Mayo GAA Discussion

I think the problem if you take the approach of excluding college players from County panels then you'll have a load of lads who will exclude themselves from Sigerson in favour of playing county. Pretty sure that happened a few years ago, some lad in DIT on the Dublin panel decided to opt out of Sigerson. I'm sure if you were to ask Tommy Conroy if he'd prefer to play Sigerson or County, that he'd have opted to play last Sunday as he did, and sit out the game last night.

I think the issue is fixtures and how they are congested. Realistically there should be no reason for Sigerson to run the same side as the league but having Club games played in the depths of winter defies logic too.

It doesn't matter what you do however as there will always be someone with their nose out of joint.

I'm sure if you had someone like Tommy who's nailed down a place on the county team being told he had to play Sigerson as he was named on the panel and couldn't play county, or Clifford or anyone else, then they'd simply opt out of Sigerson, reducing the competition by removing some of the talented players in the pool.

I agree it should be protected and to do that, I'd suggest moving the leagues to start later. If we can have the All Ireland Final in July as we are doing this year, there's no reason the league could be shifted a few weeks to let the Sigerson be run. Have the pre-seasons (McKenna Cup, FBD etc) before Christmas in December if you need to have them, or at least have those as as your Sigerson participant less games during January.

Was starting to feel a bit more optimistic about the year and now this. Hard to feel optimistic now. We have very few scoring options and none with Tommy's pace.

One step forward, two steps back.

Gutted for the lad but time for someone to step up like Ryan O' Donoghue did to fill Cillian's boots.

On we go.

Disaster for Tommy C, hope he makes a full recovery. Not good news for the Neale trying to stay up in senior either.

For the Monaghan game, I'd like to see something like this:

Byrne

Swannie

Harrison

McBrien 

Keegan

McHugh

Callinan

Oisin

Aido

Flynn

McLoughlin

Hession

ROD

Doc

Orme

I don't think it matters, he is not going to be dropped anyway. The fact that Byrne has never got a look in when Hennelly is fit or available suggests that Bryne is well off the mark.

Completely agree. Hennelly is obviously favoured by Horan but its a complete lack of foresight not to be blooding a second goalie!

It is probably past time for GAA to start researching \ keeping stats on major injuries of Intercounty players with a view to understanding if can be reduced by taking steps under their control. E.g if more likely if play a lot of games ( solution manage game time), caused by state of pitch (solution raise standard of pitches \ be more stringent in considering them unplayable).

I may be talking rubbish as I have no hard stats but I would expect that every county panel has at least 2 season ending injuries every year. TC is very unfortunate but unlikely he will be only Mayo panel member to have a major injury before AI starts.

While TC unfortunate it gives an opportunity for someone else to step up and deliver. One of the reasons for large panels every county has is to ensure cover available for injuries.

Should we not be waiting until Division 1 is secured before trying out someone else?.

How many games did Sean Currie or Evan Comerford play for Dublin while Cluxton was available for selection does anyone know?. Very few I'd guess.

I stand to be corrected here as I am going off memory but Comerford played all the league games in 2019 and 2020. Cluxton only played championship.

Its illogical to think a lad can get to inter county standard without games. How are they expected to get to that level sitting watching the match? Granted if they are clean useless then you dont play them, but then they shouldnt be there

I think its a bit of both. If we had beaten Tyrone that would be that, Hennelly forever more, but alot of the reason people(myself included) want to see another keeper developed is because Hennelly has yet to prove himself to be as reliable as Clarke.

But for now to your point he must be the best we have!

If Hennelly gets injured during the league that will make many folks who have the hang ups very pleased and then Byrne or Reape or Jennings will get their chance. I'd hope that they would acquit themselves well, but if they didn't, I'd also hope they didn't have to put up with the absolute sh*t that's been thrown at Robbie.

Its not that I don't like Reape or Byrne or Jennings. I've nothing whatsoever against them. They may have county medals but they play for different teams who all have different attributes. From what I've seen of Byrne, his kickouts are poor enough and that's been demonstrated most recently when he got his chance in the FBD game against Galway. Reape has a better kickout than Byrne but is prone to error. I do think he's better placed to be ahead of Byrne, personally, but neither are in my view, near enough to Hennelly. It's an opinion - one I know that some won't share because of their hang ups with Hennelly. I get it. And for the record, I've nothing to do with Breaffy and I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've set foot in the environs of Breaffy. Just getting that in there before that gets levelled at me.

Look if we secure division one status early Horan can throw on the under 12s for all I care - my view is that the time to experiment is when you are certain of Division 1. You can have challenge games all year round for that as well.

Last week I correctly predicted a draw vs Donegal. This week I am predicting an away win in Monaghan. How do I know these things?? Well let’s just say a certain octopus named Paul told me.

Don't want to over egg the Dublin problems as it's early days yet and I know we all have our questions about Horan, but it seems like Dublin are currently struggling to manage the transition period after a number of retirements, and it puts into perspective how good a job Horan has done on that with Mayo. We all will still have our criticisms of him but a rebuilding job is something he has always had a knack for.