Mayo v Donegal, Elverys McHale Park, Aug 03, 6pm

[Tubberman]

That's where Ruane comes in.

[trileacman]

I watched the second half (well, from 40 mins on) of this last night and kept an eye on our kickouts of which there were 15:

1 short which we won
14 long of which:
1 we won clean (doc where he got injured)
7 were broke and we won (Keegan x 2, Boyle, McDonagh, AOS, SOS & Cillian (which he lost over the line after winning it))
3 were broke and we lost
2 Donegal won clean
1 went over the sideline (fingertip touch from AOS)

So that's a 60% win rate on our own kickouts and 7 out of 9 were from breaking balls.

I saw on twitter where we had a 65% win rate on our own kickouts and 15% on Donegal's.

If we replicate anything even close to that against Dublin, it's curtains for us unfortunately

Those figures are correct but that's a false equivalence in my opinion. Donegal tried to do as Kerry had done and squeeze up on your kickouts, Mayo kicked long beyond this "packed attack". Any possession won is immediately of higher value because Donegal had over-committed to the kickout press and had no sweeper at the back and acres of space to exploit.

What I'm saying is those 8 balls you won in midfield were twice as valuable an attacking platform as the short kickout you won. So comparing your kickout win rate with that of Tyrone or Dublin isn't directly comparable.

Partially true but 60-65% is still a very poor success rate. And the flip side is that when we lost a kickout, they had plenty forward.

The other part of my point was that the 7 balls we won which broke could have been kicked out by anyone, it was our ability to win those breaking balls that gave us a chance at all - something that didn't happen in killarney.

You also had plenty back and not much space for them to work in.