Mayo GAA Discussion Part 2

aidan24326 wrote:

However in the big games Mayo have played over the last few years I just didn't see it, to me Doherty always looked to be playing on the periphery, never really contributing enough for a forward starting in a top 3 team, and certainly not contributing a lot on the scoreboard.

Funny thing is that when he first broke into the team he was a total goal machine. He regularly scores big totals for his club. He has obviously been asked to change at some stage by a county mgt setup and never reverted back.

Diarmuid had to get stitches, I'm told. Seamie concussed. Not sure what they story is with Kevin McLoughlin.

PressRun wrote: »

Diarmuid had to get stitches, I'm told. Seamie concussed. Not sure what they story is with Kevin McLoughlin.

Seamie looked well rattled coming off, his head hit the ground with some thump. Hopefully all ok for Galway, any word of Harrison? Couldn't find anything in the local papers.

And on that and going back to a comment last week, barely a mention of the U17 game in the papers. You would think they would give them a little write up.

Worth registering to read this article, Fogarty proving once again why he's one of the top GAA journos out there:

http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/columnists/john-fogarty/obsession-with-mayo-is-now-a-sickness-450676.html

Obsession with Mayo is now a sickness

Slamming Mayo is now fashionable and the more outrageous the statement, the better, writes John Fogarty

Fergus Connolly has a book coming out later this year. That’s best to keep in mind when considering the sports science and performance consultant’s claim in a Sunday Independent interview Mayo will not win an All-Ireland in his lifetime. When he lambasted Aidan O’Shea for appearing on a TV show because he has yet to win an All-Ireland medal. When he argued a media ban would be the first step to helping Mayo to their elusive goal.

Connolly might argue he would maintain such convictions regardless of his forthcoming publication but then he knows how marketing works too and that Mayo are the easiest of lays. In that regard, he could have been more original but there is an understandable inclination to be in the spotlight as he has something to sell.

A few months prior to Tom?s ? S?’s autobiography two years ago, the former Kerry star levelled Cork, describing them as ‘underachievers’ and ‘untrustworthy’. He might live in Cork but the notoriety cultivated from those comments did his sales little harm.

In a way, such behaviour reminds us of how a GAA president, keen to make a bigger impression with a year to go in office, makes a declaration. In 2011, Christy Cooney flew the kite of the provincial boundaries being redrawn. In November last year, Aog?n Farrell said the GAA may in the future need to reconsider the use of the tricolour and the national anthem. Cooney made his remarks in a Congress address but never followed them up. Farrell was answering a question about the meaning of the tricolour and national anthem to non-Irish playing Gaelic games abroad but brought his answer around to the island of Ireland (yet later sought to clarify his comments).

Put simply, each wanted to make headlines.

There was nothing different in what Bernard Flynn’s “I’m going to share it — I wasn’t going to but I’m going to do it” denigration of O’Shea following his appearance in Mayo’s recent challenge game against Meath in Mullingar. The former Meath forward was simply trying to reassert his relevancy. Condemning O’Shea for agreeing to pose for photographs and sign autographs while his team warmed down was indeed as, Flynn initially said on the RT? podcast, “a small thing” but he couldn’t help himself making it big.

Flynn mentioned he helped organise the challenge game, which took place in his club Mullingar Shamrocks’ Springfield pitch. What he neglected to point out was O’Shea was born in Mullingar. His father Jim was a former chairman of the club and was on the Shamrocks team that won two Westmeath senior county championships.

The O’Shea family’s connection with the club was not lost on the player and club officials have confirmed to us that his and his team-mates’ patience and cooperation with the children was the subject of much positive comment that evening.

Neither did Flynn care to divulge the game was broken up in two 45-minute periods and O’Shea had played the entirety of the first one after which he had joined a team huddle. He appeared in the second period but only for a short time.

It wasn’t a surprise that Stephen Rochford took exception to Flynn’s comments following Sunday’s game. He has a duty of care to his players and protecting their characters should be high on his list of priorities.

In 2011, Jim McGuinness felt compelled to defend his charges in the wake of Pat Spillane “running down” his team after their win over Donegal. A spotlight should be shone Mayo’s way but at times it seems it’s being done to blind them into crashing again. Mayo have far more reason to be aggrieved with how they are being portrayed than Donegal were. It will be said that they have brought a lot of it upon themselves but much of it is now so tenuous it’s laughable.

Connolly is about 40. All things going well, he has at least another 40 of them left. The arguments he sets out for why Mayo won’t win an All-Ireland in his lifetime are all short-term explanations. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that slamming Mayo is fashionable and the more outrageous the statement the better.

Connolly criticises O’Shea for doing media work when off O’Shea’s back he is doing the very same thing to promote himself. Flynn rebukes O’Shea for being courteous to the kids of his own club to keep himself in the limelight. That’s more cynical than Kieran Hughes’ black card foul in Clones on Saturday. The actions of the pair are symptomatic of the obsession with Mayo. Just as there is a fixation with success, there is with near-success or failure, term it however you wish.

The slightest shortcoming is magnified to be something it isn’t, the merest mistake amplified to ridiculous proportions. Because other than not being good enough on the day, which probably should satisfy us, we can’t work Mayo out.

But the words of Connolly and Flynn, following on from others, illustrate that the obsession with Mayo has grown unhealthy. With preposterous declarations and character assassinations, people are making fame off their shame. That says more about those casting aspersions on Mayo than what they think about them.

blinding wrote: »

I hope a Fella Making them Kind of Statements has His Will Made........

He'd look kind of Silly if the Footballing Gods came calling........:P

Why do people make statements like that? Only lining themselves up for backlash if it does happen.

It's one of two things - he either really believes it, which would be stupid considering he has no idea what the Mayo team will be like in 10 years, or he's being hyperbolic, and there's better ways to get his point across than silly statements like that.

Bambi wrote: »

Flynn is only a pox

Stop sitting on the fence Bambi

Latest Mayo News Podcasts.

Mayo slip past Sligo


As the Connacht Championship campaign began with a victory for Mayo, Rob Murphy and John Gunnigan were in Castlebar to set the scene and reflect on the game itself.
They were joined by Mike Finnerty, Edwin McGreal, Sean Rice and Ger Flanagan of The Mayo News, with guest appearances from Anne-Marie Flynn of Mayo Club '51, Colm Keys of the Irish Independent and former Mayo manager James Horan.

http://themayonews.podomatic.com/enclosure/2017-05-22T04_28_42-07_00.mp3

Mayo News Podcast Bonus Episode Brendan Harrison

A bonus extra podcast for this Championship week as Rob Murphy and John Gunnigan return with some special guests to look ahead to the Galway game just a few days on from the win over Sligo.

http://themayonews.podomatic.com/enclosure/2017-05-26T05_48_42-07_00.mp3

Nice piece for a change
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/gaa/mayo-are-just-picture-perfect-35748628.html

Good point made on the Mayo GAA podcast extra about Galway.

For all of the talk of their beating Mayo last year and their improvement with the Div 2 title etc people seem to have airbrushed out the fact that they went and lost to Tipp in the QF last year.

PARlance wrote: »

I don't necessarily see any crazy hype about Galway. There's a bit of hype about the game, nothing more than I would expect when you have a local derby, a team who beat us last year, a team who go promotion to Div 1. Added to that, it's early championship... anything will get hyped.

They deserve credit for what they've done. I wouldn't fear them but it should be a decent game. Around this time last year, we were losing to Galway and stumbling / lucky to get passed Fermanagh. Have we airbrushed that out?

An optimistic Galway man could throw that and a poor league campaign with a not overly convincing Sligo match at us.

Well Mayo did get to the All Ireland and lost by a point in a replay, so what happened in the lead up is less relevant.

In fact the national media narrative at this point seems to be to write Mayo off.

But the Tipp game was Galway's last championship game, yet it's not getting mentioned much in all this talk of Galway's improvement.

What I'd be looking at, more than the defeat to Tipperary last year, is the way they played in the Div 2 league final. Yes they won it, but that style of play is not making the most of what they have going forward.