Mayo v Galway 26.6.11

Started by Blowitupref, May 30, 2011, 06:14:14 PM

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macdanger2

Congratulations to JH and the lads - always good to beat Galway even if the game was desperately poor.

It's hard to call the final, neither Mayo nor Ross have beaten anyone decent (I'm sure Galway & Leitrim would be the first to acknowledge this) and both have been well beaten by Longford in the last 12 months but Ross will probably be marginal favourites as it's in the Hyde.

Some of the wides from Mayo were very poor and the free-taking is an absolute joke regardless of the wind. If we don't have a freetaker then maybe we need to start playing it short and taking the return pass? Despite how poor Galway were, I think it took us 50 minutes just to draw level and if Concannon had goaled rather than pointed then you'd wonder if we would have been good enough to come back.

On the upside, midfield was very good today and the half backs & forwards won a lot of good broken ball – they seemed much sharper and hungrier than Galway (which probably wasn't hard). It will be interesting to see what Horan does the next day - will McG go straight back into MF and move one of the O'Ses to the half forward line? It would be pretty harsh to drop either of the brothers.

Higgins should have got the line, don't know what he was thinking – there didn't seem to be any lead up to it or anything. Pretty sure they can't review it now that the ref gave him a yellow so he'll be there for the final.

Barney

Well done to the lads - that was a big win and a much needed win! Hopefully it will lift some of the pressure of their shoulders which was there after the defeats to Meath, Sligo, and London and the debacle in London. It has to be looked at in the context of how poor Galway were, and the general pace of the game. However when looking trouble they dug deep at the start of the second half and pulled it back level very quickly.

Good performances all round - Seamus O'Se was excellent in midfield, emptied the tank and gave us a good platform for winning. Kevin McLoughlin got through a huge amount of work. Alan Freeman took his goal chance well when it came to him. The backs as a unit worked really hard and did well.

No doubt Keith Higgins should have walked - after getting himself sent off at a crucial juncture against Longford last year you would think he would have learned a lesson. But Rory Hickey is a bad ref - how Jason Doherty didn't get a penalty is another question that needs to be asked?

The freetaking is a huge problem - some of the efforts yesterday were embarassing. It may have not been as bad if Dillon had calmed everybody with his first free which was relatively easy. He has had very good days on frees before and as captain needs to be handed that responsibility over the next 3 weeks in preparation for the Connacht Final. It is right to bring Hennelly out for 45s. The same type of misses in Roscommon will cost us the game.

So a weight off everybody's shoulders and with nothing to lose in the Connacht Final hopefully we can get over that line.

AbbeySider

#512
Quote from: AbbeySider on June 24, 2011, 02:19:00 PM
Quote from: southsidejohnny on June 24, 2011, 01:37:16 PM
...
*garbage and negativity*
...
Truly we have sunk and next Sunday will confirm the drop. Back door will nail it home.

You will be eating your words on Monday. Im backing Mayo by 4-6 points on PaddyPower at 9/2. Nice bet. 


:D :D :D

highorlow

QuoteIt may have not been as bad if Dillon had calmed everybody with his first free which was relatively easy.

James Horan referred to this alright on the SG but didn't go into too much detail. I think the plan B was for the players to sort it among themselves, plan C was for the goalie to come up. Plan C worked! We need a new plan A though.

I think Dillion made the same error in the county final  from a 20 yard free.

Do freeman or doherty take frees at club level? Its a simple enough problem to fix, we need someone for the close in frees from the left and the right. The goalie is our obvious freetaker for the far out ones and for the 50's.
They get momentum, they go mad, here they go

Cosmo Kramer

I just cannot understand the messing with the frees. Jason Doherty was kicking them over for fun for NUIG earlier in the year. O'Connor is well able to hit frees as well. I had assumed that was the reason he was picked to start against Galway but apparently not. Dillon is too unpredictable on them at this stage and should not take any in the Connacht final. Anything outside 40 metres and we will have to bring up Feeney or Hennelly, none of our inside forwards have the range, but the situation that has developed with the close in frees is ridiculous and it reflects badly on JH that he has not been able to sort it.

Galwayman - do you really think getting rid of O'Flatharta is going to help - getting rid of Forde, Sammon or Kernan didn't. Kevin Walsh will probably be available but would you want him? The under-21 guy is probably best left with the 21s for the time being. Actually its interesting that Galway played Cavan in the U-21 final this year because if any two teams need a heap of new players to come in to get back to where they feel they should be its those two. Both counties also prove that changing the manager again and again is a pointless exercise.
A few Mayo GAA videos if anyone is interested - www.youtube.com/CosmoKramer100

Halfquarter

What we need now is a settled team,something we have not had for about 5 years.

Maybe then we will see confidence grow and  see some leaders emerge.

It is difficult to be a leader if you don't know you are going to be a regular on the team.
A lot of the players are about the same standard so it is difficult to decide on the formation ,if we had a smaller selection
like some counties it would be easier to select  a settled team
In my opinion it does not necessarily need to be the 15 best players in the county but it would be nice if 12 or 13 of the best were included.

Rossfan

Quote from: muppet on June 27, 2011, 12:21:01 AM

Ros will still be the reddest of hot favourites the next day.  ;D
Mayowestros 4/7
Rest of Co Roscommon 5/4
Davy's given us a dream to cling to
We're going to bring home the SAM

Bomber2312

anyone of the opinion that the referee gave out yellows awful easy yday?

Chimley

I think that Tom Cunniffe would certainly agree but his corner back colleague might have a different view.

Bomber2312

well the higgins incident is a different matter, but feeney got an early yellow for very little aswel?

muppet

RTE were annoying me with their criticism of referees in general in both games. Yes there were a few obvious mistakes but are they now going to spend each week picking on the easy target?

The above was what I going to post until I saw the finish of the Dublin v Kildare game. No further comment.
MWWSI 2017

Duine Eile

Christ it's a depressing Monday to be a Galway follower! :-[ I've never left a match so disgusted. The only lads that can come away fromthis with their heads held high are Adrian Faherty, Colin Forde and Johnny Duane, the rest just didn't turn up. While it's very easy to blame the management they were responsible for a lot of the crap on show yesterday. Half back line was a disgrace, Greg Higgins was beat up a stick by Dillon all day and was left on him, midfield was a disaster, Joe Bergin only seemed to have one workin arm, why he couldn't go up with two hands for any ball was vexing especially when there was nobody there to catch the breaks, Finian Hanley god love him hadn't a clue what he was doing, he's a full back not a midfielder and this experiment just hasn't worked, just because he's tall doesn't make him a midfielder! Half forward line were another catastrophe, Concannon did nothing all day except blaze the ball over the bar when he had an open goal, Hehir was anonymous and will want to forget his senior debut, Bradshaw I presume was meant to stay around midfield and mop up breaking ball, that didn't happen. Padraic Joyce in the corner was just plain stupid, the man hasn't the legs he used to have, he never plays in the corner, 11 or 14 are the positions for him, straight in front of the posts where he can work an angle for himself. I presume the idea of playing Conroy at 14 was to pump the ball in high and for Padraic and Bane to work off him, kind of hard for that to happen when they spent most of the time passing back and over around midfield. Bane scored 4 fine points and got taken off in the 2nd half? If I was him I'd be rightly browned off. The sub decisions didn't make a bit of sense either, bringing on Blake for Hehir, as if we hadn't enough backs on! Micheal Boyle blazed a trail through the u-21 championship, why wasn't he sent on? Throwing Meehan into the deep end when the damage was already done, Mattie Clancy again thrown on and ended up getting swallowed up nearly everytime he got the ball, he slips and slides on a dry day never mind a day like yesterday. We're going to get beaten by Meath and badly beaten if players aren't played in proper positions. The players themselves also have a lot to answer for, there was no pride in the jersey out there yesterday, once Mayo went one ahead every Galway supporter knew that was it, we wouldn't be able to come back because these lads don't seem to want to battle and grind out a win anymore. Against Meath I'd like to see Finian Hanley restored to no.3, move Colin Forde to the corner or to no.6. Bradshaw and Sice on the wings, think we're stuck with Bergin at midfiled for the moment, move out Conroy with him or else throw on one of the u-21s, not sure what the story with Armstrong is but I doubt he'll be fit for Navan, Meehan will hardly be ready for a full 70 yet, I'd have Padraic at 14, I'd start Boyle before Hehir, one thing Boyle isn't short on is confidence and that's one thing the Galway lads seemed to be lacking yesterday. The amount of stupid fouling and misplaced passes was unreal, real basic stuff. One point in 35 minutes is an embarrassing statistic. According to Ray Silke the only team Galway have beaten in championship since 2008 is New York, tells its own tale really.  :-\

An Gaeilgoir

Quote from: Cosmo Kramer on June 27, 2011, 10:01:10 AM
I just cannot understand the messing with the frees. Jason Doherty was kicking them over for fun for NUIG earlier in the year. O'Connor is well able to hit frees as well. I had assumed that was the reason he was picked to start against Galway but apparently not. Dillon is too unpredictable on them at this stage and should not take any in the Connacht final. Anything outside 40 metres and we will have to bring up Feeney or Hennelly, none of our inside forwards have the range, but the situation that has developed with the close in frees is ridiculous and it reflects badly on JH that he has not been able to sort it.

Galwayman - do you really think getting rid of O'Flatharta is going to help - getting rid of Forde, Sammon or Kernan didn't. Kevin Walsh will probably be available but would you want him? The under-21 guy is probably best left with the 21s for the time being. Actually its interesting that Galway played Cavan in the U-21 final this year because if any two teams need a heap of new players to come in to get back to where they feel they should be its those two. Both counties also prove that changing the manager again and again is a pointless exercise.

It doesn't reflect badly on JH in my opinion that the free taker issue wasn't dealt with up to now. There were a lot more fundamental issues with this mayo team up to yesterday  and free taking was well down the line. Rome wasn't built in a day and i have no doubt that the free taking issue will be resolved before the Hyde. Horan has turned this team around from a pretty low base and if the same rate of improvement is made between now and the CF, we won't be far off the mark in the hyde.It is however, crazy that mayo do not seem to have an intercounty footballer who is capable of slotting over a free kick, off the ground or out of the hands from within 35 yards, surely every forward and half forward has this kind of range to some degree.

venter

Good to beat the old enemy. As the saying goes, you cant beat them often enough or by enough. There was a galway flag flying at half mast at the factory beside us here in Tuam this morning

Positives from yesterday:
Alan Feeney looks like a decent full back. He had a good solid game.
Kevin Mcloughlin. Hoovered up a lot of ball and is a real natural footballer (begs the question as to why he was benched for London game??)
Seamus O'Se had solid game for the 60 minutes or so that he was on
Alan Freeman. Got limited enough amount of ball but still scored 1-02. class act.
Good second half will hopefully give the team a bit of momentum for the final

Negatives:
Free taking calamity. What is Horan at? He had 4 different freetakers inside 20 minutes.
Dillon not able to kick the ball over from anything outside 25yards. (good player,and in most people's view, our best forward,  but he wouldnt cut it on any of the contenders teams ie Cork,Kerry)
K Higgins acting the clown.
The keepers studs... He was like a baby giraffe on ice.


AbbeySider

I wont add much to whats already being said. It was a terrible game indeed but the conditions didnt help. Mayo showed some glimpses in the second half and will gain some confidence from the win. The win will also help get rid of the memory of the London game and help us move on from last season.

Regarding the match itself; I was happy enough with the defence but they will face sterner tests in the future. Galway were fairly poor so its not a game that we will have found out much from.

In fairness to the O Sheas they did very well at midfield. Seamus O Shea especially showed great hunger and was the driving force for us around the middle and I think he surprised a few people. He would be one of my nominations for man of the match.

Elsewhere the other initial worries, Vaughan and Trevor Mortimor, both had a decent game. I think that it was O Heirs first championship start for the seniors but Vaughan did well on him which is all we can ask. Mortimer was also effective even though he did a couple of crazy things. His workrate was first rate.

The free taking was bad even though the wind was tricky to kick against. Dillon and AOS will be disappointed with their own free taking but I can see them trying to correct that on the training ground before the Connacht final so we will see an improvement. It would be a big call to take the frees off Dillon altogether after one bad day at the office. Players at all levels go through games like that so I wouldnt panic just yet.

Regarding the 45's, again its disappointing that we dont have a freetaker on the panel that is good enough or confident enough from the ground but what do you do? Its something that Mayo have missed since Maurice Sheridan and since then not many players would stick out in my mind that would be near as capable.

If you list all the current top clubs freetakers from the ground you dont come up with too many names that are
A. Consistent enough at scoring 45's
B. Good enough a player for the responsibility at county level

Would someone care to help with the list to see what I am getting at (and correct me if I am wrong)?

Club players who take 45's
(clubs in no particular order apart from Ballintubber being at the top as we are the best ;p )

Ballintubber - Padraic O Connor (not playing county football)
Castlebar - Richie Feeney (is he consistent enough? )
Knockmore - Kilcoyne (not playing county football)
Crossmolina - Ian Roland (not playing county football)
Ballaghadreen - David Kilcullen (not playing county football)
Charlestown - Mulligan(?) (not playing county football)
Ballinrobe - O Malley (goal keeper - not playing county football)
Breaffy - Durkin(?) (not playing county football)
Ballina - ?

Its Ok giving out and winging about it, but until someone like that young Quirke lad breaks through the ranks and proves he can do it at senior level I think we are better off leaving 45's to the keeper as I dont see an alternative at the minute.