 GMT
Obviously personal relationships come in to this also. Kerry did an awful lot right in 2011 and I would say more than what kerry got right last Sunday.
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Post by kerrygold on Sept 24, 2015 20:56:53 GMT
Fair point.
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Post by onlykerry on Sept 25, 2015 23:28:21 GMT
Daragh is a lot kinder to eamonn than he was to jack back in 2011. Dara did not have the personal bruises of management in 2011 either, having been there probably softens ones claws when talking of others.
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Post by glengael on May 25, 2016 15:55:12 GMT
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on May 25, 2016 16:04:41 GMT
A good read, his best piece in a while I think.
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Post by derry4sam on May 25, 2016 19:40:31 GMT
Darragh talks a lot of *e but that is a serious read.. his best yet. Which midfield partner do ye reckon he is referring to there? My money is on Scanlon!
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Post by classicfc on May 25, 2016 20:19:44 GMT
Darragh talks a lot of *e but that is a serious read.. his best yet. Which midfield partner do ye reckon he is referring to there? My money is on Scanlon! Paddy Kelly definitely!
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Post by buck02 on May 25, 2016 22:06:51 GMT
Darragh talks a lot of *e but that is a serious read.. his best yet. Which midfield partner do ye reckon he is referring to there? My money is on Scanlon! Paddy Kelly definitely! Darragh made the same mistake as Paul Galvin did in his book when describing that 2004 game v Dublin. Both went on about the Hill, forgetting the Hill was closed the same day
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