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Post by kerrygold on Aug 27, 2017 16:32:42 GMT
This will be epic!
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Post by shaggy04 on Aug 27, 2017 16:40:02 GMT
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Aug 27, 2017 16:40:12 GMT
I always like to look back and say at least Kerry lost to the eventual winners of the AI.
This has been the case bar 2010 since 2001 and is always a small consolation.
However I also love great teams and this Dublin team is great and will be spoken about for years - especially if they win this final.
Let the best team win. Physically, it could be a ferocious contest.
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Post by kerrygold on Aug 27, 2017 16:42:10 GMT
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Post by kerryboy83 on Aug 27, 2017 16:42:16 GMT
Dublin will win it easily
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Post by kerrygold on Aug 27, 2017 16:45:38 GMT
Might not lads. Tyrone were over rated and over hyped. Mayo will stay with Dublin. Will be similar to last years finals. Now to get a ticket..............................
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 27, 2017 17:49:33 GMT
It looks like they are both better than they were in 2016.
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Post by Kingdomson on Aug 27, 2017 17:59:43 GMT
Many are hoping for a huge contest but sadly I think this will be a blowout. Personally, I suggest ignore all hype, and I do think Dublin will win this game in a canter.
It might be a consolation for some Kerry supporters, if Mayo were to take Dublin to the edge again, but I honestly think in reality we were well off the pace as our year drifted to a conclusion.
Dublin absolutely peaked last year to beat Kerry in a semi-final having won a league for the 4th time in row, and the mileage was telling in the end against Mayo.
Now Dublin have incrementally been adding and rebuilding their team this year and more importantly they took a chance this year, they held back on training in order to peak for September. Dublin have not peaked at all yet this year but they are about to, and I do think Dublin will win this game in a canter with a phenomenal bench of experienced All Ireland winners to turbo boost them down the home straight. Mayo will compete early doors but with an avalanche of serious quality to come in for Dublin, I see only one winner. Prediction: Blowout - Dublin to win by 10 points plus. Wait and see!
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peanuts
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Post by peanuts on Aug 27, 2017 18:20:30 GMT
Many are hoping for a huge contest but sadly I think this will be a blowout. Personally, I suggest ignore all hype, and I do think Dublin will win this game in a canter. It might be a consolation for some Kerry supporters, if Mayo were to take Dublin to the edge again, but I honestly think in reality we were well off the pace as our year drifted to a conclusion. Dublin absolutely peaked last year to beat Kerry in a semi-final having won a league for the 4th time in row, and the mileage was telling in the end against Mayo. Now Dublin have incrementally been adding and rebuilding their team this year and more importantly they took a chance this year, they held back on training in order to peak for September. Dublin have not peaked at all yet this year but they are about to, and I do think Dublin will win this game in a canter with a phenomenal bench of experienced All Ireland winners to turbo boost them down the home straight. Mayo will compete early doors but with an avalanche of serious quality to come in for Dublin, I see only one winner. Prediction: Blowout - Dublin to win by 10 points plus. Wait and see! You could be right but I don't think this Mayo team will ever give up and they seem to be the most physically equipped to take on Dublin as they have shown over the past 2 years. They'll need to hang in with the Dubs fir as long as possible and then hope to get the breaks down the stretch.
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Post by shaggy04 on Aug 27, 2017 18:46:34 GMT
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Post by clarinman on Aug 27, 2017 19:13:39 GMT
I think this will be close. Alot could depend on who gets to ref it. I've a bad feeling it's going to be McQuillan.
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Post by piggott on Aug 27, 2017 19:59:09 GMT
I think this will be close. Alot could depend on who gets to ref it. I've a bad feeling it's going to be McQuillan. Has Padraig Hughes ever got an All Ireland Final?
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Post by seeking38 on Aug 27, 2017 20:18:06 GMT
Has to be an easy win for Dublin. As bad as we were yesterday we scored 17 times and Mayo scored 18 times. Con O Callaghan is a huge find for and was irresistible today. I can't see Connolly getting a start berth in this team. Dublin seem to be improving year after year if that's possible!
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 27, 2017 20:30:48 GMT
Wily Jim Gavin busy ensuring a blue-sky future for Dublin Quietly-spoken pilot has been overseeing constant transition of a talented panel
Sat, Aug 26, 2017, 07:30 Malachy Clerkin
The list of genuine insights rationed out by Jim Gavin for public consumption is notoriously and deliberately a short one. We are used it by now and have broadly made our peace with reality.
While it may do us little credit that one of Gavin’s easiest and most comprehensive victories was over the GAA press, we do hang in there for whatever small nuggets come our way. We are not what you’d call dignified about our status.
And so it was that when he accepted the Philips Manager of the Year award in 2013, we noted down for future use something he said in his on-stage interview afterwards.
“After a game, the most satisfying moments are the few minutes together in the dressing room. It was just the players, the management team and some county board officers. It’s important to let the players bask in the moment. They should enjoy that time because it’s a special moment.
“I said to the players that we would probably be never together as a group in the same room again. Players get injured, retire, lose form so that is the case. Even for the medal presentation, one of the players was missing because he had an early start for work the next day.”
If that line about never being together as a group again felt stark at the time, it was mostly because you could imagine the players’ reaction to hearing it on the day. Yeah, thanks for that, Captain Buzzkill. And yet, it should probably come as little surprise that Gavin’s prophesy was correct.
We can’t say one way or another whether they’ve all ever shared a room but a look at Dublin’s playing line-ups over the past seven summers makes his point in a far more impactful way.
Dublin have won four All-Irelands since 2011, taking in five finals when you include last year’s replay against Mayo. Not a single one of the starting XVs from those five finals has ever been replicated in a subsequent championship game. After their day of days, the same team never started another game together.
We live in a world of interminable peacocking and drearily repetitive argument. In the to-and-fro that invariably follows another handy Dublin win, the general foreboding over a future in which the city team will eat the sport whole is usually countered by someone saying that this is a golden generation of players, unlikely to be repeated, maybe even in our lifetime. Problem is, the numbers don’t really bear that out.
The first part is very obviously true. Gavin has at his disposal a stunning crop of players – skilful, athletic, purposeful and tactically astute. The team that took the field against Monaghan in the quarter-final contained nine All Stars, for starters.
Serious operators Of the six who don’t have a statue, John Small and Mick Fitzsimons were the man of the match winners in last year’s drawn final and replay, Con O’Callaghan is 1/8 for Young Footballer of the Year and Paul Mannion, Paddy Andrews and Eric Lowndes are serious operators in their own right. They were also able to bring on two former Footballer of the Year winners plus a four-time All Star in Paul Flynn. And do it all without Diarmuid Connolly.
As golden as a generation can be, then. But to argue that Dublin can’t or won’t keep producing as they go seems pretty disingenuous. You don’t even have to get into the fraught business of predicting the future to see it. Simple analysis of the present and recent past will point the way to where Dublin are going.
Since the 2011 All-Ireland final, Dublin have added the following players, in order of championship debut – Ciarán Kilkenny, Jonny Cooper, Darren Daly, Jack McCaffrey, Paul Mannion, Dean Rock, Cormac Costello, Shane Carthy, Brian Fenton, John Small, David Byrne, Eric Lowndes, Niall Scully, Con O’Callaghan and Brian Howard.
Others have come and gone but 14 of that group of 15 all togged out in the matchday panel three weeks ago and Costello will surely return when fitness allows. At 27, Cooper and Rock are the oldest of that cohort.
Gavin’s ability to oversee consistent transition will be remembered as the hallmark of his period in charge. In the winter of 2012, he took over a team that had won its All-Ireland the previous year and set about refitting it on the hoof. It has been a constant theme with each passing year. New faces tugging at older players’ coats, making them cranky, taking their place.
The upshot is that of the four teams left, Dublin fielded the youngest starting 15 in their most recent game. The average age of the side that trounced Monaghan was 26.26 And while Diarmuid Connolly’s return will raise that figure a touch, the Dubs will still trend in or around 18 months younger per player than Kerry and a full two years per player younger than Mayo.
For what it’s worth, the average ages from each of the four semi-finalists’ last game read like this – Dublin 26.26, Tyrone 26.4, Kerry 27.86, Mayo 28.64.
In the moment, right here today, those numbers don’t mean anything earth-shattering. Dublin will not win the 2017 All-Ireland because they have the youngest team, nor Mayo fail to win it because they have the oldest. Where they are significant though is in projecting forward.
However this year ends, Kerry and Mayo have transition periods ahead of them. Not only have Mayo the oldest team left, they have the one with the most games under them. Whereas Dublin started just four players against Monaghan who also started the 2011 All-Ireland final, Mayo had nine starters against Kerry last weekend who played in that year’s All-Ireland semi-final.
Of the under-21 team who claimed All-Ireland honours for Mayo in April 2016, only Stephen Coen and Conor Loftus made the match-day 26. Fergal Boland was on it all year but got squeezed out last Sunday. The generally unspoken desperation around Mayo’s All-Ireland quest this year is that the cliff’s edge is approaching. It takes a fair leap of the imagination to see them still matching strides with Dublin in, say, 2020.
Bear fruit As for Kerry, the rampant underage success of the past few years will presumably bear fruit eventually but there has been limited sign or sight of that crop so far.
For better or worse, Eamonn Fitzmaurice has been reluctant during his reign to field younger players – in five seasons, he has only given two championship debuts to players who were eligible to play under-21 that year. Maybe they will all come through in a burst and take the championship by storm. Under current management, that would be a significant departure from the norm.
By contrast, Gavin played four under-21s in his first championship game. He has never baulked at age. McCaffrey played in his first All-Ireland final at 19, Mannion and Kilkenny at 20, Fenton, Small and Byrne at 22. O’Callaghan has looked to the manor born so far this summer and it’s no certainty that he will be the one making room for Connolly’s return. If they come through tomorrow against Tyrone, history would suggest that Gavin won’t think twice about giving him a role in the final.
Critically, the Dublin manager has never been delicate about calling time at the other end either. For a while, it looked like the big imponderable over the coming half-decade or so would be how Dublin went about replacing their blue-chip players. But Gavin has been quietly doing it in plain sight all the while.
Michael Darragh Macauley was indispensable in the Dublin midfield until Fenton came along. Bernard Brogan was untouchable in the full-forward line until Mannion came back from his travels. Rory O’Carroll was the only footballer in the country to have been nominated for an All Star in each of the previous six seasons when he upped sticks and left at the end of 2015. Mick Fitzsimons has his place at the minute, Byrne is fighting him all the way for it.
Work done On the Dublin bench the last day, there were more players over 30 than under it. Brogan, Macauley, Flynn, Eoghan O’Gara, Kevin McManamon, Darren Daly – these are players who have the bulk of their work done at this stage. They won’t all go at once and they may not even go all that particularly soon. But Gavin won’t be scrabbling around for their replacements when it happens.
Filling the boots of Stephen Cluxton will be a trickier proposal, as will finding new faces when Connolly and Cian O’Sullivan move on. But anyone watching the Dublin under-21s win their All-Ireland earlier this year saw first-hand the coaching that has gone into Evan Comerford between the sticks and with the likes of O’Callaghan, Conor McHugh and Colm Basquel already up and running, Dublin aren’t going to be short of forwards anytime soon.
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 27, 2017 20:33:29 GMT
If Mayo don't stop Dublin this year, Mayo will fade over the next few years
Kerry are a few years away from challenging in my view....so little to stop then doing 5 in a row or more.
The following line jumped out at me.
But to argue that Dublin can’t or won’t keep producing as they go seems pretty disingenuous.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Aug 27, 2017 21:13:53 GMT
I think this will be close. Alot could depend on who gets to ref it. I've a bad feeling it's going to be McQuillan. Has Padraig Hughes ever got an All Ireland Final? I presume Gough can't ref it? Because if he is reffing it I'm not watching it.
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 27, 2017 21:22:10 GMT
The hurling final will be reffed by a guy getting his first final ....previously did a minor final but that's about it.
They will hardly give it to mcquillan..
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peanuts
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Post by peanuts on Aug 27, 2017 21:41:36 GMT
They generally don't give the AI to a ref who has reffed a semi so hopefully not.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2017 1:03:38 GMT
I pray Dublin win it. I think they will .
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Post by glengael on Aug 28, 2017 9:10:41 GMT
Mayo are in the last room of last chance saloon.
The Dublin potential seems frightening but also their ability to adapt and change and as that article illustrates, try new players at the expense of seemingly established ones. They've come a long way in less that a decade from the 09 meltdown.
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Post by kerrygold on Aug 28, 2017 14:38:51 GMT
In response to Mickmacks post in another thread in relation to the Dublin monster. Croker would be showing real balls if they sent Dublin down to the David End to warm up in this game, paraded the Dubs in the inside line and appointed Marty Duffy to ref the game. Doubt they would touch it with a barge pole?
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Post by wayupnorth on Aug 28, 2017 15:42:28 GMT
The only thing that will beat Dublin this year is complacency and after Donegal in 2014 and us in the League this year that is very unlikely.
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 28, 2017 18:32:14 GMT
I pray Dublin win it. I think they will . Be learning this off and it will while away the next couple of weeks. In Dublin's fair city Where the girls are so pretty I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone As she wheeled her wheelbarrow Through the streets broad and narrow Crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh" Alive, alive, oh Alive, alive, oh Crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh" She was a fishmonger And sure, t'was no wonder For so were her mother and father before And they wheeled their barrow Through the streets broad and narrow Crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh" Alive, alive, oh Alive, alive, oh Crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh" She died of a fever And sure, so one could save her And that…
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Post by donegalman on Aug 28, 2017 19:03:09 GMT
Unfortunately, Tyrone were no match for Dublin and we got no value yesterday. I think that we are now at a crisis stage of the game. Dublin are too well funded and unless the teams down the table are capable of getting the same sort of aid up and running, it is curtains for the game. I was only slightly aware of this until yesterday. Tyrone were one of the best prepared Tyrone teams ever going into the game yesterday, better prepared than the teams of the 00s if you asked me. Dublin brushed them aside after 7 minutes.
This leads me onto the main point. The final v mayo will be every bit as hard to watch imo. I think that if this is the case, we are in for a new dawn in the era of GAA. Never have a team won the all Ireland without at least one tough close game. If this is not the case for the final, it is the SPL here to stay.
Forgive me for being so down or negative. It is hard to call it any other way. There is a lot of denial going around in GAA circles that somehow other teams must up their game to the level that the dubs are at. This is simply impossible if the amateur ethos is to survive.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Aug 28, 2017 19:12:26 GMT
For the record I have no problem with Dublin's funding if it is fair. At the very minimum they should not be getting more per capita.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2017 19:27:00 GMT
If mayo can stay with Dublin in the first half, then I think a few refereeing decisions will get them over the line. The gaa would love a mayo win.
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falveyb2k
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Post by falveyb2k on Aug 28, 2017 19:49:42 GMT
There's been a strong rumour floating around since before the semis that McQuillan already has the final.
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 28, 2017 20:31:45 GMT
Eamonn Sweeney: Mayo must beat Dubs to keep us interested Dublin's utter dominance this year is hard to stomach with football crying out for a Séamus Darby moment
Eamonn Sweeney August 28 2017 2:30 AM 23 Dublin are both the best thing in the football championship and the worst thing for it. That's why we need Mayo to beat them in the All-Ireland final and salvage not just this sorry season but the very idea of the championship as a viable competitive entity.
The men in green and red have done a bit of rescue work already this year. Take them out of the 2017 championship and highlights would be few and far between. On September 17th they must play the game of their lives not just for their own county's sake but for the sake of Gaelic football as a whole.
There were times in yesterday's metropolitan mismatch when, as Dublin played keep ball in their own half with the result a foregone conclusion, we seemed to be witnessing a ghastly rehearsal for some dystopian future. Is this how it's going to be from now on? Dublin going clinically through their 'process' with the opposition helpless to intervene? Say it ain't so, Mayo.
Fourteen years ago another semi-final involving Tyrone was infamously described as 'Puke Football'. Yet yesterday's game was in its own way just as disheartening.
You could even call it Puke Football Mark II. This may seem unfair to a Dublin team whose instincts are positive and generous. But we don't always puke out of disgust. Sometimes a surfeit of good things can have the same effect. The utter dominance of Dublin so far this year has been hard to stomach. Seldom has such an exciting team been so boring to watch. There was an uncanny similarity between this walkover and the one several hours earlier in Las Vegas. After all the predictions that the outsider's mad-bastard intensity might somehow produce an upset, logic reasserted itself pretty quickly.
Like Conor McGregor, Tyrone were left flailing wildly at an opponent they couldn't lay a glove on and like Floyd Mayweather, Dublin didn't rub it in but remained in total control all the same. They also looked like they were playing an entirely different game to the losers.
Dublin endured both a 10-minute spell and an eight-minute spell without scoring, not because of Tyrone's defensive rigour but because the All-Ireland champions seemed content to knock the ball harmlessly around like some performance-art troupe recreating the famous Leeds United string of passes against Southampton in the seventies. Before even half-an-hour was up, the Hill had let loose a barrage of those mocking yelps you usually only hear when a team is keeping possession in the final couple of minutes.
Yet despite these lapses into lassitude Dublin still managed to put up 2-17. Three other gilt-edged goal chances were denied by the woodwork, the Tyrone keeper, and a sudden rush of blood to the head of the otherwise flawless Jack McCaffrey. The 12-point winning margin was grossly flattering to Tyrone.
Evisceration
This was one of the great one-sided semis, to rank alongside Kerry's 5-14 to 0-7 evisceration of Monaghan in 1979 and Cork's 1993 5-15 to 0-10 cakewalk against Mayo. The gulf in class between the two teams gave it an odd retro feel.
For all the greatness of that Kerry team their dominance eventually had a demoralising effect on football. By 1982 as they went for five-in-a-row only 17,523 fans turned up to witness their semi-final victory over Armagh. Five weeks later along came a stocky substitute from Rhode. Now football needs Mayo to be Séamus Darby.
Because if Dublin make it three-in-a-row and five out of seven, let alone manage to go through the entire campaign without facing a proper test, the football championship will start looking a bit like the Scottish Premiership. When the best-supported and resourced team moves so far ahead of the opposition that their victory is inevitable before a ball is kicked, it might be fun for their fans but it's hell for everyone else. The last thing Gaelic football needs is its very own Celtic.
Mayo must prevail in the final because there could be no greater end-of-season downer than seeing a team which has endured one of the longest and bravest championship runs in history lose a fourth final in seven years, the third on the trot to the same opposition. A Mayo victory would make this the most special of years, a Dublin win would render it crushingly mundane.
Dublin under Jim Gavin have been great for football. The view after Donegal won the All-Ireland under Jim McGuinness was that the game was destined to become more and more negative and that tactical sophistication consisted of an inexorable journey towards some kind of defensive zero point. Dublin have journeyed in the other direction and it was notable how old-fashioned they made Tyrone's blanket defence look yesterday.
Mickey Harte had come up with an answer to a question Dublin weren't going to ask. The gorgeous long-range points the champions summed up yet again that, modern though Gavin's approach is, there is plenty in his team to delight the purist. Football owes Jim Gavin a lot. But it can't afford another Dublin victory. They're too good to be wholesome. Indo Sport
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Post by Mickmack on Aug 28, 2017 20:34:19 GMT
Kerry went into an 11 year slump when its great team faded in 1986
Kilkenny could be looking at a similar period.
Thats the natural order of things.
Dublin wont or cant go into a slump simply because of their strength both in human and monetary terms.
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Post by kerrygold on Aug 28, 2017 21:19:12 GMT
I thought Dublin were a joy to watch yesterday. We should salute them and enjoy their play. I look forward to seeing them in the final in a few weeks time. They are starting to dominate the game in the same way that Kerry did when winning eight titles in twelve seasons during the '70s and 80s. Dublin have great players everywhere across the pitch and on the bench. That was a phenomenal time to be a young Kerry fan growing up. I'm sure the Dubs are drinking all this in at the moment.
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