Mayo GAA Discussion

Dublin it is.

The wind was a huge factor - Tommy Conroy's first effort made that clear to me from the start that it was having an impact. We were fortunate that were able to make better use of it than our hosts.

I think there's an element for PJ that his hatred of Mayo clouds his judgement. I believe it was mentioned on one of the podcasts when we drew with Galway in the league that you could see how much he felt the need to get one over on us, and that if it meant that much to him that it really meant too much. I'm sure that has to feed into the dressing room too.

PJ was an outstanding player but I 'm not convinced he's cut out for management.

Its the speed of the the ball of the surface I think rather than the size of the field

Lads talking about how it Galway were unlucky with injuries need to look at PJ, he has run injured players into the ground on a consistent basis.

A real basic and bitter manager who fails to see the bigger picture. I'm not sure how he has gotten away with it, but he has a lot of built-up credit from his playing days I suppose.

Putting myself at risk of getting shot down in flames, but does anyone reckon our lack of breaking ball winning was down to not having Loftus there to do it?. He does usually mop up a fair bit when he's on the pitch.

AOS and Bob Touhy in midfield to try and nullify McCarthy and Fentons athleticism. Mayo did very well to win without a midfield yesterday. Dublin will run over us like a freight train if we set up like yesterday. For me this is the weakest Mayo squad in over a decade and any other county would consider a league win and QF a huge success in 1st year of what is a new development. If Mayo get beaten convincingly which ai think they will the same old clichéd insults will be flunģ at them.

The first half kickouts yesterday were horrendous, seemed to be trying the same thing over and over again with the same result. Hession coming on at half time definitely seemed to help with this, think he got 2 short ones himself, and his movement made it less difficult for Reape to find a man.

Despite his form you'd think Ruane has to come back in really, we're badly stuck around the middle. As for the backs, would love to see Hession in for McLaughlin and then the other 5 that started yesterday.

Paddy Power have Kerry Tyrone down for 1 45 on Sunday, and us at 4

That is the least likely pairing if games imo

They will be the second Saturday game and ours will be the second Sunday game

Every chance but hopefully they're not stupid enough to make it that obvious.

AOS and Touhy... To combat Dublin's athleticism... In what way exactly? AOS isn't a mobile midfielder and Touhy has a few years to go to be up to pace imo. They would be my least likely pairing to play against Dublin.

Ruane and Flynn would be my pairing. Ruane hasn't been at the races for most of the year but he's built for running up and down Croke Park.

Ruane has a great engine but the issues with midfield were there when he was starting. He can't seem to cleanly field a ball, which is literally the problem with everyone in that area of the team at the moment and it's a huge part of why we're losing the kickouts. We are struggling on primary possession and the breaking ball. Dublin will press like crazy the next day, so we need to have some plan.

02.07.2023 (Sun)

GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Quarter-Finals

 Páirc an Chrócaigh 13:45 Derry v Cork RTE

Referee: Joe McQuillan, An Cabhán (E.T. & Winner on the Day)

Páirc an Chrócaigh 16:00 Dublin v Mayo RTE

Referee: David Gough, An Mhí (E.T. & Winner on the Day)

Ya your probably right about Touhy and right about AOS too nowadays I suppose. I just think we need height in the middle third. We had nobody to field a hig ball yesterday and Reapes kickouts were a shambles because he had no outlet. We didn't win much breaking ball there either. Looking back it's hard figure how we did win. But ya Touhy too inexperienced and Aiden not mobile enough. The more I think on it the more I think Dublin will win pulling up.

Valid question/hypothesis but wouldn't think it had too much to do with it.

Conor wins the odd break in there, as does DOC/Paddy/Stephen/Jack (Coyne and Carney)/Jordan/Mattie/Fionn/Enda/Aido/the rest. Or, at least, usually they do. We were just getting well beat to them yesterday. Partly strategy (Galway frequently outnumbered us heavily at the break), partly outmuscled or outbattled (Conor might have helped on that one relative to Jason/Kevin), partly bad luck (with balls just breaking the wrong side or an inch or two out of reach) and a few times too often simply fumbled/dropped when it could/should have been a clean catch.

Easy to get caught up with the statistics and see it as a big trend that might potentially have a singular cause but it was a pattern that emerged from a few different issues/mistakes/losses repeating independently rather than that one specific thing (unless we want to say lack of individuals able to win their 1v1 matchups aerially but again, wouldn't imagine Conor alone could make much impact there).

I'd tend to give Galway full credit on this one. They worked incredibly hard to prevent the easy short ones or lads breaking at pace to space unmarked (aided by the breeze which made the accuracy on anything less than a give-me too risky to try) and then used their height and physicality around the middle to bully us. Nobody else left in the competition has that height/physicality though (they were probably the best at this last year too even without Cooke) so wouldn't be 'as' worried going into a future game of it breaking in quite the same manner, especially without the Salthill wind tunnel.