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reckon this mayo team has got legs and will be focussing on working on the areas that they learned lessons from yesterday. you can't buy experience like that and you'd expect they'll go over it with a fine tooth comb. it's a bit unreasonable expecting a county that has been in the doldrums recently to have the know-how to win an AI, new manager and all that. mayo's 2012 championship starts now, sifting through the ashes. i don't prescribe to the notion that they don't have enough fiepower up front, or are lacking in skill or talent. they've plenty of that imo, it's just they need to learn from what went wrong and get grafting. be interesting to see them after this.

mayo will know themselves they didn't perform well today. it's a shame, after doing well in the exchanges at the start, they coughed up a lot of ball unnecessarily... and if there was a wrong option to take they took it too often. kerry'll be looking forward to an el classico now against the dubs eh.

come on mayo!

going on that last dub performance, the effort needed to keep in touch with them in the first half will be huge, like a sevens game or something for the amount of running needed. we'll need to have the shooting boots on and take our chances too, but there might be a bit more space in the second half for our half backs to get forward more in support to make things a bit more difficult to defend against. one thing this donegal side don't do is throw the towel in. the team spirit is really strong and ingrained, so i just can't see dublin getting out of sight enough to finish us off by a big margin. dubs favourites aye, but you wouldn't put the house on it. it could go down to the last few minutes and that's when the crack will start. both teams have been taken to the wire and beyond this season and come out on top, so i doubt if either will choke. could be an epic.       

reckon he has a fetish for donegal. 

of all the sides left, kerry have the least interesting narrative. for them, it's the same old same old. expecting to win themselves and by most others too. if any of the rest win it'll be a great sporting story.

There's too much being made of Dublin conceding 15 points to Tyrone IMO, a good number of those scores came from soft frees and a few were exceptional scores (O'Neill's 1st & Cavanagh's sideline into the hill) but most importantly many of them came late when the game was won. Dublin didn't have to batten down the hatches and conceding 15 points is not an indication of a defence that gives up scores easily. I expect the Dublin defenders will stay back and help nullify the Donegal FF line so I don't see Donegal getting much more than 8 or 9 scores, I think Dublin can get more than that

i'd agree with this. the final score in the dub/tyrone match wasn't a true reflection of how dominant dublin were. it was a testament to tyrone's spirit and doggedness that the margin was what it ended up being. and perhaps dublin did slacken off at the end and conceded some ground to protect against goal opportunities. what i do think is that tyrone went hell for leather from the get go and couldn't match what dublin had brought. and donegal seem to have a tendancy to start slowly as an attacking unit. defensively we get up to speed fairly quickly, but it seems to be that this isn't the case going forward and it isn't until we haven't had a score in yonks, that the players throw caution to the wind and come out and go for it. and that's what we need to do against dublin to win. do or die from the whistle. it wll be no use trying to fend off dublin, reliant on our defence. dublin's forwards are too good not to be able to keep the score board ticking over. i also think this donegal team has more in them. it hasn't clicked for us for the entire game, but i think that that type of performance is there. whether they can turn it on in croker sunday week is anyone's guess and whether that will be enough on the day, who knows?! it's been great to watch them this year. they've taken a lot of stick for tactics but they're never faltered and each game they've been better and looked more assured and together. they're having the time of their lives i reckon and they'll give dublin a game for sure.   

So this weekends viewing will be

SAT
Donegal v Kildare, Croke Park 6.00pm (Live on RTÉ Two & RTÉ.ie)

SUN
Kerry v Limerick, Croke Park 2.00pm (Live on RTÉ Two & RTÉ.ie)
Cork v Mayo, Croke Park 4.00pm (Live on TV3)



Are BBC not carrying Tyrone and Ros game?

They don't have the rights for Qualifier matches. The Donegal-Kildare quarter-final is on BBC2

the championship, the bbc2 NI championship, was available over in eng on monday's after the sunday it was shown over there up until the ulster final. haven't seen it on here since. i'd complain if i thought they gave a damn.

more crack in the pub watching it anyways.

dublin rightly go into this one as favs. the intensity of their training regime is scary and they'll have huge belief going into this one. having said that, mcguinness also seems to be a wily character and the way he's turned us around has been something. i'm guessing he won't be straying too far from the tactics that have got us this far. couple of opportune scores here or there is what it's going to take. it'll be very tight imo and i'm hoping for an epic battle.

oh to be a fly on the wall at both training camps to see how they're prepping for this one. 

hello... the way i see it, donegal have a few areas we can improve on tha'll give us a better chance. our distribution, especially from defence into attack, needs sorting. mchugh at times runs into traffic, relying on drawing a foul when he's isolated. dublin defenders might prove too cute for this and and one or two of our defenders seem to panic slightly, or not concentrate on their passing.

our defence is solid enough and i'm hoping we'll be able to come out even stevens in midfield, it's the attacking and the getting the ball to our forwards that i'd be worried a wee bit about.

donegal by 6.

amen.