Mayo GAA Discussion

The Rochford, McStay, McHale card would lead me to believe it isn't genuine. Would McStay be happy to play second fiddle to him? Would Rochford really pick McStay and McHale... Both strong personalities and a bit of a duo, the balance of power wouldn't be what a manager would want imo. I just can't see how that trio would work in balance.

I like the look of the Dempsey card and it's more or less what I would have expected.

Its like people put a bunch of names into a hat and started drawing them out.

I wouldn't believe any of it.

Probably on the condition that he didn't get the Mayo job

That makes a bit more sense alright.

Unusual that Rochford seems to have settled for an assistant role these days, you would think that he would want another crack at the top job, but maybe that role suits him better.

I’d be absolutely delighted if that comes to pass

It would be a big boost to the older players like Keegan in my opinion . I hope he makes

Him captain 

Mcstay is surely highly regarded and respected. He is the front man 

Rochford will be the brains behind the scene . He surely has to have their respect 

Buckley. No need to say anything . Highly respected .

Mulligan - win intermediate with Belmullet . North Mayo representative. Very smart move by Mcstay .

McHale - he apparently isn’t liked by all the players. But maybe that’s a good thing …….

I didn't see Buckley when I read the article first.

Too busy trying to type my anti-McHale rant :)

But yeah, Rochford and Buckley on the same ticket, that's good, McHale would only be window dressing in that case.

What I noticed was missing from Mayo recently was that really tough, hard agressive tackling that we were used to in previous years.

That hard edge that I believe I saw the best of in the 2016 final, where every time a Dublin player got the ball there was a Mayo man there to knock him on his ass.

That was Buckley's work, we need that back.

Hard to know if the mcstay ticket would be a good move. Rochford has already managed most of these lads and buckley has coached them. Would that familiarity be an issue for mcstay to manage the team?

Also, he is a bit too nice to my mind. We dont need another manager talking about how good a group these lads are and how lucky we are to have them. We need someone to be a bit more cold and calculated with them I feel.

I like the idea of paul galvin being involved personally. He has flagged our insistance of soloing the ball for the sake of it, instead of getting it to the forward early from a long way back.

McHale was involved with Maughan in 2004 and Maughan was very much a laps of the field guy.

My beef with him comes from an Off The Ball (the original Off The Ball) interview he did after Mayo's 2006 loss to Kerry.

He was very critical of the management that night.

My thoughts were "you were in the same position yourself two years earlier and you did just as bad, you are in no position to criticize the current management "

I also think that the fact that the players were against him in 2014 is telling.

Theses were the new Mayo who had spent the last 4 seasons bringing Mayo from being a laughing stock to serious consistent competitors.

They wanted no part of McHale.

They knew it would be a regressive step.

True, but a few high profile ones are still knocking around! Id like a fresh set of eyes personally, be it old allegiances or old gripes from not getting jobs previously - none of that stuff is positive I feel.

You would wonder how nobody from outside the county seems to be getting a mention

Pretty sneaky of mcstay to leak his (pretty star studded) team like that. Clearly designed to put the pressure on just a day before nominations close, not really the right way to do it imo. I guess he feels like he was burned back in 2014 in an unfair way

Hard to fault his backroom team though, will be interesting to see what the other nominations are comprised of

Over on the football championship thread there is a Meath poster called Sonny something or other who posts huge long posts.

Anyway in the middle of one a few days ago he mentioned Buckley being part of O'Rourke's Meath setup.

If that is true then it's either aspirational from O'Rourke or McStay or from both of them to be including Buckley in their plans.

A lot of cooks in the kitchen in that backroom team...

With such a big backroom team plus mcstay how will they pay for it?

Cute move alright but it might not play well with influential people and fwiw id prefer things to stay behind closed doors, we don't need this appointment process becoming a media circus.