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Post by sullyschoice on Sept 3, 2021 8:52:41 GMT
I was informed yesterday that Eoin Mc Loughlin is back training. He better wear a helmet Surely medical sense will prevail and Eoghan will not be allowed play in the final. It would be a somewhat miraculous recovery if he does...even surpassing Tyrone's rise from the death bed. |
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 3, 2021 20:34:42 GMT
Time Out: Bravery brought them here, now Mayo and Tyrone must do the same again
Neil Loughran
03 September, 2021 01:00
IT was kind of funny - in a sadistic sort of a way - watching, and listening, as the Mayo fans went through the gamut of emotions against Dublin last month, the latest high speed rollercoaster on the unrelenting Six Flags of life that following their county has become.
Penned in against a sea of green and red in the Hogan Stand, some of the language, the first half in particular, would have made many a grown man blush. As Dublin reasserted their natural role as Gaelic football’s masters of the universe, Mayo - when they weren’t chasing shadows - converted only four out of 10 shots at the posts.
Aidan O’Shea stared off into the Hill, eyes eventually dropping to the ground when his 21st minute mark from the 14 metre line clipped the outside of the upright on its way wide. Going in six points behind against your nemesis, the team who have always found a way to beat you, and with nothing – nothing – going your way… how do you overcome that?
Of course, almost three weeks down the line, we know the answer to that question. Conditioning played a huge part. Substitutions were significant. But it was the fearlessness with which Mayo approached the second half that ultimately sapped the souls from their opponents.
Mayo continued to make mistakes, continued to kick wides as the pressure was ramped up. The supporters nearby were turning the air all different shades of blue when substitute James Carr sent his shot wide with Dublin still two up heading into added time.
In extra-time, with the foot on Dublin’s throats, there was no slackening off, no letting up. And, in the end, they got their rewards.
There are plenty in Tyrone who would have cast admiring glances out west – not just for this All-Ireland semi-final success, but the full throttle way in which the current Connacht kingpins have risen to the occasion on big days across the last five years.
In 2016 they edged out the Red Hands on the way to the final, beat Kerry in the last four the following year, Donegal in a de facto All-Ireland quarter-final in 2019.
And while Tyrone were effectively swatted aside by Jim Gavin’s juggernaut in the 2017 semi, and well enough beaten by the end of the 2018 decider, Mayo’s brand of controlled chaos pushed Dublin to the very edge in consecutive All-Ireland finals.
They may not have the Celtic crosses to show for it, but their approach took them closer than anybody else had managed in an era of complete and utter dominance.
That ferocity, that abandon - from a relatively new-look side - was to the fore again when the Dubs’ legs were swept from beneath them on August 14. The Red Hands followed suit last weekend, swarming Kerry to pull off a stunning upset at Croke Park.
So what was different? Had Tyrone really changed that much? Sure there’s more long balls going in, fewer bodies retreating when opponents are in possession, but a water-tight defence was still the key to storming the Kingdom?
Colm Cavanagh offered a bit of insight earlier this week. Over the course of a 25 minute Zoom call on Wednesday, the former Tyrone midfielder used the word ‘fear’ five times when reflecting on the final years of his involvement at inter-county level under Mickey Harte.
“I would have said this last couple of years watching Tyrone and playing with Tyrone that there was an awful lot of playing with the handbrake on and an awful lot of fear of making mistakes.
“I don’t know what that is but being part of those teams you just knew you were going to get read up in a video analysis or whatever it was, and boys were nearly afraid to take them chances.
“While watching Tyrone this year, there’s no doubt the guys made plenty of mistakes at the weekend and have done in the games gone by, but they are definitely taking a lot more risks and they are getting the rewards for it.”
At the very top end of sport, how an athlete controls their emotions, and the manner in which they are enabled to control them, is absolutely critical.
Mike Tyson garnered a reputation as ‘The Baddest Man on the Planet’ during the late ’80s/early ’90s. But Dubliner Joe Egan, a former sparring partner, revealed that ‘Iron Mike’ was always afraid in the changing room before a fight.
In those moments, trainer Cus D’Amato would always say the same thing.
“There’s a very fine line between the coward and the hero.”
Once he ducked beneath that top rope, Tyson was often unstoppable. He mastered fear and made it his friend.
“Fear is like fire,” he wrote in his autobiography, Undisputed Truth.
“If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you.”
In team sports in particular, fear can become contagious. With his ear to the ground, Colm Cavanagh has clearly got a sense of a different outlook under Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher. The two-time Allstar even described how Conor McKenna, after returning from the AFL last year, was surprised at what he found.
“I actually heard one of the lads saying that when he came in, he said ‘lads, you’re all playing nearly with fear, you’re afraid to make mistakes’,” said Cavanagh.
“The guys, even chatting to a few of them, they’ll tell you the same, that they are definitely playing with a lot more freedom.”
Saturday week offers the best opportunity either Mayo or Tyrone will have of ending their wait for Sam. Bravery, and a willingness to own the pressure, to run the gauntlet of risk, brought them to this stage.
Both sets of players would do well to remember the words of Cus D’Amato when they cross the white line on September 11.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 5, 2021 13:05:30 GMT
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 5, 2021 13:06:59 GMT
Seamus might want to look no further than his brother. |
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Post by fearanfhirinne on Sept 6, 2021 10:59:02 GMT
Seamus might want to look no further than his brother. no surprise Brolly getting a sly dig in but as usual he's left some crucial facts out - that interview was done weeks ago - first published just after the Connacht Final. Also no sign of the fractured cheekbone the same lad had in those photos which would suggest it was done a while before that. A lie makes it half way around the world before the truth has had a chance to get out of bed. |
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Sept 6, 2021 11:17:22 GMT
This is pointless but I think Tyrone are going to win.
I think Dublin were awful in their AISF... a lot worse than Kerry.
But the scenes if Mayo win would be unreal. It would be hard to begrudge them.
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Post by royalkerryfan on Sept 6, 2021 12:46:29 GMT
I think Tyrone are set up perfectly for Mayos running game.
I don't think Mayo like ourselves are tactically astute enough to break them down.
Raw emotion and drive won't be enough.
If Tyrone could shut us down o think they'll do likewise to the Mayo forwards.
Defensively Mayo should be ok though so I see this as a low scoring game.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 7, 2021 8:37:20 GMT
Kevin McStay
What can be said about an All-Ireland final involving my home county of Mayo? It felt like they had exhausted all storylines over the past decade but here they come again. Another final chukka, as they used to say in the Raj. Or, to put it more plainly: we go again. But, then, this is new. We haven’t played Tyrone at this stage of the All-Ireland championship before. It’s a new task for Mayo.
Tyrone’s ransacking of Kerry has taken the season into unexplored country. James Horan and Ciaran McDonald were in the stadium that afternoon and as they drove home afterwards, they had plenty of food for thought. Their intelligence on Kerry would have been considerable. I imagine that a wheelbarrow must have been required to carry the files and books on Kerry football out of Mayo GAA headquarters that week.
And in its place a slim manila envelope carrying results and random pen pictures of the Tyrone squad on the desk. Because Tyrone came into this year as an unknown quantity, starting out on a brave new adventure after two decades defined by the vision of Mickey Harte. So the Mayo backroom team will have busied themselves in the meantime. They will know that they are meeting a highly organised side.
When you analyse the astute and clever pre-game decisions made by the Tyrone bootroom before the Kerry game, it becomes clear that in many ways, the winning of the game took place before the ball was thrown in. I felt Tyrone were superb in their defensive set up and chose their match-ups brilliantly. Of the Kerry forwards, only David Clifford played to his potential but even then Ronan McNamee never backed off and took him for a first-half point.
Tyrone excel at man-marking - knowing they have a safety net of cover that allows them to go flat out. That attitude is down to their management. Just look at what I would call the coronation of Conor Meyler as an elite footballer. For years, I saw Conor as a kind of typical Tyrone transitional player. But not this year. His influence has been an integral part of Tyrone’s rise. Donegal’s Ryan McHugh, a star turn against Down, was blotted out by Meyler in Enniskillen.
Then Ryan McAnespie of Monaghan was similarly closed down in the Ulster final. Paudie Clifford, on a rampage for Player of the Year, ended up chasing Meyler for long periods in the semi-final. He has thrived because management clarified his role and their expectations of him. It has liberated him and he has grown into the season in a way that places him firmly in All-Star territory - and as one of the stand out players of the year. He is the most conspicuous example of confidence flooding through individual players with startling results.
The other key decision made by Tyrone was the concession to Kerry’s kick out by allowing them to go short. It was clever in that it gave them time to set up their defence and to then double and triple-team the Kerry ball carriers. It was a strategy and it said: if we are to win this, we have to have a team commitment to minimise the goals against. They made that commitment. It became the engine for their victory.
Defensive challenge
It seems reasonable for Mayo to expect a similar Tyrone defensive challenge: a light to heavy blanket allied to a lightning transition. So what do Mayo do to break that defensive unit down? Well, their comfort in chaos will be a help. They thrive in broken play and unpredictability. But that will come at a certain time in Saturday’s final.
There are two other approaches: the patient Dublin approach where you swing the ball from wing to wing until someone falls asleep and a gap opens up. I believe this would be totally unsuited to Mayo’s personality and temperament. It would frustrate their fans - and, I think, the players themselves.
The other method is through strong runners bursting through the first tackle and then off-loading the football to a runner off the shoulder on their first touch. I imagine this will be Mayo’s preferred route. It creates chances, it draws frees and it attracts black cards. In fact, the guy who releases the ball can often draw contact through a late tackle.
In many ways, Tyrone and Mayo are similar teams.
The cold facts show that as Tyrone’s defensive intensity increased over the summer, so did their foul count. Donegal scored 0-5 from frees out of 1-14. Monaghan got 0-6 out of 0-15 (40 per cent). Kerry 0-8 from frees out of 0-16 in normal time (50 per cent). So, clearly, they are prone to fouling once that first line of cover is broken. This is an opportunity for Mayo to get vital scores in a game that is likely to be tetchy and claustrophobic.
What about giving up the short kick-out? It’s a short question that has massive implications. Tyrone survived a colossal failure in the kick-out department against Kerry through their success in turnovers. It is a conundrum for James Horan. If Mayo accept the short option, then they have a journey to make. They will face that high Tyrone press. It takes a toll to get the ball a hundred metres up the field- again and again and again. But if Mayo do kick long and compete, are they better at the overload than Tyrone are? I would say that it is a 50-50 battle. These are the decisions that separate managers from pundits and fans.
Personally, I would gamble on going long and winning the overload. Why give Tyrone a chance to set up that defence? The quality of long-ball possession is so much more valuable than restarting the ball short. Opt for the short kick-out and, yes, you have possession but you are facing that formidable Tyrone set up and the ball is an awful long way from their goal. Brian Dooher and Fergal Logan have teams where they want them then. I think the long ball is a positive option. You aren’t hedging your bets. You aren’t allowing Tyrone to dictate terms.
In many ways, Tyrone and Mayo are similar teams. Their athletic profile is impressive. Both teams move very rapidly and randomly around the pitch until they reach the attacking half of the field when some patterns emerge. Mayo have an edge in pure size.
Against that, Tyrone are more comfortable or polished in the fine skills of the game - passing, possession, evasion, drawing an opponent and dishing a good ball. Both teams have big men in the middle of the park. But the Tyrone unit is very functional and plays between the two 65s. This is significant for Aidan O’Shea. This may be the one All-Ireland final where he is not asked to check middle-distance runners like James McCarthy or Fenton.
There should be no debate about the selection of Aidan. There is so much nonsense spoken and written about him. In the semi-final, he won some key possessions in the first-half and he could have had 0-3 by the break. His move to full forward would have been viewed differently then. I can see him spending time at midfield against Tyrone, at 11 and at 14, if required. He has played many smashing games for Mayo when he was the outstanding player on the park. And I believe he can will himself to bend the shape and direction of this All-Ireland final in his favour. It is a massive opportunity for him.
Lurking in the background is a variable we have essentially dismissed. We forgot about Covid because of Tyrone’s Herculean effort in the extra-time period against Kerry. But don’t cod yourself that it didn’t affect them. Against Kerry, there was no Richie Donnelly or Rory Brennan on the match programme. They weren’t kidnapped! They were clearly struggling. So it is unfair and untrue to say it has had no effect. We tend to park the idea and assume it is a past tense. But we don’t know to what extent they are still dealing with the aftermath of the outbreak. It could re-emerge as a factor in ways that even Tyrone can’t legislate for on Saturday.
Quietly impressive
I have attended all of Tyrone’s games except for their opener against Antrim. They were quietly impressive all season: tidy and toiling away and they are the sum of their parts. They have no real superstars but lots of good players. That is their strength. There is no doubt that the change in management and philosophy has emboldened them.
The change has not been radical but they have reshaped the team to their vision: to meet teams higher up the field and return to a kick passing game; to leave two to three up front at all times. I remember being at a Tyrone game where Mark Bradley was the lone full forward. They have also revitalised guys like Darren McCurry, Myler and Kieran McGeary and helped them to play with a radiant self belief.
Nobody can argue that these counties don’t deserve to be here. Both came through titanic semi-final victories. Consequently, both will be adamant in their belief that they will win it all now. Their conviction will be absolute- because they are not meeting one of the serial All-Ireland winners.
And Mayo have yet to play for 70 minutes. This is an All-Ireland final. Nothing else than a 70 minute return can be acceptable. They must will themselves to compete from the start. They need to be tidy in their turnovers (20 or lower) and wides (6 or lower) in order to win and to break this long streak.
Mayo have lost plenty over the years but don’t call us losers.
Obviously, Mayo have endured a fatalistic relationship with the task of winning the All-Ireland final. I remember a lovely interview with Paddy Prendergast, Mayo’s last living member of the 1951 team from a few years back. Paddy spoke a lot about the memories. But he said this: If you are in a final, then of course you have a chance. He was displaying the ‘51 medal in a lovely humble way. He said: If you get to a final, you should be bloody well good enough to win it. There is a lot of truth in that.
I believe Mayo will win this final. There is not that much to separate the teams in terms of attitude and ability. Mayo have been forewarned by Kerry in that they were given a demonstration of what not to do. But Kerry also illustrated that you can create a lot of chances against Tyrone - goals and points.
To win these major days takes courage and bravery. You have to be brave to turn up and play and perform. There is a requirement to never doubt yourself. Coragem, the Brazilian football coaches call it. This is the critical attribute. They place a very strong faith in it. They should know. They have won five World Cups - in the most competitive and widely played field game in the world.
What do they mean by this? They are talking about the courage to make mistakes and to then recover. The courage to keep going. The courage to bend the game to one’s own will. That is what they mean.
Lee Keegan after the 2017 All-Ireland SFC final - where Dublin edged out Mayo by a point. Photograph: Tommy Dickson/Inpho
Lee Keegan after the 2017 All-Ireland SFC final - where Dublin edged out Mayo by a point. Photograph: Tommy Dickson/Inpho
Mayo is a proud county. It has suffered plenty down the decades and emigration, rather than All-Ireland heartbreak, has been our greatest curse. Mayo have lost plenty over the years but don’t call us losers. I would argue that we have stood tall and always shown resilience and have always come back for more - including on Saturday evening.
I do believe that when the championship ends Mayo will be the champions of Ireland for the first time in 70 years: that this team will bring an end to the grand obsession.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 7, 2021 22:05:27 GMT
Below is the team that started v Dublin.
Harrison and Gallen and OHora may be the fullback line on Saturday. A very good one too.
That frees up Lee Keegan to the half back line in place of Eoghan McLaughlin and adds a scoring threat
Enda Hession had a huge game v Dublin and will feature early if he isnt in the starting line up. Darren Coen may start instead of McHale.
Mayo:
Rob Hennelly;
Padraig O'Hora, Lee Keegan, Michael Plunkett;
Paddy Durcan, Stephen Coen, Eoghan McLaughlin;
Matthew Ruane, Conor Loftus;
Diarmuid O'Connor, Kevin McLoughlin, Darren McHale;
Tommy Conroy, Aidan O'Shea, Ryan O'Donoghue.
Subs:
Rory Byrne,
Colm Boyle,
Brendan Harrison,
Enda Hession,
Jack Coyne,
Conor O'Shea,
James Durcan,
Bryan Walsh,
Jordan Flynn,
Darren Coen,
James Carr.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 8, 2021 8:22:34 GMT
Darragh O'Se
There’s an interesting dynamic to this final in that everyone is going for their first All-Ireland success.
The only people in the dressing rooms on Saturday with All-Ireland medals will be Brian Dooher and a few of the Tyrone backroom team. None of the players know what it’s like. All of them are walking around today wondering how it will be. They’ll be thinking of very little else.
You only win your first All-Ireland once. If you’re very lucky, you get to do it again somewhere down the road but it never feels the same as that first time. I’m not saying one is better or worse than that other – it’s just a different feeling. You never get that sense of a weight being lifted off your shoulders like you do that first time.
My first one came in 1997. Kerry hadn’t won an All-Ireland in 11 years. We hadn’t even been in a final. We were a young team as well so, outside of the management, there was really nobody who knew what winning an All-Ireland would be like. Stephen Stack had been on the panel in 1986 alright. But otherwise we were clueless.
The build-up was hectic. There was no chance of it being anything else – unless you were well into your 90s you had no idea what it was like for Kerry to go a full decade without so much as being in a final. So there was huge expectation and massive excitement. And pressure too, obviously.
On a personal level, all I heard all week in the build-up was how there were doubts about me in midfield. Now, obviously, that’s not all that was being said in the outside world but it’s all I heard. Pat Fallon was going well for Mayo at the time and he was an All Star in waiting. I was a young fella in his first final – and a nephew of the manager to boot. Sure how could you be depending on someone like that?
That suited me, in fairness. The thing about a final is that it can all get too big if you let it. You can worry about too many things or you can try and hit too many markers. I didn’t know it at the time but what all this talk did for me was it allowed me to narrow down my focus for the week. Whatever happens, I know who I’m playing on, I know what I need to do to play against him.
That said, I didn’t sleep a wink on the Saturday night. I had one of those nights where you know you have to sleep so all you can think about is trying to sleep. And then you can’t sleep. And then you pass from trying to sleep to worrying what not sleeping is going to mean for you the next day and now you definitely can’t sleep. I worried about it all through the Sunday morning. At least it kept my mind occupied.
What I didn’t know then – and what would stand to me for any other final I played in – was that even without really knowing it, I had done my sleeping during the week. I had enough sleep banked and had the body rested enough to get me through the game on Sunday even though I couldn’t keep my eyes closed on Saturday night.
Winning a final, having a medal, it all gives you that bit extra. It’s a great badge of honour to have
So that was just one small thing that I took away from that first win. If we had lost, it might have been a different story. I might have blamed it all on the bad night’s sleep. I might have spent the rest of my career trying to find a way to get to sleep the night before a final. I might have done a million things to fix something that actually wasn’t a big problem at all. But because we won, I never worried about sleeping before a final again.
Winning your first All-Ireland changes you. It gives you a new kind of confidence in yourself. Whether that’s deserved or not is another matter altogether – you will go on to lose plenty of matches in the following years so the confidence obviously doesn’t make you bulletproof.
More confidence
But you do come away from it feeling a greater sense of authority. It scrubs away some of the doubts you have about yourself. Am I any good? Can I take on this kick? Should I make that run? On some level, you know the answer to those questions already – you don’t make it to an All-Ireland final by sheer luck. But after you win one, you have more confidence in the answers.
You go out to play games at ease with yourself. I can do this. I can be comfortable in this arena. I can express myself here. There’s a small bit of arrogance to it, yes. But that’s often no harm either. There’s nothing wrong with knowing how to do something well and showing that when it’s needed. As long as you have the right attitude to it.
And there’s no doubt in the world about it – winning a final, having a medal, it all gives you that bit extra. It’s a great badge of honour to have. It gives you a fierce comfort in what you’re doing. I don’t know if it makes you a better player necessarily. But it sure makes you a happier one.
Who will be happy on Saturday night? It’s a tricky final to assess. When you have two squads with no All-Ireland medal between them, you can’t point to one side or the other and say they have more experience. Both sides have been in finals recently. The likes of Lee Keegan, Paddy Durcan and Aidan O’Shea have been through more big days than most so maybe Mayo have an edge on that score. But it’s a small one.
The one thing Tyrone can focus on is the fact it will feel like the rest of the country is up for Mayo
Nobody expected this from Tyrone. The Mickey Harte era ended with most people assuming they had gone backwards and that they would take at least a year or two to get themselves back in the reckoning. Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher deserve huge credit for turning it all around so quickly.
They have brought an intensity to it. They have kept Tyrone’s identity. They have puffed out their chests and said, “We are Tyrone, like us or lump us”. And they’re damn right to do so. It’s up to everyone else to realise the terms of engagement and deal with it. If that goes into dark arts territory, so be it. Finals are about playing the game that happens on the day and never being disappointed because it’s not the one you were hoping for.
Tyrone have always needed a cause. On the face of it, they don’t really have a specific one here because they have no bone to pick with Mayo. The two counties don’t have any great history together. There was never any big brawl or bad temper between them.
But the one thing Tyrone can focus on is the fact it will feel like the rest of the country is up for Mayo. There's a romance to the Mayo story that might be a bit overbearing at times but you can’t deny that it’s out there. And the one thing Tyrone would never pretend to be is romantic. They’ll be very happy to rain on the parade.
The championship hasn’t been predictable on any level. Certainly not to me anyway! I thought Galway would beat Mayo, I thought Dublin would beat Mayo, I thought Kerry would beat Tyrone. The patterns throughout the summer have been difficult to work out because no two games have followed the same formula.
When it comes right down to it, Mayo have beaten better teams than Tyrone have over the past few seasons
Oddly enough, I think we have ended up with two pretty similar teams in the final. Both of them like it best when the game loses a bit of structure. They both like to get runners from deep going helter-skelter up the pitch and creating chaos. The two of them have goalkeepers who could win the game for them but who could just as easily lose it. You’d go to war with either of the backlines but you’d still have your doubts about the two attacks.
An edge
The James Horan factor gives Mayo an edge, I reckon. I thought his management of Aidan O’Shea in the semi-final was next level stuff. People were making out that it was a huge call to take his captain off but it was really the only option on the table. O’Shea was having a right shocker of a match and, in that scenario, it would have been actively bad management to leave him on.
The idea that he was sending a message out to the rest of his squad that nobody is safe from being pulled off is nonsense really. If anyone thinks the players don’t know that about Horan at this stage, they haven’t been paying much attention to him. But it was the decision to send O’Shea back on for the crucial play at the end of the game that stood out to me.
Aidan O’Shea: was substituted against Dublin but came on for the vital last play. Photograph: Tommy Dickson/Inpho
Aidan O’Shea: was substituted against Dublin but came on for the vital last play. Photograph: Tommy Dickson/Inpho
In that moment, Horan was looking to defend the square and make sure that Dublin weren’t able to turn Dean Rock’s 45 into a goal. But he was also telling O’Shea that there were no hard feelings. You played *e, I took you off, but the game is on the line here and I need you to go in and do what you do.
Which he did, by the way. It got lost afterwards because James McCarthy grabbed Lee Keegan while the ball was in the air and got a black card and a free out. But if you watch it again, you’ll see that while that was going on, O’Shea was the one who guarded the small square and came out to punch the ball away. He didn’t just go in there and hide as an extra body. He came on and put his bad performance behind him and got to the dropping ball. He justified Horan’s trust in him.
I fancy O’Shea to have a big role to play on Saturday. Tyrone have a couple of big players around the middle but he’s well fit for big lads – it’s the really mobile ones he struggles with. I wouldn’t be surprised if people are talking about him having silenced the doubters afterwards.
All things considered, I’m siding with Mayo. They have pulled themselves out of disastrous situations against both Galway and Dublin. They have showed that when the intensity gets up to the highest level, that’s where they thrive.
Tyrone knew they could disrupt Kerry by turning up the heat. But the higher they turn the heat on Mayo, the more Mayo like it.
When it comes right down to it, Mayo have beaten better teams than Tyrone have over the past few seasons. They have everything in their track record except the last thing, the most important thing. Now’s their time to go and get it.
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Post by clarinman on Sept 8, 2021 10:42:32 GMT
Below is the team that started v Dublin. Harrison and Gallen and OHora may be the fullback line on Saturday. A very good one too. That frees up Lee Keegan to the half back line in place of Eoghan McLaughlin and adds a scoring threat Enda Hession had a huge game v Dublin and will feature early if he isnt in the starting line up. Darren Coen may start instead of McHale. Mayo: Rob Hennelly; Padraig O'Hora, Lee Keegan, Michael Plunkett; Paddy Durcan, Stephen Coen, Eoghan McLaughlin; Matthew Ruane, Conor Loftus; Diarmuid O'Connor, Kevin McLoughlin, Darren McHale; Tommy Conroy, Aidan O'Shea, Ryan O'Donoghue. Subs: Rory Byrne, Colm Boyle, Brendan Harrison, Enda Hession, Jack Coyne, Conor O'Shea, James Durcan, Bryan Walsh, Jordan Flynn, Darren Coen, James Carr. Hard to leave out Oisin Mullin if fit. |
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 8, 2021 10:52:55 GMT
Below is the team that started v Dublin. Harrison and Gallen and OHora may be the fullback line on Saturday. A very good one too. That frees up Lee Keegan to the half back line in place of Eoghan McLaughlin and adds a scoring threat Enda Hession had a huge game v Dublin and will feature early if he isnt in the starting line up. Darren Coen may start instead of McHale. Mayo: Rob Hennelly; Padraig O'Hora, Lee Keegan, Michael Plunkett; Paddy Durcan, Stephen Coen, Eoghan McLaughlin; Matthew Ruane, Conor Loftus; Diarmuid O'Connor, Kevin McLoughlin, Darren McHale; Tommy Conroy, Aidan O'Shea, Ryan O'Donoghue. Subs: Rory Byrne, Colm Boyle, Brendan Harrison, Enda Hession, Jack Coyne, Conor O'Shea, James Durcan, Bryan Walsh, Jordan Flynn, Darren Coen, James Carr. Hard to leave out Oisin Mullin if fit. Sorry....i meant Oisin Mullen..... not Gallen |
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 8, 2021 11:02:43 GMT
Set up to be some affair and would be one not to be missed as the off-the-ball tactics will be key, and by that I don't just mean fellas getting to know each other - and for starters who will be getting to know who anyway. Off point but was talking with a stalwart lately and who topped a previous comment about how hard it is to read a game these days, i.e. anticipate, with the observation that it is as a consequence, also so hard to rate individual player performances and right he'd be. Anyway both AI finalists appear to have better defenders and that is a double whammy in a way because both allegedly weaker forwards will be marked by them - gives a new meaning to the term 'backs and forwards' and the dynamic will be intriguing. AO'6 might be the barometer of the affair as in a way he typifies Maigh Eo - if he reigns supreme then Tír Eoghain will need more than Covid to stop the train that has been running for 70 years and yes, there is more to them than Covid. For the life of me I can't understand the gap in the odds as there is an extraordinary number of marginal factors at play and in a world of increasingly tight margins - everyone will get a run for their money here and a draw on 70 could be an exciting punt, maybe it will be penalties - BTW should points count in a shoot out? And if anyone needs a top up of GAA fuel, just look at the pic here. |
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 8, 2021 11:42:47 GMT
I think Joe will give Mayo the marginal calls in this one!
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 8, 2021 16:23:28 GMT
This All-Ireland football will conjure up strange new sensations beyond the walls of Croke Park. Imagine the pinging and dinging of all those inter-county panel WhatsApp groups on Saturday evening. Imagine what they’ll be saying and thinking. Could have been us, lads. Should have been us.
How many teams will be watching Mayo and Tyrone walk around in the parade and shaking their heads, full sure that they’d fancy themselves against either one of them. There’s at least two, probably three in Ulster alone. You could spend a day trying to convince them that Tyrone are better than them and not make them believe it.
Scattered around the country, anything up to 150 footballers will be watching the All-Ireland final with the nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be watching the All-Ireland final
Galway have to be looking at Mayo and thinking they’re not that far away, even after two miserable seasons in a row. Dublin and Kerry’s thoughts on the matter would be obvious and unprintable. Scattered around the country, anything up to 150 footballers will be watching the All-Ireland final with the nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be watching the All-Ireland final.
It has been a long, long time since that was the case. At no stage during the Dubs’ run to six-in-a-row were they ever considered anything but the heaviest favourites for the All-Ireland. Nobody on the outside ever watched a Jim Gavin-era Dublin final and imagined they were taking up their spot. More to the point, you couldn’t always be sure the team that was actually lining up down the red carpet from them really believed they were worth their place.
In 2014, Mayo and Dublin watched the final kicking themselves for allowing Kerry and Donegal to best them in those epic semi-finals but nobody beyond the final four thought they had left a big chance behind them. Even in 2012, the novel pairing of Donegal and Mayo didn’t brook a lot of argument. The Dubs looked Coppersed from early on that year and both Kerry and Cork threw everything at Donegal and still came up short.
Envious glances
So you probably have to go back to 2010 for the last time an All-Ireland final threw in to so many envious glances from afar, so many regrets and what could-have-beens. Cork and Down made the final that year after semi-finals against Dublin and Kildare that went right to the wire. Kerry and Tyrone went into the quarter-finals as first and second favourites and were swept away on a weekend of high drama.
It gives this final an undeniable extra frisson. The football championship has been such a gulag sentence for most counties for so long now that it had become difficult to imagine something like this coming around again. And definitely not this quickly.
Dublin won last year’s All-Ireland with such comfort and ease that we were taking bets through the final as to whether their subs’ bench would actually cheer at the final whistle, given that they were the only panel in the country that hadn’t made a noise throughout the winter. You didn’t need Croke Park to be empty to feel like they had turned the whole championship into a wasteland.
But now, not only are they kicking their heels for the first final since 2014, so too are their presumed successors. After the 2019 final and replay, it felt like Dublin and Kerry were set fair to play out their own Super League over the coming decade, swapping Sam Maguire between them as the mood took them.
By far the worst aspect of Dublin’s dominance was the fact that it made the rest of us root for Kerry - Kerry! - to come along and dethrone them. Decades of cowering under the green and gold iron fist and now suddenly they were our only hope. Who are ye up for, lads - will it be Richard Branson or Elon Musk?
And that may well still be the case, of course. It is more likely than unlikely that Dublin and Kerry will go away and work out their kinks and come back next year in better fettle. They both have changes to make but they both operate in a realm where those changes are not just possible but will be deemed to be non-negotiable.
Real flaws
Here and now though, it is Mayo’s week and it is Tyrone’s week. Two teams who have made it to the All-Ireland despite carrying some real flaws in their knapsacks with them. For years you would sit in Croke Park an hour before the All-Ireland final and fine-tooth comb the Dublin page in the match programme looking for weaknesses before throwing your hands in the air and giving up. That’s not going to be the case on Saturday.
Both teams have obvious deficiencies. Mayo haven’t turned up in either of the first halves of their last two games in Croke Park. They were able to paper over the crack of missing Cillian O’Connor all the way through Connacht but for all of Ryan O’Donoghue’s moxie, his free-taking began to creak at just the wrong time against Dublin. Aidan O’Shea had the worst game of his life in the semi-final and now, at the age of 31, they have to work out what to do with him all over again.
Tyrone are no dead cert either. Much like Mayo, they put in a half of truly hapless football in the Ulster final against a Monaghan team who didn’t do anything more sophisticated than push up on them and wire into them. Their starting forwards attempted just one shot from play in the first half against Kerry - a Darren McCurry effort that was blocked down. Their kick-out is mercurial, to say the least.
After years of wondering would anyone ever find a hole in the Death Star, we’re heading into a final where neither team is close to being the finished product. There will be lots of mistakes, plenty of turnovers, handling errors to beat the band. There will, you’d imagine, be a distinct lack of polish to it all. An understandable absence of the studious do-the-right-thing excellence of the Dublin years.
To which the only sane response is: Hallelujah. Can’t wait.
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 8, 2021 20:26:15 GMT
This All-Ireland football will conjure up strange new sensations beyond the walls of Croke Park. Imagine the pinging and dinging of all those inter-county panel WhatsApp groups on Saturday evening. Imagine what they’ll be saying and thinking. Could have been us, lads. Should have been us. How many teams will be watching Mayo and Tyrone walk around in the parade and shaking their heads, full sure that they’d fancy themselves against either one of them. There’s at least two, probably three in Ulster alone. You could spend a day trying to convince them that Tyrone are better than them and not make them believe it. Scattered around the country, anything up to 150 footballers will be watching the All-Ireland final with the nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be watching the All-Ireland final Galway have to be looking at Mayo and thinking they’re not that far away, even after two miserable seasons in a row. Dublin and Kerry’s thoughts on the matter would be obvious and unprintable. Scattered around the country, anything up to 150 footballers will be watching the All-Ireland final with the nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be watching the All-Ireland final. It has been a long, long time since that was the case. At no stage during the Dubs’ run to six-in-a-row were they ever considered anything but the heaviest favourites for the All-Ireland. Nobody on the outside ever watched a Jim Gavin-era Dublin final and imagined they were taking up their spot. More to the point, you couldn’t always be sure the team that was actually lining up down the red carpet from them really believed they were worth their place. In 2014, Mayo and Dublin watched the final kicking themselves for allowing Kerry and Donegal to best them in those epic semi-finals but nobody beyond the final four thought they had left a big chance behind them. Even in 2012, the novel pairing of Donegal and Mayo didn’t brook a lot of argument. The Dubs looked Coppersed from early on that year and both Kerry and Cork threw everything at Donegal and still came up short. Envious glances So you probably have to go back to 2010 for the last time an All-Ireland final threw in to so many envious glances from afar, so many regrets and what could-have-beens. Cork and Down made the final that year after semi-finals against Dublin and Kildare that went right to the wire. Kerry and Tyrone went into the quarter-finals as first and second favourites and were swept away on a weekend of high drama. It gives this final an undeniable extra frisson. The football championship has been such a gulag sentence for most counties for so long now that it had become difficult to imagine something like this coming around again. And definitely not this quickly. Dublin won last year’s All-Ireland with such comfort and ease that we were taking bets through the final as to whether their subs’ bench would actually cheer at the final whistle, given that they were the only panel in the country that hadn’t made a noise throughout the winter. You didn’t need Croke Park to be empty to feel like they had turned the whole championship into a wasteland. But now, not only are they kicking their heels for the first final since 2014, so too are their presumed successors. After the 2019 final and replay, it felt like Dublin and Kerry were set fair to play out their own Super League over the coming decade, swapping Sam Maguire between them as the mood took them. By far the worst aspect of Dublin’s dominance was the fact that it made the rest of us root for Kerry - Kerry! - to come along and dethrone them. Decades of cowering under the green and gold iron fist and now suddenly they were our only hope. Who are ye up for, lads - will it be Richard Branson or Elon Musk? And that may well still be the case, of course. It is more likely than unlikely that Dublin and Kerry will go away and work out their kinks and come back next year in better fettle. They both have changes to make but they both operate in a realm where those changes are not just possible but will be deemed to be non-negotiable. Real flaws Here and now though, it is Mayo’s week and it is Tyrone’s week. Two teams who have made it to the All-Ireland despite carrying some real flaws in their knapsacks with them. For years you would sit in Croke Park an hour before the All-Ireland final and fine-tooth comb the Dublin page in the match programme looking for weaknesses before throwing your hands in the air and giving up. That’s not going to be the case on Saturday. Both teams have obvious deficiencies. Mayo haven’t turned up in either of the first halves of their last two games in Croke Park. They were able to paper over the crack of missing Cillian O’Connor all the way through Connacht but for all of Ryan O’Donoghue’s moxie, his free-taking began to creak at just the wrong time against Dublin. Aidan O’Shea had the worst game of his life in the semi-final and now, at the age of 31, they have to work out what to do with him all over again. Tyrone are no dead cert either. Much like Mayo, they put in a half of truly hapless football in the Ulster final against a Monaghan team who didn’t do anything more sophisticated than push up on them and wire into them. Their starting forwards attempted just one shot from play in the first half against Kerry - a Darren McCurry effort that was blocked down. Their kick-out is mercurial, to say the least. After years of wondering would anyone ever find a hole in the Death Star, we’re heading into a final where neither team is close to being the finished product. There will be lots of mistakes, plenty of turnovers, handling errors to beat the band. There will, you’d imagine, be a distinct lack of polish to it all. An understandable absence of the studious do-the-right-thing excellence of the Dublin years. To which the only sane response is: Hallelujah. Can’t wait. Took me to read auld Mickmacks 15,776th post to realise he is a legend alright though I was kind of disagreeing with his last paragraph until I realised my contention pointed in the same direction. Still predicting the future is a right boyo and with the way things are going it may be that nobody is even 50% right in how it will work out. It could be over at HT or it could go to penalties and nobody could say such was impossible. This 70 year curse may have Mayo sprout wings and annihilate the Red Hands while that same thought might have the very opposite effects. Anything could happen and that's probably exactly what will happen and that's my prediction of the future and I'm sticking with it, getting out before the rush, where someone says something crazy and has us all thinking, 'never thought of that' - ye know the crack, like picking the winner of The Grand National and getting a tip. P.S. Was just chatting with someone who knows a (good) bit more about things pitch-side that myself - comes down to did Mayo break Dublin or did Dubs collapse, and probably boils to at what pressure was the game decided. And of course same applies us us v Red Hands. Then benchmark 'em and that tells us where Mayo were 4 weeks ago and Tyrone 2 weeks back. Ah now I'm sure - not an iota of this science will be relevant but interesting all the same. |
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 8, 2021 21:30:28 GMT
This All-Ireland football will conjure up strange new sensations beyond the walls of Croke Park. Imagine the pinging and dinging of all those inter-county panel WhatsApp groups on Saturday evening. Imagine what they’ll be saying and thinking. Could have been us, lads. Should have been us. How many teams will be watching Mayo and Tyrone walk around in the parade and shaking their heads, full sure that they’d fancy themselves against either one of them. There’s at least two, probably three in Ulster alone. You could spend a day trying to convince them that Tyrone are better than them and not make them believe it. Scattered around the country, anything up to 150 footballers will be watching the All-Ireland final with the nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be watching the All-Ireland final Galway have to be looking at Mayo and thinking they’re not that far away, even after two miserable seasons in a row. Dublin and Kerry’s thoughts on the matter would be obvious and unprintable. Scattered around the country, anything up to 150 footballers will be watching the All-Ireland final with the nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be watching the All-Ireland final. It has been a long, long time since that was the case. At no stage during the Dubs’ run to six-in-a-row were they ever considered anything but the heaviest favourites for the All-Ireland. Nobody on the outside ever watched a Jim Gavin-era Dublin final and imagined they were taking up their spot. More to the point, you couldn’t always be sure the team that was actually lining up down the red carpet from them really believed they were worth their place. In 2014, Mayo and Dublin watched the final kicking themselves for allowing Kerry and Donegal to best them in those epic semi-finals but nobody beyond the final four thought they had left a big chance behind them. Even in 2012, the novel pairing of Donegal and Mayo didn’t brook a lot of argument. The Dubs looked Coppersed from early on that year and both Kerry and Cork threw everything at Donegal and still came up short. Envious glances So you probably have to go back to 2010 for the last time an All-Ireland final threw in to so many envious glances from afar, so many regrets and what could-have-beens. Cork and Down made the final that year after semi-finals against Dublin and Kildare that went right to the wire. Kerry and Tyrone went into the quarter-finals as first and second favourites and were swept away on a weekend of high drama. It gives this final an undeniable extra frisson. The football championship has been such a gulag sentence for most counties for so long now that it had become difficult to imagine something like this coming around again. And definitely not this quickly. Dublin won last year’s All-Ireland with such comfort and ease that we were taking bets through the final as to whether their subs’ bench would actually cheer at the final whistle, given that they were the only panel in the country that hadn’t made a noise throughout the winter. You didn’t need Croke Park to be empty to feel like they had turned the whole championship into a wasteland. But now, not only are they kicking their heels for the first final since 2014, so too are their presumed successors. After the 2019 final and replay, it felt like Dublin and Kerry were set fair to play out their own Super League over the coming decade, swapping Sam Maguire between them as the mood took them. By far the worst aspect of Dublin’s dominance was the fact that it made the rest of us root for Kerry - Kerry! - to come along and dethrone them. Decades of cowering under the green and gold iron fist and now suddenly they were our only hope. Who are ye up for, lads - will it be Richard Branson or Elon Musk? And that may well still be the case, of course. It is more likely than unlikely that Dublin and Kerry will go away and work out their kinks and come back next year in better fettle. They both have changes to make but they both operate in a realm where those changes are not just possible but will be deemed to be non-negotiable. Real flaws Here and now though, it is Mayo’s week and it is Tyrone’s week. Two teams who have made it to the All-Ireland despite carrying some real flaws in their knapsacks with them. For years you would sit in Croke Park an hour before the All-Ireland final and fine-tooth comb the Dublin page in the match programme looking for weaknesses before throwing your hands in the air and giving up. That’s not going to be the case on Saturday. Both teams have obvious deficiencies. Mayo haven’t turned up in either of the first halves of their last two games in Croke Park. They were able to paper over the crack of missing Cillian O’Connor all the way through Connacht but for all of Ryan O’Donoghue’s moxie, his free-taking began to creak at just the wrong time against Dublin. Aidan O’Shea had the worst game of his life in the semi-final and now, at the age of 31, they have to work out what to do with him all over again. Tyrone are no dead cert either. Much like Mayo, they put in a half of truly hapless football in the Ulster final against a Monaghan team who didn’t do anything more sophisticated than push up on them and wire into them. Their starting forwards attempted just one shot from play in the first half against Kerry - a Darren McCurry effort that was blocked down. Their kick-out is mercurial, to say the least. After years of wondering would anyone ever find a hole in the Death Star, we’re heading into a final where neither team is close to being the finished product. There will be lots of mistakes, plenty of turnovers, handling errors to beat the band. There will, you’d imagine, be a distinct lack of polish to it all. An understandable absence of the studious do-the-right-thing excellence of the Dublin years. To which the only sane response is: Hallelujah. Can’t wait. Took me to read auld Mickmacks 15,776th post to realise he is a legend alright though I was kind of disagreeing with his last paragraph until I realised my contention pointed in the same direction. Still predicting the future is a right boyo and with the way things are going it may be that nobody is even 50% right in how it will work out. It could be over at HT or it could go to penalties and nobody could say such was impossible. This 70 year curse may have Mayo sprout wings and annihilate the Red Hands while that same thought might have the very opposite effects. Anything could happen and that's probably exactly what will happen and that'smy prediction of the future and I'm sticking with it, getting out before the rush, where someone says something crazy and has us all thinking, 'never thought of that' - ye know the crack, like picking the winner of The Grand National and getting a tip. That piece is by Malachi Clerkin i think. I copied it from one of the papers. Dunno why the authors name didnt copy.... |
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 8, 2021 21:44:45 GMT
Took me to read auld Mickmacks 15,776th post to realise he is a legend alright though I was kind of disagreeing with his last paragraph until I realised my contention pointed in the same direction. Still predicting the future is a right boyo and with the way things are going it may be that nobody is even 50% right in how it will work out. It could be over at HT or it could go to penalties and nobody could say such was impossible. This 70 year curse may have Mayo sprout wings and annihilate the Red Hands while that same thought might have the very opposite effects. Anything could happen and that's probably exactly what will happen and that'smy prediction of the future and I'm sticking with it, getting out before the rush, where someone says something crazy and has us all thinking, 'never thought of that' - ye know the crack, like picking the winner of The Grand National and getting a tip. That piece is by Malachi Clerkin i think. I copied it from one of the papers. Dunno why the authors name didnt copy.... Could have fooled me, ah I was only joking, that Farney hoor is talking through his hat! |
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Post by glengael on Sept 9, 2021 11:12:49 GMT
It's a good piece although I'd say the 2012 Final attracted a few 'what if' moments for other counties also.
I'll nearly be afraid to watch it on Saturday in case Mayo fall short again.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 9, 2021 14:39:51 GMT
Mayo seemed determined to stop Dublin scoring goals in the first half. The first minute goal by Dublin in the 2020 final would have been uppermost in their minds.
Tyrone got just one goal in the Ulster championship ...against Cavan. They never looked like getting a goal v Monaghan.
If Mayo dont concede a goal, i think they will outscore Tyrone.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 10, 2021 7:56:37 GMT
Kevin Walsh: Do Mayo and Tyrone go with what they know or gamble with a change of plan?
FRI, 10 SEP, 2021 - 06:00
KEVIN WALSH
The analysis teams in both Mayo and Tyrone camps will have been working overtime over the past fortnight looking for chinks in the opposition armour.
But is it wise to spend a huge amount of effort and energy on your adversary or should you dedicate these valuable hours fine-turning your own game, one that has served you so well all year?
I believe in focusing on my own game plan that is compatible with my players and their individual talents.
There is also huge merit in identifying strengths and weaknesses in the upcoming opponents. As well as constantly practising on your own strategies, there will have to be adjustments made to attack your opponents, to get the desired result. How and what do we look for when we look towards our enemies on All-Ireland final day?
Is it all ‘style of play’ or do we zone in on the characteristics of individuals? Who are the players that carry the biggest threats and what areas of the pitch can they do the most damage? But there is a caveat. All-Ireland final day is a day like no other. The occasion sometimes shows up mental frailties in players while others simply thrive in these situations.
You just don’t know what finals can throw up. At this stage of the All-Ireland competition, one would expect that all of these players are exceptionally talented. The class sitting on both benches is proof of that.
But having said all that, talent isn’t everything on days like this. Lots of the players that are given loads of space will excel, but close off that space in the right areas and some will crumble as they struggle to play themselves into the game.
I would expect both management teams will be looking at the opposition players and working out those who are the warriors and then those who may waiver when pressurised physically and mentally.
Your warriors may not be the players that have all the silky skills but are hard men of the team. Those are the leaders and will rarely be rattled, whereas the waivers can often be those with a bigger array of skills but can be easily unsettled if their normal operating space is removed.
These are the areas away from your own game plan that could have a massive bearing on the full-time result.
When analysing your opponents as a team, you must identify what makes them tick — and what could stifle them.
If you look at both teams this season, there is a huge difference in approach. Mayo have always put pressure on all opposition kick-outs and put on a physical high press up the field which takes massive concentration and work rate.
One of the pluses in this tactic is if you turn over the ball high up the field you are nearer the scoring area which in turn forces the goalkeeper to go long and unsettles the opponents.
The negative is if Mayo fail to dispossess or slow down their opponents, they can be left open at the back against some very talented Tyrone forwards.
Tyrone on the other hand have given up the kickouts against their opponents and got their team defensive shape together further back towards their own goal. Kerry won 100% of their kickouts in the All-Ireland semi-final (25 from 25 with only 2 going long). That won’t worry Tyrone too much as they won’t be looking at the statistic in one way. I’m sure they will be more interested in the outcome which follows those numbers. So the Kingdom had a flawless possession rate on their own kickouts whereas Tyrone only won 18 from 26 from theirs. But break it down further. Crucially, Kerry scored five points directly from their 25 retained kickouts while Tyrone hit 1-4 from the 18 restarts which they won.
So, in hindsight why wouldn’t they give up the opponent’s kickouts when they were winning the most important statistic which was the scoring outcome? Also, where Tyrone prospers is inviting the opposing team onto them by inviting them down the sidelines and in by the end lines. They then converge on the ball carriers with aggressive numbers in the middle areas of their defence, dispossess the carrier, and counterattack at pace to get the ball up quickly to the few dangerous attacking forwards they have left up the field.
Another interesting factor will be the two managements on the line. Again, there are huge differences in experience: James Horan has had many big days on semi-final and final days over the last 10 years or so. In contrast, this is Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher’s maiden voyage. It will be interesting to see if Horan will use his experience to good effect.
In previous All -Ireland finals it could be argued that big calls didn’t work in Mayo’s favour. All these decisions in-game will be vital. And it will be interesting to see how the Logan/Dooher partnership works in their most testing battleground.
So will the managements put more emphasis on the game plans that has served them so well this year or will they be tempted to change because of the analysis and research?
All will be revealed on Saturday evening.
MORE IN THIS SECTION
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Post by Ballyfireside on Sept 10, 2021 11:52:34 GMT
An eye watering article hereunder for the days that are in it, sure has my eyes welling, GAA fuel I'd call it, puts life into perspective and yes, sport is amazing, as a pastime it up there with taking the dog for a run up the field, we're all hardy boys on the outside. Still, I never felt so high for a non-Kerry game, never even near - if truth be told probably as excited as I ever was for any game, maybe that I have pals in both counties and also that it can't be called, I wonder how many 'non-participantings' really enjoy AI finals? Is it getting to us all or is it just me? BTW I have a connection boxing in a big one at 5pm today so hopefully he'll get the weekend off to a flying start, amazing what I've learned from chattin with him since his childhood years, from then he'd have been well up there with a few county footballers I'd have known and who would have had years on him, one conversation and him 16 yrs old was awesome, still reeling with some of the stuff that was routine to him, and some great yarns too as you could imagine in his wee village of real life actors, boxers have to have it all, not a team, no substitute if ya have an off day. Gov Health Warning - best read this article if you are unhurried as you may be late for your next appt, at best arrive in tears! www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/mayos-2004-show-of-support-for-tyrone-in-the-aftermath-of-the-tragic-death-of-cormac-mcanallen-40835773.html |
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Post by brucewayne on Sept 11, 2021 1:14:43 GMT
Has this Tyrone team have been underachieving for quite a while? The performance they found in the semi was completely unexpected. Was it unexpected because their preparations had been so badly hampered? Or, was it unexpected because everything they had done before this would never have suggested it was in them?
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2021 8:07:05 GMT
Jim McGuinness
There is so much intrigue and speculation about this evening’s gripping All-Ireland final.
Well, I think it is going to be a proper game of football. Both Mayo and Tyrone will go after each other here. I think there is a chance both teams will let loose on each other. It will be highly tactical but it could also be full throttle. When you have two teams who fully believe they can - will - become champions, then it means there will be a collision. Of game plans; of bodies; of sensibilities. Of tradition. And what happens then?
Well, then, you are left with a game of will.
There are so many fine margins involved here. The similarities between Mayo and Tyrone became glaring once they were paired - against national expectation - in what is a first ever senior final between two behemoth football counties. The two teams are so evenly matched and share a strong self-belief. They are hugely invested in their belief system and share an unbreakable faith in what they are about. As it happens, they are well balanced in terms of technical ability and skill-sets and athleticism as well.
And the comparisons don’t end there. I think we will see a mirroring of game plans. Both teams - and managements - will go after the same things. They will go after the other’s goalkeeper in the belief that there is a weakness in the other side. Tyrone will feel that Rob Hennelly can be got at. Mayo will feel that Niall Morgan can be got at. Conversely, they will know that both goalkeepers have a considerable arsenal: they are both fine players with impressive kicking repertoires. And they are both a bit eccentric - maybe all goalkeepers must be. But both men can have a major bearing on this final, for better or worse.
Because of this, expect to see both sides pressing the kick out. In the modern game, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get pressure on the ball because goalkeepers are getting better - and playing with greater calm in the face of pressure. They can see the wood from the trees more clearly and are confident now to take that kick out through the sliver of a fifteen-metre gap. So the challenge to press is harder. But one slip or moment of madness or a bad decision and you can be hurt. Both teams will look to exploit that on the other’s kick out.
Middle third
Once the ball moves into open play, both Mayo and Tyrone will press high and ask questions. If only to lay down a marker and to put their stamp on the game; to attempt to become the dominant team in the contest. I feel a lot of this final will be compressed into that mid-block area. You will see a lot of action in that middle third.
Now: Mayo have made massive strides in becoming an excellent running team. Since the Covid break they have improved on that at a phenomenal rate. Tyrone won’t want marauding half backs, along with Lee Keegan and Oisín Mullin and Mattie Ruane bombing through their cover. How do you deal with that? By using your forwards as a block across the front and going man-to-man at the back.
Mayo will look at Tyrone in a similar prism. The Tyrone players are physical and strong and have fantastic agility. They dance out of tackles and away from lunging hits with ease. But they are not a big team. Both teams want to play a transitional game. So they will be hell-bent on stopping the other from achieving this.
And I think Mayo will bring the same level of respect and intensity and discipline to Tyrone in their defensive effort as Tyrone brought to Kerry. They will track runners honourably. They will pack the D and they will make life difficult from Tyrone. They know that the Tyrone engine starts at half back. They have so many pocket dynamos - Niall Sludden and Conor Myler and Peter Harte - low to the ground guys with serious shoulders and power, speed and agility. Mayo will want to stop those runners at source.
The mid-block press will be breached at times. Then comes the dirty part: the will to fall back and defend in the last third. Both teams will have the stomach for that all day long. I am convinced of that.
And that brings us to an interesting dynamic in terms of Mayo’s Lee Keegan marking Conor McKenna, Pádraig O’Hora on Darren McCurry and Enda Hession (or Oisín Mullin) on Mattie Donnelly. These three Mayo defenders were serious operators against Dublin. I felt that trio turned the game. They were physical, relentless, they were in their opponents’ ears, they broke at speed and were disciplined. There is a lot being made of Tyrone’s attack - particularly with that splendid bench. From what I saw, the Mayo fullback line is up to that challenge.
So if Mayo are successful in defending in the mid-block, then Tyrone need to look early to their inside forward line. That is when the action moves from that congested zone into those one on one battles in the last third. And that is the part of the game I am most looking forward to. Kerry didn’t do that. They continued to try and run through the Tyrone hazard rather than look up to play early ball to David Clifford and company. Will Tyrone be prone to the same error in the heat of battle? Can they find quiet moments in their minds to move the ball and find that moment of time and space on the weak side to kick a dangerous pass beyond the Mayo press?
Kicking team
I have a sense that Mayo have a crucial advantage here because I think it is in Tyrone’s DNA to run the ball. I know this sounds like a contradiction because I lauded Mayo’s running game above. But! Mayo are traditionally a kicking team and they still have that string to their bow. If I was James Horan I’d be looking for a 50/50 split between the kicking game over the Tyrone mid-block press and an aggressive hard running game. One play, they look to Tommy Conroy, for instance, early on the diagonal with runners flooding through from deep. The next, they look to run the ball direct and with pace. You are then posing a whole new set of problems for the Tyrone fullback line. Against Kerry, Pádraig Hampsey and Ronan McNamee felt emboldened enough to get forward and kick scores. They may still do that but if Mayo vary their attacking game, they will suddenly have a to-do list of nine or 10 things rather than three or four. Maybe the confidence on the ball and the luxury of roaming disappears.
Finally, the physical conditioning of both teams is remarkable. They are powerful, quick athletes with serious aerobic capacity. It promises to be very high energy.
If it comes down to fine margins, it is vital that the teams don’t wander away from the script for prolonged periods. In the All-Ireland final of 2012, we in Donegal had to navigate our way through the mid-block press against Mayo. But when we went 2-2 to 0-0 ahead at the start of the game and were eight up, we started kicking the ball from deeper areas and it gave the Mayo fullbacks a chance to get out in front and knock the ball away. We went from being ruthless to drifting into 50-50 scenarios and squandered the strong start. It was one of the few times I got angry at half time. I bring this up because I think the clarity of the game plan and sticking with it is vital to both teams.
And I feel Mayo will do this. They have the focus. They have the capacity to deal with adversity. We know this - in fact, they normally double down. That’s why they didn’t flinch when Cillian O’Connor got injured. They are persistent. Those qualities are there in buckets. And it doesn’t happen by chance. That is the fuel that has been thrown on their fire by James Horan and his management team.
Tyrone have this toughness too, absolutely. But I think Mayo hold a slight advantage because they are just so battle hardened. What hasn’t already happened to them? All of those grim defeats have to be beneficial somewhere along the line. Because: here they are, again.
Team approach
All of that said about Mayo, Tyrone have confidence on top of confidence. What I mean is: they are always confident. But their achievement against Kerry will super-endorse that. The age profile of the team is significant. They are winners at underage. The biggest strength is the collective - the team approach that underlines everything they do. When Tyrone played Donegal in the national league it was a gorgeous spring evening. I was out in the garden when the game began. I was listening to the start of it on Highland Radio, finishing up. And you could sense the energy on the commentary. Big hits and pace and scores and what-not and within a minute or two I raced into the house to turn on the television. And after that game I had seen enough to make me believe that Tyrone could be dangerous. They were hungry and feisty and well-drilled. Those qualities have become magnified since.
So I think the crowd in Croke Park and watching around Ireland will slowly become transfixed by a football game between two very similar teams that boils down to a very pure battle of will. A game of will is about who can hold out the longest.
And you must then draw on every past experience in your sporting life and beyond. And I just feel that if the game is reduced - or elevated - to that space coming down the track, it will produce a true champion. And I struggle to see beyond Mayo getting there in that scenario. It’s just a gut sense based on everything Mayo have come through as a group and a county, with all the hurt they are carrying and the necessity, sooner or later, of finding a release.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2021 8:13:53 GMT
Keith Duggan
In the long hot summer of 2005, Kehinde Wiley’s Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps made its debut in a Brooklyn gallery and was instantly hailed as the most important artistic statement of the year. But that was only because the art crowd never got to see Owen Mulligan’s goal for Tyrone against Dublin.
Remember the day: north and south, style and substance, locked into a slow-burning struggle on a muggy Saturday in late August when Mulligan came barreling out from goal to pick a ball up around the 45.
In aspect, that Tyrone crew were fairly conservative; suited and booted they’d have passed for a prosperous young accountancy firm on the up. Except for Mulligan, who was slightly more peroxide than Eminem that summer.
His goal was one of the very rare sequences in ball sports where those watching – in the crowd, on television – got to appreciate that they were witnessing an all-time moment even as it materialised.
Turning with the deceptive agility that became his calling card, Mulligan moved with intent towards the Canal End leaving his marker for dust. Then he voodoo-ed an approaching Dublin defender (it doesn’t matter who: nobody could have stopped this flow) with a left foot solo and a gorgeous faked hand-pass to a phantom Tyrone player on his left side.
Three seconds later, he fooled another arriving Dublin defender with the exact same deception. The repetition elevated the moment into genius. Suddenly he was through on goal and the crowd responded to the collective dawning that the moment demanded a goal. Mulligan had already reached the same conclusion, ebulliently firing past Stephen Cluxton – but with his right foot, as though conscious of the aesthetics.
He helped himself to 1-7 that day. Over the next few weeks, Tyrone would eclipse their bitter rivals Armagh in a classic semi-final and finish the year by beating Kerry to win the All-Ireland title. It was their second title in three years and, also, ever. The goal seemed to embody everything that Tyrone were about: insolence and the spark of genius and the unasked question hanging in the air: how do you like us now?
Tyrone, Tyrone. One of the incidental aspects of this evening’s All-Ireland final is that it pits two of the most fascinating Gaelic football counties against each other.
If Mayo have found themselves occupying the role of national darlings because of their high-octane assaults on winning the thing, Tyrone claim a more complex place in the national imagination. They’re the team and county that the others love to hate and have no choice but to admire.
Within Ulster, the other counties form a line for the right to be considered Tyrone’s chief antagonists. It’s not that there’s no love lost. There is simply no love. It’s partly an accident of geography: you are in the heart of the heart of Ulster country when you are driving through Tyrone and perpetually rubbing shoulders with Armagh, with Monaghan, with Derry.
Big stage
“Football always meant more in Tyrone when I was growing up,” remarked Brian McEniff, the godfather of Donegal football, whose mother Elizabeth spiritually remained a Carrickmore woman even as she raised a family and started a business in Bundoran.
“Tyrone played on the edge. Always did and, I suppose, always will.”
They arrived on the big stage in just that state; Mickey Harte’s combination of kids and veterans tearing into Kerry in the 2003 semi-final with an abandon that, at the time, seemed shocking and disrespectful.
As they bloomed into a truly great team, official praise was parsimonious – at best. Even as they became part of the establishment counties, they never became part of the club. Somehow, despite becoming one of the brand leaders of contemporary Gaelic football, they’ve retained the aura and healthy paranoia of the outsider. It’s always the old Brando line when it comes to what Tyrone are rebelling against.
“Whaddya got?”
“I don’t even think it’s an Ulster thing,” Aaron Kernan, the former Armagh player and always an interesting voice, said this week of that state of mind.
“It’s a Northern thing where we like to have a chip on our shoulder. We get wound up over stuff, like, that might be in the media. We do see it very much as us and them: the North versus the rest. Definitely gets into the psyche. And you’ll hear people locally whether it was Armagh going well or maybe Cross. And you will see Tyrone using it as well. Something that might seem very simple or an off-the-cuff statement can be taken very differently with ourselves.”
There’s always a different energy in towns and stadiums on days when Tyrone are playing. They arrive in expectation substantiated by a reputation for boldness in big games. On the field, the attitude is spiky. They’ll smile a lot and enjoy chattering away to opponents. They are well-presented.
There’s sometimes a touch of the nightclub about them. They’ve a reputation for producing classicists: Jodie O’Neill, Frank McGuigan, Brian McGuigan, Peter Canavan himself.
Their years of All-Ireland splendour were accompanied by a series of tragedies they absorbed with an incredible grace and dignity which, even more than the on-field pyrotechnics, offered the country a true glimpse of what it means to be from Tyrone; the depth of the place.
And in football, they seem to be able to turn it on like a light switch. When the mood takes hold of a Tyrone team, as it has this summer, then watch out.
Brian Dooher vanished into Tyrone’s veterinary world after bagging his three All-Irelands only to emerge this year with Feargal Logan: still Spartan athletic, still austere, still wry, still meaning every single second of it. Tyrone meant business. The take-us-or-leave-us swagger was back.
Epic fashion
Only Tyrone could make the metamorphosis from the team humiliated by Kerry in the league( 6-15 to 1-14: it’s still an eye-watering score ) in June to the team that shocked them just nine weeks later.
Only Tyrone would have the nerve and breadth of imagination to regretfully and genuinely state their inability to field a team for that All-Ireland semi-final and then turn up a fortnight later and brazenly win the thing. In the heat and in the sunshine and in epic fashion, with the whole country watching.
There’s a kind of self-reliance and glorious indifference to the court of public opinion about Tyrone that makes the county special.
Yes, they are the diabolical jester dancing through Kerry dreams but don’t imagine for an instant that their close rivals in Ulster – from Monaghan, from Donegal and, through gritted teeth, Armagh – aren’t watching on gripped by the fear that they are now going have to watch their worst nightmares all over again: Tyrone, in Excelsis.
Because Tyrone are back in the terrain they love today, gatecrashing the garden party, buoyed by a sense of internal cause, locked and loaded and utterly comfortable in the guise of the dark anti-hero unexpectedly returned, ready to spoil the perfect ending on the good knight Mayo.
Tyrone-ness may not quite be enough to have the fires burn through O’Neill country on Saturday night. But this summer has been a reminder that an All-Ireland championship when Tyrone are in the mood for football and mischief is never dull, never predictable and always seems to matter that bit more.
May they never change.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2021 8:18:43 GMT
Éamonn Fitzmaurice: Grey areas in an All-Ireland final are never good
Éamonn Fitzmaurice: Grey areas in an All-Ireland final are never good
SAT, 11 SEP, 2021 - 07:00
Eamonn Fitzmaurice
Éamonn Fitzmaurice
As I watched back TV coverage of the Kerry and Tyrone semi-final, the camera panned to Mayo’s James Horan and Ciarán McDonald quietly conferring in the Hogan Stand. It took me back to 2014. They were like Kerry seven years ago, possibly expecting a different opposition to emerge from the second semi-final.
We had prevailed against Mayo in that replay in Limerick on the Saturday and drove to Dublin on Sunday morning half-planning for the Dubs as we expected them to beat Donegal. We all know what happened next and as we returned home that evening we were filled with confidence and excitement, knowing that this was an All-Ireland that was there for the taking.
I am sure Horan and McDonald had similar thoughts on their way west a fortnight ago. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as over-confidence. It’s merely cold analysis of the facts. For Mayo, Tyrone in an All-Ireland final carries zero baggage. The same can’t be said for them about Kerry. It doesn’t mean that the Ulster champions will be any easier to beat, it just means it is very doable even if that seems like an oxymoron.
The similarities with 2014 don’t end there. While it is a lifetime ago in terms of how football has evolved, much of what was relevant for us that day is true for Mayo today. Two weeks ago Kerry showed Mayo exactly what not to do. Solo into trouble, get turned over and leave the backdoor open for a counter-attack. This is providing laboratory conditions for Tyrone to thrive in.
As I mentioned here after the semi-, Kerry were turned over 30 times in the attacking third and Tyrone scored 2-9 of their 3-14 via this method. Mayo will have to guard against this. With their hard-running game, they also have a tendency to repeatedly attempt to bludgeon their way through the middle channel even if it is well manned defensively. They are guilty of turnovers in this area and one critical area that Kerry really fell down in was their reaction to these turnovers.
The problem was too often there was no reaction, which is unforgivable. Turnovers against a team like Tyrone should equal emergency stations in a player’s mind. Kerry players should have been sprinting to the tackle or back into their own half to help out defensively. Too often players just stood up and let runners go or lunged in and missed tackles.
It was mad stuff, will make for hard viewing and conversations whenever they get around to the review — but it was perfect for Tyrone. I expect Mayo to have turnovers today, as they are inevitable when playing Tyrone, but I also expect them to react much better to them as they always do.
In fact, they are excellent at immediately winning the ball back again. In 2014 when we were playing Donegal, they wanted us to do the exact same thing. They wanted to invite us on, take the ball off us and counter attack in pods of three and four into space. They also had Michael Murphy and Colm McFadden close to goal as long options from out the field, similar to Tyrone with their Mattie Donnelly-Cathal McShane and Darren McCurry axis.
After we won that All-Ireland, someone, somewhere used the phrase that we mirrored Donegal and that won the day. That became the narrative and was almost used to dismiss the win. In fact, it was much more nuanced than that, but essentially we kept our six backs in place. Two of their half forwards played as extra defenders thus freeing up two of our backs. We went one-on-one with their remaining four forwards and used Peter Crowley and Killian Young as double sweepers.
As we rehearsed this in training we tweaked their roles. Initially, they were both using the 45 as a starting point and reading the play from there but the more football we played in training the more obvious it became that both players were often unsure and there were too many grey areas. Grey areas in an All-Ireland final are never good. There has to be certainty and clarity when the heat is on. We then decided to stagger them, using Peter as a deep sweeper in front of Murphy and McFadden. His job was to help with and cut out long deliveries from out the field and double up on Donegal players close to goal. Killian’s job was to station himself on the 45m and deal with any Donegal runners that escaped our initial press further out the field. It really clarified it for both players and on the day of the game it worked. We were well set up to deal with Donegal’s counter-attack and took away a huge weapon from them. This kind of work on the training ground is the single most enjoyable part of inter-county management. Working on aspects of your game in that detail late in the season is fantastic and when it comes off on the big day is extremely enjoyable and fulfilling.
While other aspects of our gameplan didn’t work as well — in particular our long-range shooting — defensively we were really solid. The fact the game wasn’t pretty didn’t bother us, once we won. We have played in plenty of classic football matches but on All- Ireland final day winning is all that counts. If you can do it in style, that is jam on top.
Mayo will need to have some kind of security measure in place for when they lose possession today. Tyrone thrive on having space to break into, while Mayo have to take it away from them. This might sound simplistic but it is going to a huge factor in today’s game. They probably won’t be able to do what we did in 2014 with the double sweeper but I certainly expect to see someone permanently minding the middle channel as Mayo attack to guard against turnovers. A left field choice could be to designate Aidan O’Shea as that player but more than likely it will be someone like Stephen Coen.
On the Tyrone side, of the many notable aspects of their game this year the two elements that I have been most impressed with has been their hybrid middle eight players and the impact from the bench. As I mentioned before the semi-final, Conor Meyler, Kieran McGeary, Niall Sludden, Michael O’Neill, Tiernan McCann, and Peter Harte are exceptional at adapting to different roles in the middle sector of the pitch.
They can mark a man out of it, link the play, clog up attacking lanes, sweep, win breaks, serve as counter-attack runners with their athleticism and engines, supply their inside line and score. While some of them are stronger at certain aspects, they are all proficient at everything. They rotate between these roles seamlessly and to the casual eye in a seemingly ad hoc fashion. There is no such thing as ad hoc at this level of the game though and as McGeary mentioned this week, they are all given quite specific roles depending on the opposition. This can change during the game but everyone understands what is expected as they fulfil each defined role. It can be hard to play against, particularly if the opposition are trying to mark one of these players out of the game.
Secondly, the impact of their bench has been incredible. In particular Conor McKenna and Tiernan McCann against Donegal and McCann, Mark Bradley, Darragh Canavan, and Cathal McShane since. All-Ireland champions nearly always get a significant return from their bench and Tyrone may hold an advantage here, particularly if Eoghan McLoughlin does not make it back for Mayo.
Today’s final is so hard to call. So many aspects on both sides are even. Both counties even occupy the same place on the roll of honour with three All-Irelands apiece. One significant factor could be Horan’s superior All-Ireland experience in comparison to Brian Dooher and Fergal Logan in their first season. Both teams are capable of springing a surprise with their set up or starting personnel but I expect them to go with what has worked so far this season.
Mayo will have to make sure that they play for the entire match and not just the second half while Tyrone will need to avoid those costly black cards. It could be a day for one of the unsung heroes to be the difference a la Enda Hession or Conor Meyler in the semi-finals. I still can’t decide who is going to take it but a new winner for the first time in seven seasons is certainly no harm.
Kieran McGeary summed up the admirable Tyrone attitude brilliantly this week when he said ‘You see a fire, you put it out’. It speaks of a spirit that breeds success. But we also recognise that Mayo won’t lack togetherness and fight, and we will know by 7pm if they’ve finally reach the promised land or if Tyrone are once again kings of September.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2021 9:10:35 GMT
Ciarán Whelan
talking point
September 09 2021 07:00 PM
Mayo have been knocking on heaven’s door for a long time but will the pearly gates finally swing open, or will they spend another year, at least, as residents in the house of pain?
The season has rightly been described as the summer of the underdog, with All-Ireland successes for the Meath minor and senior ladies’ footballers as well as Offaly’s U-20s. Both teams in tomorrow’s Croke Park decider upset the odds in the semi-finals, so the SFC has concluded with something of a tale of the unexpected.
Mayo manager James Horan was possibly anticipating a clash against Kerry in the decider and it would be interesting to know if his backroom brains’ trust invested much, if any time, working on tactics to face the Kingdom in between both semi-finals?
This senior football championship has also been the campaign of the defence, with many of the heroes for both Tyrone and Mayo have been defenders. Despite the introduction of the mark, along with other tweaks to rules and regulations, the game isn’t forward’s paradise.
However, the style of refereeing changes throughout the championship has had an influence here also - what is a black card foul in the first round of the provincial championship might not necessarily be one come the All-Ireland series.
While there are many similarities between tomorrow’s finalists, there are differences also; how they defend is one of them. And whose defensive system/style performs best will go a long way to deciding the outcome.
Many argue that the county with the best forwards wins All-Irelands. As I’ve stated before, I’m in the camp that the team with the best defenders and defensive system wins All-Irelands, but it is the forwards and impact subs who decide the margin of victory.
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In terms of the respective defences, Mayo have some excellent man-markers, players who like and have the bravery to play on the front foot.
They showed this when bringing Dublin’s 45-game unbeaten championship run to a grinding halt in their semi-final.
Though seven points down at one stage and six at half-time, Horan’s men were rewarded for their defensive bravery in the second half and attacked from all angles as Dublin struggled to hold back wave after wave of Mayo attack.
poster
When Horan set about rebuilding his panel, following his return to the Mayo managerial role, it was clear some of the characteristics he prioritised included the ability and temperament to handle a direct opponent one-on-one, along with a strong, athletic running game capable of standing up to the test of Croke Park.
Before their semi-final victory, Mayo had not beaten Dublin in eight Championship matches at GAA HQ, stretching back to their victory in 2012. It is no coincidence that one of the elements of both victories was that they did not concede a goal in either 2012 or again last month.
In Pádraig O’Hora, Mayo have found a full-back in the traditional style, a bit like Donegal’s Eamon McGee in his prime or even Dublin’s Rory O’Carroll, men that were happy just keeping their man out of the game by whatever means.
I expect two out of Lee Keegan, O’Hora, Stephen Coen and Oisín Mullin, if he starts, to take up marking duties on Darren McCurry and Mattie Donnelly, which will liberate Paddy Durcan to showcase his attacking potency if he can shake off the attention of Conor Meyler.
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Mayo are not afraid to take a risk at the back on the understanding that is the key to gaining reward further up the field. It paid dividends for them, when they needed it most, in the second half and especially in the last quarter of normal time against Dublin.
They pushed right up on the Dublin kick-out and Dessie Farrell’s men started to buckle. They found it hard to work the ball out of defence, especially when Eoin Murchan picked up his injury and was eventually substituted.
poster
When Dublin did emerge from defence, they kicked straight-line balls towards their intended targets on too many occasions. It was in these moments that Mayo’s ability to defend one-on-one and take man and ball emerged most. And all those small battles contributed hugely to them winning the overall war.
It is impossible to do, though, for 70-plus minutes in Croke Park, or anywhere for that matter, so Mayo will have to be clever on how and when they deploy the full-court press on this Tyrone team.
Tyrone’s defensive approach is different. They utilise something akin to what in soccer parlance is known as the mid-block and it worked very effectively against Kerry last time out, resulting in turnovers that contributed to scoring 2-9 on the counter-attack.
One of the strengths of the Ulster championship is the number of versatile players they have who are comfortable in several positions and are also strong and creative in possession.
Against the Kingdom, they erected two banks of four players nominally condensed between their own 45 and 65-metre lines. Kerry’s running game found the traffic in there too heavy and in the resulting gridlock, Tyrone emerged in possession and used it clinically to swiftly counter to telling effect.
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Tyrone will press this mid-sector, which may force Mayo down the flanks. However, Horan’s men should be forewarned so as not to make the same mistakes as Kerry and will try to spread the play, ‘widen’ the pitch and utilise their possession better.
One advantage Tyrone will be hoping to exploit is off the bench and their impact subs are capable of contributing more in terms of scores. If Tyrone hold back starting Cathal McShane and Darragh Canavan, they have two potential trump cards to play after the half-time interval. Players who both can complement the likes of McCurry and Conor McKenna but can also implement a change in game-plan if required. Again, it is this versatility that makes Tyrone tricky opponents.
While history and the psychology of sport suggests that Tyrone could have the upper hand because of Mayo’s track record in All-Ireland finals, this team doesn’t play under the pressure of the mental baggage of a 70-year wait to end their Sam Maguire famine.
This is a new Mayo team and often younger players cope with pressure better because they are not burdened by history.
It all makes for an intriguing tactical battle and a contest that is likely to be very physical. Referee Joe McQuillan and his officials could be in for a testing late afternoon.
So back to the question at the start, heaven or house of pain for Mayo? The gates certainly won’t swing open invitingly, but I think Mayo can finally break them down. Sam to head West.
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horsebox77
Fanatical Member
Our trees & mountains are silent ghosts, they hold wisdom and knowledge mankind has long forgotten.
Posts: 1,795
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Post by horsebox77 on Sept 11, 2021 9:14:52 GMT
If Tyrone bring the same intensity that they displayed against Kerry over the course of the seventy minutes and extra time, I can’t see Mayo staying the pace. Mayo played for the second half against Dublin and the extra time period, they will need to start from the off against the red hand to have any chance.
Tyrone’s bench too for me is more productive on the score board, even though the bookies have it tight, even a draw is 17/2. But for me it’s Tyrone by three +
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2021 9:46:40 GMT
Extra time applies to the final. And a replay if still dead locked.
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Post by Mickmack on Sept 11, 2021 10:43:51 GMT
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NEWS
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LIFESTYLE
OPINION
Better by design: The second coming of James Horan as Mayo manager
FRI, 10 SEP, 2021 - 20:21
KIERAN SHANNON
Back when James Horan and Mayo started out on their All-Ireland odyssey a decade ago, they took a leaf out of Tyrone’s book — or at least Mickey Harte’s — on how they had gone about kicking down heaven’s door.
In Harte’s diary of the ground-breaking 2003 season, he mentioned how he took some inspiration and guidance from the words of George Zalucki, a former dean of psychology who had branched into the field of motivational speaking. Some of Horan’s backroom delved further into his work and a few of Zalucki’s nuggets were circulated in audio form to the players to become central tenets of the team’s culture and philosophy.
“Persistence is awesome.”
“Commitment is doing the thing you said you would do long after the mood you said it in has left you.”
And above all ...
“The better you get, the better IT gets.”
And it did. Keith Higgins has admitted that for all his talent his career was meandering aimlessly until he encountered and embraced Horan’s high-performance setup and duly won three consecutive All-Stars.
Over Horan’s first four years Mayo won as many All-Stars – 12 – as they had in the 16 years prior to his appointment. They reached the All Ireland semi-final every year, contesting two finals. The better they each got, the better it got for each and all of them.
But obviously, they needed to get even better to win IT.
Horan would have been conscious that such a truism would have to extend to him, all the more so were he to return for a second stint.
He’d long been a student of the work and words of leading sports coaches — from Bill Walsh to Bill Belichick to Clive Woodward — and collaborated closely with sport psychology consultants in the past, including this writer both with Mayo and previously in helping his native club Ballintubber win their first county title the same year it celebrated its centenary.
Ahead of his second coming he went even deeper.
He continued to be a regular if unobtrusive attendee on the coaching conference circuit; when Jim Gavin during his keynote address at Sport Ireland’s 2017 HPX high-performance conference noted with a smile that there were “competitors” in the audience, he’d have flashed it in the direction of Horan.
He shadowed several leading coaching practitioners for days at a time, such as Leinster’s Stuart Lancaster. He availed of the advice and mentoring of Liam Moggan, the country’s outstanding coach to the coaches from his work as Coaching Ireland’s lead coach education officer, and even had him do some work to upskill his young coaching staff when he did return to the Mayo job.
And even more so he committed to upskilling as a coach himself by signing up to do a masters in personal and management coaching at UCC (the final year of it overlapped with his first season back over Mayo but he managed to complete it, commitment being the thing you said you would do).
“The coaching journey is a bit of a self-discovery,” Horan would write in an article he contributed to for a supplement that appeared in this paper in conjunction with UCC’s Adult Continuing Education department. “You learn an awful lot about yourself as a person.
“I needed a bit of coaching around the thinking patterns and biases that people have… And [the course] helped you recognise the flawed thinking patterns that you have yourself — once you recognise that, you can do something about it.”
As well as involving a 12,000-word thesis and 50 hours of practical coaching experience, the course included many modules such as rapport and relationship-building, narrative coaching, person-centred coaching, psychodynamic coaching and cognitive behavioural coaching.
“You might initially have the solutions in your head as a coach and 10 things you want to say to guide them but coaching is very much about just asking the questions to help the person come to the realisation.
You definitely need to stay with it and just focus on what the coachee is saying so you can take that in, internalise it, and ask the next question that will help the coachee along. It’s about staying in that approach as opposed to having a pre-defined idea about what’s right or wrong for that person.”
There were other subtle but significant differences between Horan Mark One and Horan Mark Two. Outside of his medical and analysis team, most of his key management collaborators in his first stint came from outside Mayo, a trend which Stephen Rochford continued by having big-name proven operators like Tony McEntee as well as Donie Buckley on his coaching ticket. The second time around, he went for an almost all-Mayo lineup.
And perhaps the most surprising aspect of that was that it didn’t feature his still great friend and confidant, Tom Prendergast, a vital and steady presence and his defacto right-hand man during his first tenure with Mayo and in Ballintubber’s breakthrough. He didn’t just want this setup to be different; he wanted his players to see that it as well as he was different.
Possibly the most vital member in his new-look coaching staff was James Burke who had fleetingly played for Horan in 2011 and 2013. Initially Burke was supposed to just take the team’s Dublin-based hub for midweek sessions but they were of such quality he was promptly promoted to taking collective sessions in Castlebar. As someone who had played for Ballymun Kickhams all through the past decade, Burke had studied how Dublin had edged Mayo and dominated everyone else, and trained under top coaches such as Ken Robinson (Mick Bohan’s former right-hand man with the four-in-a-row Dublin ladies side and now coach to the Westmeath men’s senior team), Paul Curran, and Brendan Hackett.
After the 2019 semi-final defeat to Dublin, a couple of other former players with vital institutional knowledge were brought back wearing different caps. That offseason Evan Regan would have received either one or two calls from Horan: you’re being let go off the playing panel; with your career qualifications, we’d like you on board as our team nutritionist.
Ger Cafferkey’s role description as values and behaviours coach has triggered a few scoffs from the traditionalists who similarly might find difficulty that Tom Parsons’ day job until recently was as a culture manager for the European division of a Fortune 500 company. The world is different than it was and so are young men and Cafferkey, from his own training and lifestyle and time management skills, as well as his huge engagement and experience with previous Mayo team sport psychologists, has been a vital mentor to any young players coming through and instilling and retaining the ‘The better you get the better it gets’ ethos.
A couple of other old colleagues and charges of Horan’s would also have helped with that transition. In the latter years of Mike Solan’s tenure as U21-20 manager, he’d have co-opted his Ballaghaderreen clubmate Andy Moran as well as Mickey Conroy onto his coaching staff.
It would be too reductive to say Mayo only won the one All-Ireland and the two Connacht titles during Solan’s six-year spell. They possibly would have won the 2018 All- Ireland final had Oisín Mullin not broken his collarbone after the demolition of Roscommon in the Connacht final and been available to mark Kildare’s dangerman Jimmy Hyland in Croke Park. They could well have won it in 2020 too if Mullin hadn’t missed a penalty after extra-time in the first-round Connacht championship game against eventual All Ireland champions Galway. At all times but especially upon Moran joining the ticket in 2020 their greatest priority was to produce players ready to go straight away into the senior panel. Mullin was the perfect example. No one now talks about that missed penalty against Galway because he’d end that year as an All-Star and Young Player of the Year after his exploits with the seniors.
He was always going to be a player Horan would love, a mix of Keith Higgins’ dynamism combined with Lee Keegan’s strength and temperament. Back in his days with Ballinrobe CS, he was called aside by team manager Damien Egan at the last training session before the Connacht final. Their opponents had a standout two-year Galway minor and Egan had prepared a considerable video analysis and scouting report of that players’ tendencies to show Mullin upon telling him he had been assigned to mark that player.
But once Egan told Mullin that he was marking that standout player, Mullin just smiled, “Grand job” and breezily continued heading to the dressing room. He didn’t want or need any video analysis. He had it. And sure enough the next day he held that player scoreless from play while scoring himself and eventually leading his school to an All-Ireland title.
Eoghan McLoughlin would be similarly athletic and confident if somewhat more abrasive. A former underage international cyclist, one night with the U20s he told the team’s S&C coach Sean Boyle ahead of a 1km time-trial run to signal when there were two laps left. Boyle ended up only alerting him when there was just a lap to go, prompting McLoughlin to take off and lap half the panel – and then lambast Boyle for not alerting him earlier, that there was plenty more in him!
It is a testament to Horan’s management that McLoughlin has hugely tidied up his skills — especially his solo-run — since the Westport man’s U20 days, but it cannot be underestimated how much someone like a Boyle has been in his athletic development and that of his contemporaries.
For a decade now Mayo have been constantly one of the top three teams in the country in no small part because they have always had a podium-level strength and conditioning programme and lead coach. It’s been regularly mentioned in the past, by the likes of Higgins and many more, how Horan’s recruitment of Dr Ed Coughlan in the autumn of 2010 was a quantum leap in how Mayo teams prepared.
In the autumn of 2014 Coughlan was succeeded by Barry Solan, now lead S&C with the Arsenal first-team. Because Solan was based in London, he delegated a lot of his duties to his Claremorris-based wingman and old housemate Conor Finn who then assumed the head S&C role upon Horan’s reappointment.
Finn runs a gym called AXSOM Sports where among his staff are Boyle and Martin Connor, who have also extensively been lead S&C coaches over Mayo U20 and minor squads. That means there is a level of continuity and collaboration there that few other counties have, helping bring through a Mullin and McLoughlin so they can become the new Keegan and Vaughan and Boyle.
It’s allowed Horan to fashion a team similar to his first, only he’s been possibly even more daring in championing and promoting youth. And possibly his boldest move of all was to co-opt Ciarán MacDonald onto his coaching team in early 2020, a hint that he is even more open more to left-of-centre thinking than he previously was.
He has almost all angles covered — the team even avail of drones to review every session.
There’s also another key difference between Horan Mark One and Mark Two. In his first stint he was one of only two managers over the previous 30 years to bring a team to an All-Ireland final that hadn’t already served as an underage county manager, or served as at least as a selector with a senior inter-county team or won a club All-Ireland or Sigerson Cup: Pat Gilroy was the other exception, and Gilroy compensated for such lack of experience by having Mickey Whelan as his right-hand man. It was levelled at Horan — including by some of players if Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly’s incendiary 2017 interview is to believed — that he could have been better on the line in his first stint, probably stemming from the fact that he’d only been coaching four years before he landed the Mayo job.
But now he appears to tick the profile of an All-Ireland-winning manager. He has previous experience of being a selector or more of a senior inter-county team, to go with his time with Westport in 2018. He would have been a close observer and student of the game’s tactical evolution during his time as an analyst with Sky Sports and Newstalk and The Star from 2015 to 2018. If the Dublin semi-final is anything to go by, he now sees things quicker and sharper and better than he even did in his first stint when he presided over some huge wins. Tyrone will be the ultimate test of that but he seems ready to answer it.
This might not be the best single-season Horan or Mayo team of the past decade: in fact there’s a case it’s only definitively superior to the sides of 2011, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
But it seems as if he’s never been better. That he’s got even better.
And as he’d preach over a decade ago, the better you get, the better chance you have of getting IT.
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