Aussie agent Ger Sholly says Marty Clarke is unlikely to return to the same AFL club if he decides to pack in the GAA again - http://bit.ly/lrBHGf (http://bit.ly/lrBHGf)
Sholly also names the one GAA player he never got for the AFL who he would have loved to have got.. you can probably guess...
Conor Mortimor? He had a host of clubs after him but he chose to complete his 3rd level studies so that meant he missed out on 11 years.
Hope none of the clubs in oz even enquire about Clarke we in Down are delighted to have him home class act . Martin Clarke is one of the footballers that most people enjoy watching . There is not that many of them about
QuoteMartin Clarke is one of the footballers that most people enjoy watching
Pah! If he wasn't playing in the Athletic Grounds I wouldn't miss seeing him at all.
Quote from: armaghniac on May 07, 2011, 01:58:15 PM
QuoteMartin Clarke is one of the footballers that most people enjoy watching
Pah! If he wasn't playing in the Athletic Grounds I wouldn't miss seeing him at all.
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, 'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.'
like i said Most people like the quote Paul
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/northern_ireland/gaelic_games/13593420.stm
So, was Marty in the Athletic Grounds? I didn't notice him.
Quote from: armaghniac on May 30, 2011, 12:18:40 PM
So, was Marty in the Athletic Grounds? I didn't notice him.
you obvivously spent your time on the phone checking out what way the champions league was going diffently not watching the gaelic[
I hear he might be going to the Gold Coast Suns franchise. How could u swap Kilkeel for that?
Best of Luck Marty wherever you go. Even when you have a quiet game you still manage 3 or 4 points.
Lit up the championship last year with some outstanding performances, and i have a feeling that you may have one or two more before the summer is out.
Major loss to Gaelic football as will young Caolan Mooney.
Can't see him getting a regular game at Collingwood - much better players than Clarke are struggling to get a game for the Pies at the moment (Goldsack, Dick etc). He wasn't playing too much in the senior side when he left and can expect a lot of time in the VFL (reserve grade).
He would be better off at the an expansion club - he could make more than $500,000k at one of the those clubs and would be guaranteed a regular game.
This might come as a surprise but the best performing Irishman in the AFL at the moment is Pearce Hanley. His game on Sunday was super - he seems to be improving with every outing. The lad has some serious pace. Kennelly is struggling with injury at the moment, Setanta is battling away and none else is getting a game. I am surprised Tommy Walsh hasn't got a senior game yet - his form in the preseason was good and St Kilda were struggling with injury. He, like Clarke, should think about moving clubs.
How is Niall McKeever getting on at Brisbane (I think)?
Quote from: HeaveHo on May 30, 2011, 03:16:18 PM
This might come as a surprise but the best performing Irishman in the AFL at the moment is Pearce Hanley. His game on Sunday was super - he seems to be improving with every outing. The lad has some serious pace. Kennelly is struggling with injury at the moment, Setanta is battling away and none else is getting a game. I am surprised Tommy Walsh hasn't got a senior game yet - his form in the preseason was good and St Kilda were struggling with injury. He, like Clarke, should think about moving clubs.
Or coming home if he's not for getting a game ?.
Quote from: snoopdog on May 30, 2011, 02:04:51 PM
Best of Luck Marty wherever you go. Even when you have a quiet game you still manage 3 or 4 points.
Lit up the championship last year with some outstanding performances, and i have a feeling that you may have one or two more before the summer is out.
Major loss to Gaelic football as will young Caolan Mooney.
Loads of players have quiet games and still hit 3 or 4 frees, and I think it difficult to count how many games he actually was outstanding in last year. Definitely the most over-rated player of recent times, based on what he actually did in Senior County football.
nrico, I shouldn't rise but your comment doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.
Last year Marty played 7 league games and 8 championship games in his debut senior season, having not played gaelic football for 3 years. In those 15 games, he was MOM in 9 .He scored 1-25 in the league and 1-30 in the championship.This year he has played 7 league games and 1 championship game so far- MOM in 3,
So , to make it easy for you, excluding the Mc Kenna Cup he has played 23 competitive games for Down and has been MOM in 12. That is 52% of senior games played. Unbelievable .That is not difficult to count and is a reminder that he is a special talent.
In all fairness, he was getting MOTM in games where other Down players had better games.
A lot of those should have gone to Danny Hughes.
The media love Marty though.
Quote from: HeaveHo on May 30, 2011, 03:16:18 PM
This might come as a surprise but the best performing Irishman in the AFL at the moment is Pearce Hanley. His game on Sunday was super - he seems to be improving with every outing. The lad has some serious pace.
Good to hear it - I was actuallly just watching the highlights the other night on TG4 and checked up online how he has been doing this season, played in 8 from 8 so far. Pity BL are doing so poorly though. We could have done with him yesterday.......
Quote from: Jinxy on May 30, 2011, 05:12:00 PM
In all fairness, he was getting MOTM in games where other Down players had better games.
A lot of those should have gone to Danny Hughes.
The media love Marty though.
I agree with you with regards to Danny Hughes. He is a player that I have admired for a long time, but he never got the credit that he was due until last year's Championship run by Down.
Quote from: Dubh driocht on May 30, 2011, 05:00:36 PM
nrico, I shouldn't rise but your comment doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.
Last year Marty played 7 league games and 8 championship games in his debut senior season, having not played gaelic football for 3 years. In those 15 games, he was MOM in 9 .He scored 1-25 in the league and 1-30 in the championship.This year he has played 7 league games and 1 championship game so far- MOM in 3,
So , to make it easy for you, excluding the Mc Kenna Cup he has played 23 competitive games for Down and has been MOM in 12. That is 52% of senior games played. Unbelievable .That is not difficult to count and is a reminder that he is a special talent.
Wonderful footballer. We will miss him badly, Down will struggle without Marty, irreplacable imo.
Sure you still have his brother John.
Quote from: Dubh driocht on May 30, 2011, 05:00:36 PM
nrico, I shouldn't rise but your comment doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.
Last year Marty played 7 league games and 8 championship games in his debut senior season, having not played gaelic football for 3 years. In those 15 games, he was MOM in 9 .He scored 1-25 in the league and 1-30 in the championship.This year he has played 7 league games and 1 championship game so far- MOM in 3,
So , to make it easy for you, excluding the Mc Kenna Cup he has played 23 competitive games for Down and has been MOM in 12. That is 52% of senior games played. Unbelievable .That is not difficult to count and is a reminder that he is a special talent.
You boys really don't like any criticism of goldenballs. He goes missing far too often. Plenty of grafters on that squad that give it 100% EVERY match. You'd be better off building a squad without him.
Looks like we are going to have too Tony but Clarke is a class act . This fella came home to a team just out of div 3 and imo was the biggest help we had in getting to an All Ireland final in his first year playing senior inter county football . This was after playing no gaelic for almost 3 years so any one knocking what he did for us last year seems to have a chip on their shoulder with him . Even when he went missing in games he still was averaging 5 or 6 pts a game . Sad to see him leaving but can go with his head held high . Good luck Martin
Quote from: nrico2006 on May 30, 2011, 04:14:44 PM
Quote from: snoopdog on May 30, 2011, 02:04:51 PM
Best of Luck Marty wherever you go. Even when you have a quiet game you still manage 3 or 4 points.
Lit up the championship last year with some outstanding performances, and i have a feeling that you may have one or two more before the summer is out.
Major loss to Gaelic football as will young Caolan Mooney.
Loads of players have quiet games and still hit 3 or 4 frees, and I think it difficult to count how many games he actually was outstanding in last year. Definitely the most over-rated player of recent times, based on what he actually did in Senior County football.
I agree 100% and I'm not stirring it. Many people I've talked to have said the same. The media had a fascination with him as they had with Kennelly because of their AFL background. Marty was good last year and is a decent free taker. Has excellent vision. Kicks some great passes. Takes the odd score from play. But so do alot of players in other counties. Best to luck to him if he returns to Oz or if he stays. Comes across as down to earth solid guy in interviews but I do think he is over rated.
Look guys, Marty was superb the other night. he didn't have his best ever game but as he is a passer his best ever game partly relies on the guys around him playing well. Marty isn't a particularly physical footballer and so he relies on good passes coming in and players showing well for his pass. But make no mistake, when Down were falling apart he kept us in it. feeding of scraps of possession he pulled enough strings to take us a point ahead.
The rest of the team let him down. it is a lot easier to mark the best player in the team if the other players are performing so poorly that they hardly need marking.
One big criticism of him though is that he has no great ability to beat a man and run away from him, Marty can only do what he does in clear space, his pace is well down the list of Down attackers. McKeever was able to stand up to him, slow him down and therefore restrict him to passing only. On a dirty night it isn't so easy to hit good passes to light forwards.
We have the rest of the summer (how ever long that may last) to asses Marty. I think he has done enough already to be allowed the right to be judged then and not now.
Quote from: ross matt on May 31, 2011, 08:01:06 AM
Quote from: nrico2006 on May 30, 2011, 04:14:44 PM
Quote from: snoopdog on May 30, 2011, 02:04:51 PM
Best of Luck Marty wherever you go. Even when you have a quiet game you still manage 3 or 4 points.
Lit up the championship last year with some outstanding performances, and i have a feeling that you may have one or two more before the summer is out.
Major loss to Gaelic football as will young Caolan Mooney.
Loads of players have quiet games and still hit 3 or 4 frees, and I think it difficult to count how many games he actually was outstanding in last year. Definitely the most over-rated player of recent times, based on what he actually did in Senior County football.
I agree 100% and I'm not stirring it. Many people I've talked to have said the same. The media had a fascination with him as they had with Kennelly because of their AFL background. Marty was good last year and is a decent free taker. Has excellent vision. Kicks some great passes. Takes the odd score from play. But so do alot of players in other counties. Best to luck to him if he returns to Oz or if he stays. Comes across as down to earth solid guy in interviews but I do think he is over rated.
Again i dont have a personal vendetta against Marty Clarke nor do i have any particular dislikening towards down but i have said previously on this board that he is extremely hyped up by the media. I am also of the opinion that his time at aussie rules has had a negative impact on his Gaelic Football game. Paul you say that he isnt as pacey as other down players and cant take players on. I think this due to bulking up too much while in Australia and in the Aussie Rules game he was not able to take players on. Before he left anybody that saw the lad play could testify to his absolutly blistering pace and ball carrying ability. I know players have to adapt to be able to play senior intercounty football but i think a lotve what marked him out as an underage protege he has lost. People will say that you have to adapt to play senior intercounty but name to me another underage talent who was a success at senior level and didnt have the very same playing style as he did throughout. The lad will undoubtidly be a big miss to down football but in my opinion not as big a miss as if Danny Hughes or Benny Coulter would be. Look if he declared for Armagh tomorrow id be over the moon but i just feel he is slightly over rated. Like give me Pa Kelly, Paul Kerrigan, Dec/Dar o sull, Dan Hughes james kavanagh, Sean Cavanagh before him.
Good post orchard lost his pace in oz but also learnt to off load the ball quicker so as to avoid the hit . He never tries to take the man on content to pass it but still would rather have him than not have him class act
Quote from: orchard 8195 on May 31, 2011, 11:44:30 AM
Again i dont have a personal vendetta against Marty Clarke nor do i have any particular dislikening towards down but i have said previously on this board that he is extremely hyped up by the media. I am also of the opinion that his time at aussie rules has had a negative impact on his Gaelic Football game. Paul you say that he isnt as pacey as other down players and cant take players on. I think this due to bulking up too much while in Australia and in the Aussie Rules game he was not able to take players on. Before he left anybody that saw the lad play could testify to his absolutly blistering pace and ball carrying ability. I know players have to adapt to be able to play senior intercounty football but i think a lotve what marked him out as an underage protege he has lost. People will say that you have to adapt to play senior intercounty but name to me another underage talent who was a success at senior level and didnt have the very same playing style as he did throughout. The lad will undoubtidly be a big miss to down football but in my opinion not as big a miss as if Danny Hughes or Benny Coulter would be. Look if he declared for Armagh tomorrow id be over the moon but i just feel he is slightly over rated. Like give me Pa Kelly, Paul Kerrigan, Dec/Dar o sull, Dan Hughes james kavanagh, Sean Cavanagh before him.
A very fair post I think, also I agree with you on the point you made about bulking up. Though you are wrong about players not changing their style to step up to seniors. Many midfielders become half backs because they don'e grow enough between minor & senior and specifically Greg Blaney started as a speedy poaching full forward and ended as an all star play-maker. But I understand your point and it is correct that though he is OUR most influential player there are better players out there. However you listed some of the best players around as a comparison and that alone says quite a lot doesn't it?
One thing for sure is that he is not "the most over-rated player of recent times" that is as equally unfair as claiming he is the best player of recent times.
But yeah, perhaps a little over-hyped and certainly probably because of a prurient obsession of the media that anyone who has ever been selected for an Aussie Rules team must automatically be a Gaelic football great!!!
I think the overrating of MC is overrated. I think some people have gone too far with the assumption that if the media hype him, well he's nothing but a creature of media hype. Also, I detect an element of what I used to identify as Trevor Giles syndrome. Giles was such a talented player that if he didn't absolutely dominate a game, people were disappointed. There was hardly a championship game in his career after which someone in my company didn't say "Giles was poor today" or something similar. In nearly all of those games, he would have been a least one of the best performers and biggest contributors on view. When a player is known to be great, we expect greatness in every touch and make no allowances.
In my eyes, Clarke is nearly always a huge contributor in every game. Apart from his free-taking, which is exceptional, his positional sense, unfailing availability to take the pass, ability to take the right (often simple) option more often than not and low error count are special.
I agree that the AFL experience is a negative and but for it he would be outstanding. The Aussie stuff kills off a lot of the natural instincts of a Gaelic footballer, chief among them the inclination and ability to take on the tackle and either run through it or sidestep it. Clarke almost never tries it. You get creamed or penalised if you do that in AR and players exposed to that stuff seem to forget it's part of the essence of Gaelic.
Quote from: PAULD123 on May 31, 2011, 11:56:10 AM
Quote from: orchard 8195 on May 31, 2011, 11:44:30 AM
Again i dont have a personal vendetta against Marty Clarke nor do i have any particular dislikening towards down but i have said previously on this board that he is extremely hyped up by the media. I am also of the opinion that his time at aussie rules has had a negative impact on his Gaelic Football game. Paul you say that he isnt as pacey as other down players and cant take players on. I think this due to bulking up too much while in Australia and in the Aussie Rules game he was not able to take players on. Before he left anybody that saw the lad play could testify to his absolutly blistering pace and ball carrying ability. I know players have to adapt to be able to play senior intercounty football but i think a lotve what marked him out as an underage protege he has lost. People will say that you have to adapt to play senior intercounty but name to me another underage talent who was a success at senior level and didnt have the very same playing style as he did throughout. The lad will undoubtidly be a big miss to down football but in my opinion not as big a miss as if Danny Hughes or Benny Coulter would be. Look if he declared for Armagh tomorrow id be over the moon but i just feel he is slightly over rated. Like give me Pa Kelly, Paul Kerrigan, Dec/Dar o sull, Dan Hughes james kavanagh, Sean Cavanagh before him.
A very fair post I think, also I agree with you on the point you made about bulking up. Though you are wrong about players not changing their style to step up to seniors. Many midfielders become half backs because they don'e grow enough between minor & senior and specifically Greg Blaney started as a speedy poaching full forward and ended as an all star play-maker. But I understand your point and it is correct that though he is OUR most influential player there are better players out there. However you listed some of the best players around as a comparison and that alone says quite a lot doesn't it?
One thing for sure is that he is not "the most over-rated player of recent times" that is as equally unfair as claiming he is the best player of recent times.
But yeah, perhaps a little over-hyped and certainly probably because of a prurient obsession of the media that anyone who has ever been selected for an Aussie Rules team must automatically be a Gaelic football great!!!
just using your point about underage players and midfield. Alotve the time in underage and even at minor u put ur best player into midfield as thats the place they can have most influence on the game but at senior level play in their most natural positions for example Graham Geraghty (Arguably played his best football at half back and half forward), seamus moynihan, Brian Dooher and even r own Kevin Dyas did on their last year of minor. Also the big hallion of a midfielder at minor who makes it at senior v rarely plays in a diff position barring ff or something. However i will def take your point on Blayney but on the whole the successful underage talents do play a very similar game Not necessesarily in the same position throught their careers. Just using a down example ur own manager wee james. The players i listed were all half forwards who are possibly better than marty at this moment and i didnt even include the best there is atm in Galvin.
Zach Tuohey will play his first AFL game on the weekend for Carlton. This will be first time since the Stynes brothers back in the 90's that two Irish lads have turned out for the same AFL side. Apparently Tuohey has been in excellent form with his VFL club (reserve grade for Victorian based AFL clubs) and is coming off a 27 possession game which generally indicates good form. Apparently his parents will be at game (in Adelaide) which is a nice touch.