The 2024 All Ireland Senior Football Championship (Sam Maguire Cup)

To me, I would have subbed Comer and Walsh in the last 10 mins. 100% a poor coaching and tactical decision. Those wasteful frees, short kicking into goalie's hands and shooting into no man's land was a point lost. When you think that Galway only needed one point for extra time. They must be kicking themselves.

What a load of absolute horseplop.

Imagine blaming Jim McGuinness for anything, when:

1. Some of the football that Donegal team played was absolutely absorbing and gave us some cracking games. That team felt destined to win that All-Ireland from the second the ball was thrown up in Ulster that year.
2. It was followed up by the most exciting and entertaining team to ever play the game and indeed, probably going up against another exciting watch, in that Mayo team.

This constant negativity is absolutely exhausting. No one's forcing you to watch the game, but you add nothing by throwing out ill-informed crap like that.

Pepper your posts with some "blanket", "defence", "typical Ulster" and "puke football" tropes to really get us going. 🙄

Thought it very strange Walsh kicking that first free with his left. Was it his right hamstring giving him trouble???

That would explain him taking frees with his left, and also dropping balls short. Maybe a slight fear of damaging it again.

This would be on management. No player is going to say I'm not up to it. Manager should have taking the decision out of his hands.

Or if I remember correctly, Diarmuid Connolly took a free in an All Ireland final. Cluxton was coming up to take it, and Connolly just waved to say , its OK, I've got this.

Comer, or another team mate could have stepped in and said I'll take this. They would of known better than anyone that Walsh was struggling to kick through on the ball.

Maybe galway just lacking leadership, on and off the field

They are already trialling that

Ah I don't know Walsh has a habit of doing crazy things in games. He can be very infuriating to watch. His last free, if his hamstring was tight you'd pull it at the stage for the sake of the game. Cannot be dropping balls short at that stage.

Every single time they name the all star team on the Sunday game they see to only pick players from the semi finals onwards.Pretty sure there were only 3 or 4 teams represented on the hurling equivalent last week and there won;t be much more variety in the official all star awards named for each team either.

The all star awards are pointless, better off to have a team of the week named every week in football and hurling from the start of the league onwards and the most cumulative points picked up by players named on the team of the week gets an all star award (they could have different points allocations for each stage of the year i.e slightly higher points for championship than league) at least something like this would reward players for playing well throughout the year and not just having a standout performance in a final or semi final.

Question for those more knowledgeable than I - when was the last time 1-11 was enough to win an AI final?

Edit: quick Google suggests 2015 when Dublin beat Kerry with 0-12 to 0-09. Thought it would have been further back.

2015, Dublin beat Kerry in a poor enough match by 12 to 9

Fair play to Armagh, deserved champions this year. They took their chances in a way that other teams didn't, over and over. While somewhat defensive by historical standards, they at least try and go out and play football at times, kickpass, attack at pace etc, so probably better for the game as a whole that they won. Their win is also a welcome break from the dour, defensive tactics that Dublin have deployed over the last 8 or 9 years.

But this wasn't a very good or memorable final by any stretch and it finishes off what was a fairly worrying season for Gaelic Football. We had the (predictable) complete collapse of interest in what is the shambles of the Leinster Championship, the worst of all the provincial Championships. Then there was poor attendances across the group stages. And I find there is just a general feeling that football is not penetrating the public imagination the way it once did, and definitely not compared to hurling nowadays. Rule changes can't come quickly enough.

hahaha Dublin dour defensive tactics , that team is the greatest of all time bar none and racked up some absolutely huge numbers. I’d have hate to seen them playing attacking football, maybe they’d have had to be split in 8.

I don’t really agree to be honest, tactics in sports tend to change over time , I’m not sure if garrotting the rules is really the answer, it’s rarely seen as the answer in other sports. Bit off topic but with the introduction of all these gym bunny players they really need to change the sliothar, the ease of long range scores now is frankly ridiculous.

I think if you're looking at teams to blame due to the current style of football, you'd have to look back to the great kerry team. They were renowned for their fitness levels and hand passing game.

Ironically, Pat Spillane was lauded as one of the fittest players in the country. Probably the first forward to consistently help out in defence. Other forwards now mimic what Spillane himself started.

You just can't help yourself having a pop at Dublin at any opportunity

Soupy Norman