Dublin V Mayo, Saturday 29th March2014. Croke Park 7.00 pm.

[orangeman]

O'Gara 2 kicks 2 goals and what goals they were.


Mayo will be scratching their heads for a day or two.

[Captain Obvious]

O'Gara 2 kicks 2 goals and what goals they were.


Mayo will be scratching their heads for a day or two.

Not many myself included that rated him that highly however those were two fine goals. Tale of two Dublin goalkeepers that almost won the game for Mayo.

[mayoman dan]

On that showing we have lots of problems.Hennelly is a liability the sooner we get Clarke or O Malley in the better.Vaughan gives the ball away and goes walkabout far too much.Aiden O Shea simply refuses to pass the ball and has to take it in to traffic which normally results in a turnover.Our forwards bar Cillian are not good enough

[haze]

What an enjoyable game.

But it has left me somewhat frustrated as I flicked over and back between the two big games..

Tonight we had two big games in the Capital. Both games were effectively shadow boxing for bigger clashes ahead. Yet, you had 28k more people in the Aviva than Croker. Now while it's not like for like and to a large extent the discrepancy is media fuelled but no one can tell me that the Magners League is any way more important than the Allianz football/hurling leagues.. But for the last 3/4 weeks Leinster rugby have done the hard sell on radio and in the print media to ensure a full house. While Munster Leinster arguably sells itself, it doesn't necessarily have to because the organisation behind it is doing it.

I'd be interested in viewing figures comparison also. Forget all this talk about SKY for a moment but RTE should as part of their deal be made to commit to the Saturday night league games. Maximum exposure is what we want and to get more people talking about games like we just have seen this evening.

[squire_in_navy_slacks]

God Mayo buckos you could have made a serious statement there, I expected ye to win by 8 pts plus easily 

[squire_in_navy_slacks]

Frenetic stuff. MDMA does some charging with the forearm

Big Aidan leads with the elbow all day long

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

What an enjoyable game.

But it has left me somewhat frustrated as I flicked over and back between the two big games..

Tonight we had two big games in the Capital. Both games were effectively shadow boxing for bigger clashes ahead. Yet, you had 28k more people in the Aviva than Croker. Now while it's not like for like and to a large extent the discrepancy is media fuelled but no one can tell me that the Magners League is any way more important than the Allianz football/hurling leagues.. But for the last 3/4 weeks Leinster rugby have done the hard sell on radio and in the print media to ensure a full house. While Munster Leinster arguably sells itself, it doesn't necessarily have to because the organisation behind it is doing it.

I'd be interested in viewing figures comparison also. Forget all this talk about SKY for a moment but RTE should as part of their deal be made to commit to the Saturday night league games. Maximum exposure is what we want and to get more people talking about games like we just have seen this evening.

Home crowds probably similar. Away Munster population 1,246,000. Mayo 130,000.

[Syferus]

Frenetic stuff. MDMA does some charging with the forearm

Big Aidan leads with the elbow all day long

That's how all Mayo men say hello.

[J OGorman]

Frenetic stuff. MDMA does some charging with the forearm

Big Aidan leads with the elbow all day long

Throw those curtains wide.... :-)

[moysider]

God Mayo buckos you could have made a serious statement there, I expected ye to win by 8 pts plus easily 

Yes, under the circumstances we really should have. The fact that we didn t was mostly about our failings but Dublin will take a lot from it.

This was a disaster of a performance by Mayo even before the last goal went in. At no stage in the game did we look good as a team. The errors and turnovers started early. It would be interesting to see how many opposition scores come from us giving the ball away, and not just in this game.
I didn t think winning this would be a marker game so not going to panic over this mess tonight. It s one game and next week is just as important as regards the progress of the season.
Positives for Mayo.
I thought Harrison was doing well. Gibbons was outstanding again. McLoughlin was very good. Pity but its like at times he is the only one we have with a functioning football brain. O Connor will improve and Andy should signs of improvement tonight.
But that s about it.  Boyle was a loss but cant complain. O Gara s goals came after Caff was replaced. How he was allowed to be totally free, twice, in penalty area and us a man up is. Doherty blew that goal chance pretty badly. Can score them in Castlebar all day long but........
The long ball into Freeman didn t work and it looks again like kicking ball to our ff line in Croke Park is just giving the ball back to the opposition and allowing them to hurt us on the counter-attack. For me this is the biggest problem this team has but i don t think management can or maybe know how to fix it. But afaic it is coaching as much as a personnel problem. Aidan continues to try knocking down walls all day long instead of taking the correct option. He getting hurt and hurting the team but still it goes on unchecked it seems. What s that about? Do they not do video analysis and stats? Do players listen to music on headphones during meetings?
Keith is not having the impact in the forwards that we need. Maybe it needs to be persisted with longer but I think he should be tried at 6. We re not getting the expected product from him where he is and we re not getting enough product from our current no.6.
The bottom line for me is that our flaws cost us a match we should have won with a fair bit to spare. Win by 3 points and those cracks might have been papered over so this result might be just as well. But we ve seen this type of thing before and lessons have not been learned before. Not sure thay will now either. The sounds after the game were the same. Still talking about learning and stuff.

[orangeman]

Colm Boyle black harsh ? I thought he out his hand in to strip the ball ?

Yes ? No ? Maybe ?

[ross4life]

How is this league shaping up now, could Mayo still face Dublin in the final?

[orangeman]

Dublin 3-14 Mayo 2-17: Heavyweight rematches rarely live up to the hype, but this was a brilliant exception – Dublin showing just enough punch late on to ensure in finished on a split decision, and with that denying Mayo the chance to make some amends for their All-Ireland defeat here last September.
It also leaves both teams with one foot in the Allianz Football League semi-finals – with just one round to go. Yet Dublin had to fight long and hard to salvage a draw, the defending league and All-Ireland champions losing goalkeeper and captain Stephen Cluxton to a straight red card on 28 minutes for tripping Mayo forward Kevin McLoughlin from behind, for no apparent reason.

[From the Bunker]

God Mayo buckos you could have made a serious statement there, I expected ye to win by 8 pts plus easily 

Yes, under the circumstances we really should have. The fact that we didn t was mostly about our failings but Dublin will take a lot from it.

This was a disaster of a performance by Mayo even before the last goal went in. At no stage in the game did we look good as a team. The errors and turnovers started early. It would be interesting to see how many opposition scores come from us giving the ball away, and not just in this game.
I didn t think winning this would be a marker game so not going to panic over this mess tonight. It s one game and next week is just as important as regards the progress of the season.
Positives for Mayo.
I thought Harrison was doing well. Gibbons was outstanding again. McLoughlin was very good. Pity but its like at times he is the only one we have with a functioning football brain. O Connor will improve and Andy should signs of improvement tonight.
But that s about it.  Boyle was a loss but cant complain. O Gara s goals came after Caff was replaced. How he was allowed to be totally free, twice, in penalty area and us a man up is. Doherty blew that goal chance pretty badly. Can score them in Castlebar all day long but........
The long ball into Freeman didn t work and it looks again like kicking ball to our ff line in Croke Park is just giving the ball back to the opposition and allowing them to hurt us on the counter-attack. For me this is the biggest problem this team has but i don t think management can or maybe know how to fix it. But afaic it is coaching as much as a personnel problem. Aidan continues to try knocking down walls all day long instead of taking the correct option. He getting hurt and hurting the team but still it goes on unchecked it seems. What s that about? Do they not do video analysis and stats? Do players listen to music on headphones during meetings?
Keith is not having the impact in the forwards that we need. Maybe it needs to be persisted with longer but I think he should be tried at 6. We re not getting the expected product from him where he is and we re not getting enough product from our current no.6.
The bottom line for me is that our flaws cost us a match we should have won with a fair bit to spare. Win by 3 points and those cracks might have been papered over so this result might be just as well. But we ve seen this type of thing before and lessons have not been learned before. Not sure thay will now either. The sounds after the game were the same. Still talking about learning and stuff.

Ah we were on a hiding to nothing. Once Cluxton seen the line, there was no winning for Mayo. They would get no credit for beating Dublin by 1 or 10 points. Dublin got to play off the cuff and it worked in patches. Anyway, despite scoring 2-17 we still have no marquee forwards. Substitutions were once again like the game against Cork, very strange and left us weakened in different sectors at a stage where we should have been closing out the game. The high ball was constantly tried into Freeman, almost to show us how last years substitution of the same player was justified. Then to add salt to the wound, we take said player off instead of trying something different. One of the forwards brought on is not up to it and i cannot see how Horan still fancies him. O'Shea has gone back to 2011 and carrying the Ball into the tackle and more importantly losing it. Black card is

Away from all that, the referee was all over the place for both sides. The two big calls - the Mayo goal and the sending off were not his calls but came from the umpires and this must be taken as a positive. As most umpires either miss these incidents or cannot be bothered to get involved. The Black card is very frustrating. I suppose it's the best solution at the moment. But there is something dodgy about it. And when the big call come in the summer there are going to be some really unfortunate victims of this rule.

Moysider, going into the final minutes, I was (sorta) glad Dublin got the last goal. I could not believe the hold ball antics with one score in it (if two maybe) and the only way to learn from doing such a silly thing was to be punished in a lesser important game.

[The Hill is Blue]

Fantastic display by the Dubs. Mayo should really have been out of sight at the final whistle. This Dublin team has a fighting quality which so many Dublin teams of the past have lacked.

Long may it last.