Messages

I agree that square ball serves very little purpose as it is now, I don't really see the benefit in maintaining it.  Whilst we are re-drawing the lines, could I also suggest that the penalty area is brought out to the '21 and made about 5 yards wider on either side also.  Relative to the size of the pitch the current penalty area is very small and so many goal chances are lost to minor fouls 14/15 yards from goal.

Goes to show you what referees have to deal with when those are being thrown up as contentious.

I'm surprised we've got this far without acknowledging that Beggan was actually launching it into the square!

I saw Eoin Donnelly do similar a couple of times for Fermanagh, and I was never quite sure if he was shooting or not either.  Personally for me, it either needs to contain individual flair/skill or be a fantastic team score.  A one off shot whilst often superb, is pretty common.  I can think of similar scores from my own club men over the years.  But when I look at some of the scores from Canavan, Clifford or Matt Connor, you don't see that replicated  much at all because of the level of skill, balance, poise, composure etc.  I'm sure there are others too.

*Please don't post that James McCartan point v Derry where he runs 40 steps like a little terrier, it's an amazing feat of tenacity but doesn't belong here!

Championship should absolutely be linked to leagues. if you're div 1 league you're playing against better teams and therefore your team are used to playing at a higher standard than those playing in the divisions below, I honestly cant understand how anyone can say a div 1 team are a Junior club

But equally can't see how playing in a League that is set to run without county players etc. means a team who managed to reach Division 1 and barely held on means they'll be good enough for Senior. Especially when their Championship results over last 8 years show they deserved to be a Junior team.

Is it hard to understand that a diluted League with no County men might not be the best judge of a team?

They stayed in Div 1 mainly wihtout their county men so surely they are stronger with them?

All 3 of Cavan's provincial representatives Senior (Gowna), Intermediate (Ballyhaise) & Junior (Arva) play in Cavan Division 1.

Cavan people think this is perfectly normal. Imagine Tyrone sending the team that finished 13th in Division 1 (Coalisland) to play in the Ulster Junior.

Arva lost to Drumlane last year in the Cavan Junior Final. Drumlane then lost to the Stewartstown in the Ulster Final. Why not look at the actual games rather than an imaginary scenario?

I'm familiar with Stewartstown, for all intents and purposes they're a middling Intermediate team that slipped into junior (Covid-related) and came right back up again. So for a Cavan Junior team to take them to extra time leads me to believe that like Stewartstown, they're not actually Junior standard.

So what you are saying is that Stewartstown shouldn't have been a Junior team but nevertheless ended up a Junior team, despite this being based on the presumed correct way of doing things via the league.  Have yous thought of basing the gradings off the Championship

When you strip it all back, the All Ireland Intermediate and Junior competitions aren't really fit for purpose. The sentiment at the time of their creation was in the right spirit. But when you look at it, both competitions operate on a skewed playing field. There are huge disparities in how counties run their internal competitions.

There's no doubt it is a skewed playing field, but I'm not even sure if everyone applied the same rules across the board would the playing field really level out at Provincial level given the disparity in the number of clubs between each county.  It would nearly need an individual directive within each county, is that realistic?  I don't think it is, but there should be some attempt to reduce the anomalies that can occur. 

I still believe they are both good competitions even if they can be skewed at times.

My point about Shane's being punished this year isn't that they're in the senior championship. It's that they miss their county players throughout the league, but come championship time they're punished by being seeded based on league position. It's ridiculous.

Down, who people like to claim have the fairest system, have also moved away from linking league and championship and are now using relegation playoffs for championship too. Bosco for example were in intermediate but also div 4 this year, whereas Drumaness were div 3 but won the junior.

I had understood the point you were making Ranch and it is an entirely fair point.  A lot of leagues across the country are played without county players, or at least at various stages of the year.  Meanwhile Championships will virtually always have teams at their strongest, now which seems more logical to base gradings on?  The weaker league teams or the stronger Championship?

It's obviously not as simple as that, but most of you are allowing the rare confluence of events that led Arva to be a Div 1 team and at Junior Championship level to base your opinions off.  However if we were to thoroughly examine Championships based off leagues, would we find certain clubs with no (or few) county players who are arguably playing at a Championship grade beyond them? 

In Fermanagh we have a similar system to Cavan and this rare event has never occurred.  However a team who one year is not good enough to win the Junior Championship within their own County is then deemed to be too strong for the Provincial Championship one  year later?  Bear in mind that the team that won that Championship (Drumlane) didn't even win the Provincial Championship.  It wasn't an issue last year but now once they have improved as a team, it is a problem.  Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to play their returning players from emigration or lads back from injuries which will have them back at the level people seemingly want for the grade .  No grading system will be perfect and on rare occasions teams will end up being very strong at their grade, or very weak, which will be more down to the personal circumstances of the team than whether it is Championship or League based relegation/promotion. 

In Fermanagh we have a split of 8, 8 and 4 for Junior.  For a long time we didn't have a Junior Championship and just had 10 in both Senior and Intermediate (and 12 and 8 at one stage too iirc.)

Anyone able to answer this one?

Guy gets a straight red in a county final in a lower grade - intermediate for example.

Does he serve the one match suspension in this year's provincial championship (a different competition?) or the first round of next year's senior championship?

This goes all the way back to Mark Vaughan getting sent off in a Leinster semi final in 2006 maybe (which was lost) and then playing for Kilmacud the following year v Brigids in opening round of Dublin Championship (I believe they appealed that it was a different competition and thus he was allowed to play.)  I tried to google there but given there was so much back and forth it's hard to find the chronology of events (Brigids appealed successfully initially I think.)  The rational outcome would be that they are all regarded as the same competition (or a continuation of the same, as such.)  However I can't be 100% sure.  I'd definitely side with the player being suspended for the provincial game, they're bound to have cleared that up, surely, maybe, possibly.

From gaelicstatsman

David Clifford needs 0-5 or more to top the overall list for this year

It's all to play for the 'from play' list, Colm Basquel (30), Con O'Callaghan (29) and Clifford (28) all involved in the All Ireland final

Did Shane McGuigan point at the end to give himself a better chance at top scorer.....?

No, he did not.

Did nobody else think Glass was at fault for the Kerry goal?
I know I said before that White is fast but Glass seemed to let him go.
Not sure would McKinless or others have done the same.

Yeah it was poor from him, was also poor from Clifford for Derrys goal, he let Rogers run past him.

I see a lot of posts about Derry changing their style. I don't think they really did, they attacked with 15 and defended with 15 like they always do, they pressed the kick outs like they always do, they used Lynch as a spare man out the field like they always do, they went for goals like they always do.

They've put in very good attacking displays before playing like this which the media fail to acknowledge (eg All Ulster champ games in last 2 years bar the finals, Clare last year, Donegal this year, all the Div 2 games they won at a canter). The boring games are when teams replicate them and there have been a few high profile games like this eg the last 2 Ulster finals, Galway last year, Cork. The main difference was how Kerry set up against them imo.

Totally agree with this, Derry didn't change their style at all.

This was irritating me also. On the RTE GAA Podcast last week Damien Lawlor seemed to be scoffing at the suggestion from Paddy Bradley that Derry would go all out to win the game and not go into a defensive shell.

Also the notion that Derry wouldn't have done this under Gallagher is similar, it was him that led the team to play this way (along with his management team, who have continued in the same vein.) For me though, it was the best performance from Derry in the past 2 years, but they are a year further down the line and had the experience of playing a full blooded AI Semi in Croker so were also in a better place to deliver that (the facile win v Clare didn't really count for much in terms of big game experience last year tbh.)

Why not play Downey for one of the corner forwards and bring him in front of Clifford. You weren't losing anything up front to be honest. I thought it was a tactical error, you knew that I'd u held Clifford they struggle. What u given to have J Brolly, one of the Bradleys up front to support McGuigan.

I don't think it's quite as simple as that.  Derry were trying to create overlapping runners and to afford Kerry a spare man (Morley) to stand back into the space where these runners were breaking into (McKinless and Rogers in the main) would have stifled Derry's attack significantly.  That's not to say Derry couldn't attempt to provide more protection or that the trade off in not doing it, was necessarily worth it.  However to just point to a particular forward who didn't have an impact and state they could have been forsaken in order to provide more cover for McKaigue on Clifford, is looking at something in isolation when there is a whole world of moving parts (I appreciate you haven't specifically stated this.) 

I've no doubt Meenagh/Derry considered it pre-game and even at times during the game but came to the conclusion the pay off in how they were attacking the game was worth it (Clifford had more impact in first half yet Derry were leading.)  The outcome always dictates the narrative, but it is very fine margins; a very strong arm from Shane Ryan or a very soft free to help change momentum for example!  Overall, for me, I think Derry got the balance right but just didn't mange to finish the job with the chances they had.

[Clifford pulled up with cramp, which wasn't really fortuitous, it was most likely him not being well enough conditioned for such an intense game.]

Kerry have always been heavy favourites any time they have played Tyrone and pretty much any team they play except for some of the time against the all conquering Dublin team. Tyrone and Kerry both got beaten well by Dublin in finals. The match between them was tight in 2019 and Tyrone definitely left that one behind them, though Kerry had beaten Tyrone well in the league that year.

Tyrone were underdogs in the semi and final. They were missing 5 players for the Ulster final and had to deal with difficult circumstances, to put it mildy, for the semi with several players still not right. Tyrone should have wrapped up things in normal time against Kerry and indeed in the first half of extra time, while also getting two black cards when Kerry should have also had similar. Clifford pulled up with cramp, which wasn't really fortuitous, it was most likely him not being well enough conditioned for such an intense game.

Tyrone beat Cavan (the Ulster champions), Donegal, Monaghan, Kerry and Mayo to win the All-Ireland. So three Division 1 teams and Mayo who got promoted and were in the final the previous year. Kerry beat Cork (Munster champions), Limerick, Mayo, Dublin and Galway in 2022. That's two Division 1 teams, one who got relegated and one promoted division 2 team.

Why was Tyrone's win an aligning of the stars and not Kerry's?

FYI David Clifford did not suffer from cramp that day. He went off injured with a dead leg as a result of a knee to the thigh by Niall Morgan. He labored badly for at least the last 10 minutes of regulation. Conditioning was not the issue as you state.

Thats an amazing insight into your thought patterns but Im not letting you create that narrative in this case.  Do you believe Morgan shouldnt have went for the ball and let what was a wayward pass be won uncontested by Clifford. Even if that was the case why was he even stretching out cramp on the sideline by the way...

Not trying to create any narrative. I'm going by video evidence along with word from within the Kerry camp. Watch when the injury occurred here at the 1hr 19 minute mark. https://o-trim.co/yoGovq

Clifford had an ice pack on his thigh during extra time, clearly seen on television. Have a look at the recent Sunday Game, in the lead up to the Kerry/Tyrone highlights, the ice pack on his thigh is also shown. Just want to debunk this cramp myth as that is all it is, a myth. Absolutely, Niall Morgan did what he had to do in competing for the ball. It was 100% an accident. I'm not in one way trying to take away from Tyrone's AI win, it was fully deserved. All Ireland wins are hard earned, I hate it when counties are not given full credit. You seem to be a very decent poster so it came as a surprise that you of all people are trying to indicate that I'm attempting to create a narrative. Just as in all walks of life I only stick to the facts.

There is another Tyrone poster that I really take issue with though. He is constantly trying to create the narrative that Kerry are bad losers and even worse winners. This even seeps down to club level where he also made some crazy remarks on this year's junior final. County supporters who are used to winning and losing take it in their stride and that goes for every Kerry supporter I know. His hatred for Kerry knows no bounds. It's doubtful if he even knows one Kerry person. It is another myth that Kerry never gave Tyrone credit for their victories in '03, '05 and '08. This was all media driven. They had some of the greatest players to ever play the game. Peter Canavan may well be the best ever. There is no way that Dublin would have won 6 in a row, nor anywhere close, if that Tyrone team arrived at the same time.

The win on Saturday was special because of the respect we have for Tyrone. Sport is a lot about rivalry and should have nothing to do with hatred. If there is hatred in your heart keep away and find another hobby. Be the first to congratulate the winner and console the loser. A year is a very short time in sport, cherish the wins and don't get too down about the defeats. Tyrone will be back, Darragh and Ruairi Canavan as special players and Tyrone are recent U20 winners .
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Well said Seamus, agree on all.

I noticed and Murphy on commentary mentioned also the Armagh players reacting to every penalty with fist pumps etc. Monaghan seemed a lot more measured. Surely that emotion is draining to the players and they aren't mentally set to make the right decision next time round. I'm not a sports psychologist but I wonder if that is something coached or more of a team culture that develops naturally.

You're over analysing.

Initially they created a 5 second rule for the forward mark, whilst the midfield mark was 15 seconds.  Both of these were policed initially, to some extent.  Then they reverted to 15 seconds for both and duly ignored them.  In all honesty it isn't a big issue, though.

If  a player  is on one side of the field  , 1 yard outside the 50 yard  line, and kicks it  across the field , to a  teammate who catches it   1 yard inside the  50 , will a  mark be given?

Yes.