Enjoy!!
Old thread here......
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057962937/mayo-gaa-discussion-part-4#latest
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Green Peter - Permanent
Man Vs ManUre until 9/05/23
Plus, it's giving me bad memories.
More of the here and now please.
Would Oisín even make the team now😜
Alas the Hype Train™ hasn't reached Australia yet it seems but if you're missing Oisin you can watch him butchering the Irish language every Tuesday night on RTE 1....
Western had it for 14:45 back in December.
Someone mentioned it being wrong (at 12:45) on the Scór Beo app recently too so probably some typo or bad information floating around somewhere or other.
RTE website definitely had it as 1245 last weekend, not sure if that was an error or not. GAA ticketing website is showing 1445 so I presume that's correct
Was the throw in time for Sunday changed to 2:45 or was it always that time? Could have sworn rte website had it down as 12:45 when I checked it on Sunday.
While we're reminiscing
It's raining in Mayo heartland and hearts as the inquests begin
Mayo reaction to All-Ireland SFC humiliation: Keith Duggan on the anger and disappointment in the county at their latest setback
In a Shakespearean touch, it has not stopped raining in the west since Sunday. The rain buckets down on Mayo and there is nothing for it but to bemoan another distorted and inglorious All-Ireland defeat.
Mickey Moran and John Morrison have, understandably, asked for a few days of solitude. Morrison did make encouraging sounds on Sunday night after reviewing the day's events and promising the management would, given time, sit down with the players individually and try to work out what was going on in their heads.
He vowed Mayo would be back, which was at least an early indication the Ulster men are planning to return for the second year of their managerial term.
For the players, the Mayo club championship looms large, but after a desperately subdued return to the Welcome Inn in Castlebar, the squad officially broke up, a dismaying end to a greatly promising season.
Much more so than in 2004, when there were clear signs that Mayo were labouring in the build-up to the All-Ireland final, the nature of last Sunday's defeat remains inexplicable and, for many supporters, unacceptable.
The reaction lies between crushing disappointment and outright anger.
After sitting through The Sunday Game as a panellist, former Mayo star Kevin McStay headed home and wrote a very strong column for the Mayo News arguing that enough was enough.
"I wasn't angry, it wasn't that," he explains, "as an ex-player, you know what it feels like to get walloped and it isn't pleasant to pick up a newspaper or listen to a radio and see a former player cutting the socks of you. But driving home, I thought of my own people who came over here from Boston thinking, 'God, if they won and I wasn't there, I'd never forgive myself'. Nobody put a gun to their heads, but it was an awful lot of time and effort and hundreds of people did the same.
"And it was hard to square off that collective effort with what we saw on the field. The bit that killed me was that apparent lack of ordinary effort, the simple blocking and tackling. That feeling that this game was the biggest day in their lives.
"And I have been critical of David Brady in the past, but I take my hat off to him because he stood up to be counted when he went in. But I felt that there weren't that many standing with him."
Amid the disappointment, theories and criticisms abound. That Mayo did not set out with an obvious contingency plan to counter the threat of Kieran Donaghy has been the chief criticism. But there were problems all over the field and Kerry were masterful in quietening Mayo's key men.
As Jack O'Connor remarked with a satisfied grimace on Sunday evening, they "cracked" the Mayo midfield. Contrary to pre-match expectations, Tommy Griffin was the key man. The heavyweight pair of Darragh Ó Sé and Ronan McGarritty sort of cancelled each other out.
"Yeah, but Mayo needed more than for Darragh Ó Sé to be quiet," counters McStay. "We needed Ronan McGarrity to be huge."
Once again, Tom O'Sullivan hounded Conor Mortimer, although a substantial argument can be made that the Shrule man never got quality ball and was playing a dead match before he got his first meaningful touch.
Aidan O'Mahony marked Ciarán McDonald diligently, tracking the Mayo playmaker back and coolly kicking two points when the opportunities presented themselves as the Crossmolina man, with increasing desperation, tried to make things happen.
"And the explanation for Alan Dillon's game is that once Mayo's overall game plan was obliterated, his role effectively disappeared," adds McStay.
Still, it is the minor details that haunt him. He instances a sequence when a clearance by Séamus Moynihan was half-blocked down. A Mayo player, racing into defence, was too distracted or rushed to notice that the ball was about to fall near him - as he tore back to cover, Paul Galvin was racing the other way, alive to the break.
For Donaghy's goal, he noticed a defender was torn between his natural defensive instinct to race to David Heaney's assistance and a fear of leaving his own man unmarked. That second of hesitation was fatal. "We were bamboozled. And there are plenty of examples, I don't want to pick on individual players."
Anyway, it is as a unit that Mayo failed. And as the team and county go back to the drawing board, there may be a loudening clamour for a fundamental change of the fast and open attacking game that Mayo play.
Mayo are comfortably a Division One team and, as regular provincial championship contenders, a reasonable bet for the last eight of the championship. But there is a mounting feeling that if they are to push on, they will need to play a more sinister and narrow-minded game.
"I don't know if that is the way," argues McStay. "Our style is our style. And when it is good, it is very pleasing to the eye. If we were to go the other way and try and embrace the darker side, as they say, I am not sure we are cute enough to pull it off.
"Take a guy like David Brady, one of the toughest players on the Mayo team, but I am not sure he would be able to adapt to playing the game on the borders of the rules the whole time."
Like most Mayo football people, McStay is uncertain as to where or how things will go from here. Leaving Croke Park last week, he met a former Kerry great who was genuinely troubled and perplexed about Mayo's fretful showing. But speaking of the three most impressive forwards who played for Mayo this year, he noted that only Dillon, the industrious, roving wing forward, would have fitted comfortably into the contemporary demands of the Kerry panel.
"What he was saying was that only Dillon, with his direct approach and incredible work ethic, would have been acceptable to Kerry. I suppose that is a reflection of how we play the game in Mayo. There is an extravagance to our game.
"Being honest, I suppose I liked being that bit extravagant when I was playing myself. And I look back and think, God above, why didn't someone grab me and shout stop. But I suppose it goes back to the way we play the game."
And all they can do is keep on playing and keep clinging to the word that has trailed them all summer - faith.
Bloody hell
I come back and see 3 pages and think maybe Oisin Mulllin has got as excited as us and flown home
Nope it’s just a good auld Clarke/Hennelly debate :(
I’ll leave it with a repeat of my earlier comment. If it wasn’t blindingly obvious to some that kickouts at the end of the drawn game cost us about 4 points, it certainly was obvious to others.
“for all the comments that people have about Robbie in that replay, there was a clear reason at the end of that drawn game for Robbie’s selection in the replay.
If Rochford didn’t spot the issue, that would have been a failure of management.
If he spotted the issue and failed to act on it, it would have been a failing of management.
The decision to start Robbie in the replay was in my view 100% justified.”
It’s been done to death at this stage.
I have always rated Hennelly highly and think he should be our number 1 this year.
However, changing goalkeeper for an AI final replay is daft. The fact Clarke had one bad kickout 12 months later doesn't prove anything. Sure he won an All star and was nominated for player of the year.
Can we leave the Clarke/Hennelly debate in the past? It's been done to death over the years since then.
''wasn't a big surprise'':::: everybody was surprised it was one of the if not the biggest decision I ever saw in a final........by a country mile. Everybody was surprised pundits, supporters even other managers.
Was it Clarke fault the kickouts were going wrong. Was the first day not the day that Aidan O Shea was put in FF for the last ten minutes and did not stay in there and ended up kicking in a sideline ball instead of being in underneath it.
And ya Hennelly should have been substituted after 20-25 minutes at the replay he had completely cracked under the pressure.
I seem to recall Clarke kicking one out over the sideline while Coen was free and unmarked the other side towards the end of that 2017 final but yeah, Hennelly.
Cheers...all those games kinda blend into one massive trauma for me tbh 😂
Worth looking at the last 20 minutes of the 2016 final, poor kick outs let Dublin get there points on the spin. Hennelly was sent out to warm up in that game. Wasn't such a big surprise Clarke was dropped. Issue for me was not subbing him on at half time in the replay as RH wasn't having the hoped for impact. Management needed the courage of their convictions either way
2016 replay was the goalkeeper switch.
For the 2017 final, against the same opposition, Clarke was picked and our kickouts didn't fall apart by any means.
That's why I don't understand people still saying it was correct to make such a risky call for an AI final replay.
Re: 2017.....I remember being in Dublin the morning of the final and the shock around the place when the news broke that Clarke was dropped.
It's one of those margin calls that if it came off and we'd won, Rochford would have been hailed as a genius.
A Clarke-Hennelly hybrid would be the perfect goalie
Why was Clarke picked to play in the 2017 final if his kickouts weren't going to work vs Dublin?
Of course there are things that could have been worked on in the 2 week. Players bunching in the middle and breaking to the wings, overloading one side of the pitch etc. God forbid the 2 O'Sheas and Parsons would take a bit of responsibility for winning the kickout too!
Hennelly was always better at that side of the game, but bringing him in in that situation was complete madness. That's not just hindsight either.
Fair enough. I think Hennelly is more likely to score some distance frees though - they're 50/50 efforts - but outside Reape's range. Reape's technique is very good though, very like Rory Beggan and Niall Morgan. Reape needs to learn to become really aggressive around the square. Don't worry about fouls, the ref will nearly always side with the goalie.
The bullsh*t being circulated by malcontents in the pub or on whatsapp was that "the management was unduly influenced by a couple of players in the team from the same club". I dont recall any "information" that backed that up though. Feel free to share however if you have some.
What Reape has above Hennelly is a boomer of a kickout, he can hit the far 45, really important when teams go full press, Reape can kick over that press
All the talk in 2017 was about the perceived weakness of Clarke's kickouts. He had an unusual kicking style that was too easy to attack and it wasn't going to be fixable at that stage of his career. Everyone knew it. The management at the time made a calculation based on the stats available. Robbie has a better kickout and did in 2017 too. Obviously stats don't always align with temperament and it was ultimately too much to ask of Robbie to go into a final basically cold. They made a judgement call and it didn't work out. Another day, it might have.
How do people still think that really happened. At the time, I thought it was a very rash decision. But in hindsight, it was definitely worth a gamble by management. We have seen since that Hennelly continued to develop his kick-outs. David Clarke didn't or couldn't. In the past 6 or 7 years, you can't have a goalie that floats a kickout up in the air, and cannot ping the ball to a teammate without a bit of speed in it.
If you think Clarke could could have sorted his kickouts in the two weeks between those finals then you're deluded.
Clarke was a wonderful keeper but he really struggled when kickouts became a more important part of the game towards the second half of his career.
Hennelly is and was far better in that regard so I can completely see where the decision to start him in the replay came from. It was a big ask though asking a keeper to come in from the cold on such a big occasion.
The decision didn't work but if I remember correctly 3-4 points came directly from poor kickouts from Clarke in the first game. Those sort of mistakes don't live as long in the memory as a mistake for a goal but they have a similar impact.
That’s horseshit.
Of I remember that game Clarke had a good game. Not perfect but a fairly solid game. The information is the management was unduly influenced by a couple of players in the team from the same club.
Disagree with that. Clarke lost a few kickouts in the drawn game, so what? We had 2 weeks to work on mixing our kickouts up a bit for the replay. It wasn't a binary choice of changing the goalkeeper or do nothing! Clarke's kickouts in the 2017 final were fine by and large.
Nothing against Robbie BTW, personally I always thought it a 50:50 call between them. However you can't change goalkeepers from game to game like a corner forward.
That final disaster was predominantly down to management selection IMO.
All water under the bridge now of course!
for all the comments that people have about Robbie in that replay, there was a clear reason at the end of that drawn game for Robbie’s selection in the replay.
The decision to start Robbie in the replay was in my view 100% justified.
13 and 21 ?
no, your taking my comments out of context. in the plainest way i can put it, he has a national medal in his back pocket that says he can cope under pressure. Iv often criticised him, and rightly so, but mentioning his buckling under pressure time and time again, i dont think is really warranted.
If you recall the disaster final, he was brought in for the replay. that should be on rochford to bear the brunt of that poor decision, not hennelly. IF you or I or anyone else was brought in, knowing youve really got to perform, and knowing youve created a rift within the team, the pressure is much much more than just losing a final.
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