All Ireland Football Final 2017 Mayo V Dublin

[The Hill is Blue]

Coming into this final all the momentum seems to be with Mayo. It seems that this year Sam is well within their grasp. However, if I were a Mayo supporter I'd have one nagging concern. Since much of the optimism about their prospects seems to stem from their devastating performance against Kerry I'd be asking myself: How good were Kerry this year?

I'd be asking myself the same question after beating Tyrone! Let's say Kerry are rubbish. Would you put your league final defeat down to seriously taking you taking your eye off the ball?

Before last Sunday I'd no idea how we'd perform against Tyrone but as we know now Tyrone were very poor on the day and so Dublin learned little. Perhaps Mayo may feel the same after the Kerry games. All this makes the final intriguing and impossible to call.

[Mac2]

Dublin will be looking to absolutely murder us like they did in the league, goes without saying that we need a decent start. Be concerned too with the number of easy frees we're giving away, we don't appear to be as disciplined in the tackle as we were last year. If we see Moran and COC being dragged towards their own 40 by their markers we'll know the game is up.

[JoG2]

Coming into this final all the momentum seems to be with Mayo. It seems that this year Sam is well within their grasp. However, if I were a Mayo supporter I'd have one nagging concern. Since much of the optimism about their prospects seems to stem from their devastating performance against Kerry I'd be asking myself: How good were Kerry this year?

Kerry were awful. Nobody is reading too much into beating them other than it's a monkey off our backs. It was overdue, it was a sore point after 2014, so it was sweet, but they were really poor.

that said lost against galway, et against derry, poor against clare, et against cork, drew with roscommon - all poor performances. Kerry were poor the first day but still drew and could very well have won. Cant really read too much into either replays Roscommon were awful and kerry were even worst than the first day, so where is the optism that we can beat possibly the greatest ever team coming from

we get it at this stage, like pretty much every match Mayo have been involved in this year, it's awful tiresome at this stage. Take a wee breather for a couple of weeks and recharge those negative batteries. You're prob not even a Mayo man


Anyway, Mayo to win by 2 points.

[seafoid]

Kerry are way better than Tyrone in fairness.
The Dubs havent had to break sweat once this year

[straightred]

Kerry are way better than Tyrone in fairness.
The Dubs havent had to break sweat once this year

On what basis ? How do you know Dublin wouldn't have wouldn't have done the same against Kerry or more to the point how to know they won't embarrass Mayo. There is no top 4 IMO. There's 1 off in the distance and then there's a bunch of Div 1 teams who could beat each other on any given day

[Gael85]

One thing Dublin need to do in final is cut out the frees against Mayo as we have conceded a lot of scoreable frees against them. We have played them in 6 championship since 2012. Cillian O'Connor has scored 2-46 in them 6 games 1-38 has come from placed, 4 45s and only 1-4 from play. Andy Moran has scored 1-8 in 5 games against us with 1 point coming from a free.

[seafoid]

Kerry are way better than Tyrone in fairness.
The Dubs havent had to break sweat once this year

On what basis ? How do you know Dublin wouldn't have wouldn't have done the same against Kerry or more to the point how to know they won't embarrass Mayo. There is no top 4 IMO. There's 1 off in the distance and then there's a bunch of Div 1 teams who could beat each other on any given day

Kerry in recent years have beaten decent teams. Tyrone have not. FFS

[blanketattack]

Reckon it's Mayos year. The team that beats Kerry has won every All Ireland since 2011 and 14 of the last 15 All-Irelands.

[Ballaghman]

Form in semi-final is completely irrelevant when predicting what's going to happen in a final.

Only thing of relevance is last year's All Ireland finals, and that being 12 months ago makes it very hard to compare. Andy Moran is clearly playing better than last year, as is Aidan O'Shea. Doherty now a legitimate threat and Loftus looks like he could do what Costello did last year. Boyle is super, and nobody can doubt the class of Harrison and Barrett at the back. Vaughan (who I would say pretty much has always been poor v the Dubs) is having his best year ever. Keegan not at the same level as last year, but illness accounts for that. COC not playing as well as last year, but I'm sure Mayo lads are confident he'll play well.

Overall I would say I expect Mayo to be slightly better this year than last year. I think Dublin are better too. It'll be down to who produces on the day. Should be a super game.

Pretty fair assessment Hound but can't agree with the Vaughan part. He played really well in both of last years games and was a huge loss last year when he went off with concussion.

[Syferus]

Reckon it's Mayos year. The team that beats Kerry has won every All Ireland since 2011 and 14 of the last 15 All-Irelands.

The team that's Dublin have won four of the last six All-Irelands. A bit more relevant to this match than your fact.

[Captain Obvious]

Reckon it's Mayos year. The team that beats Kerry has won every All Ireland since 2011 and 14 of the last 15 All-Irelands.

Down the only team that beat them and didn't go on to win the All Ireland?

[shark]

Reckon it's Mayos year. The team that beats Kerry has won every All Ireland since 2011 and 14 of the last 15 All-Irelands.

The team that's Dublin have won four of the last six All-Irelands. A bit more relevant to this match than your fact.

A nice bit of trivia all the same. And the exception of those 15 years actually lost to Kerry en route to winning the all-Ireland.

[shark]

Reckon it's Mayos year. The team that beats Kerry has won every All Ireland since 2011 and 14 of the last 15 All-Irelands.

Down the only team that beat them and didn't go on to win the All Ireland?

Yeah. You have to go back to Meath in 2001 before that.

Although it should be "knocked out" rather than "beat", as Cork best them a few times in those years

[sid waddell]

Form in semi-final is completely irrelevant when predicting what's going to happen in a final.

Only thing of relevance is last year's All Ireland finals, and that being 12 months ago makes it very hard to compare. Andy Moran is clearly playing better than last year, as is Aidan O'Shea. Doherty now a legitimate threat and Loftus looks like he could do what Costello did last year. Boyle is super, and nobody can doubt the class of Harrison and Barrett at the back. Vaughan (who I would say pretty much has always been poor v the Dubs) is having his best year ever. Keegan not at the same level as last year, but illness accounts for that. COC not playing as well as last year, but I'm sure Mayo lads are confident he'll play well.

Overall I would say I expect Mayo to be slightly better this year than last year. I think Dublin are better too. It'll be down to who produces on the day. Should be a super game.

Keegan was certainly at last year's level up to half-time in the draw against Roscommon. With three weeks rest you have to expect he'll be back to that level again for the final.

For me Cillian O'Connor has been better from open play in the last few matches than he was last year, or perhaps ever. But his free-taking has definitely gone down a notch.

Mayo's real disadvantage is that they are basically relying on 18 players. It's clear that only Durcan and to a lesser extent Loftus and Coen are really trusted by their management to come in and do a job off the bench.

[macdanger2]

Form in semi-final is completely irrelevant when predicting what's going to happen in a final.

Only thing of relevance is last year's All Ireland finals, and that being 12 months ago makes it very hard to compare. Andy Moran is clearly playing better than last year, as is Aidan O'Shea. Doherty now a legitimate threat and Loftus looks like he could do what Costello did last year. Boyle is super, and nobody can doubt the class of Harrison and Barrett at the back. Vaughan (who I would say pretty much has always been poor v the Dubs) is having his best year ever. Keegan not at the same level as last year, but illness accounts for that. COC not playing as well as last year, but I'm sure Mayo lads are confident he'll play well.

Overall I would say I expect Mayo to be slightly better this year than last year. I think Dublin are better too. It'll be down to who produces on the day. Should be a super game.

Keegan was certainly at last year's level up to half-time in the draw against Roscommon. With three weeks rest you have to expect he'll be back to that level again for the final.

For me Cillian O'Connor has been better from open play in the last few matches than he was last year, or perhaps ever. But his free-taking has definitely gone down a notch.

Mayo's real disadvantage is that they are basically relying on 18 players. It's clear that only Durcan and to a lesser extent Loftus and Coen are really trusted by their management to come in and do a job off the bench.

Absolutely, once you go beyond those two / three, the subs start to seriously weaken the team. Dublin could go well past six without doing that to any great extent. We'd need a couple of Dubs to go off early to balance that up - either young starters for Dublin having a nightmare, a black card or an injury. Last year we had two subs used by HT so we can ill afford a repeat of that.