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

[Zulu]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

[orangeman]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

Don't mention the lad that's not there. 

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

f**king shiteballs, complete arseology of the highest order.

You really have to hand it to Dublin. That's the confidence that comes from winning a couple of AI. Not much between the teams talentwise.

True, but that feels like a loss.

[From the Bunker]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

Who said that?

[orangeman]

Mayo are a very good side and won't be far away in August and September.

[Zulu]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

Who said that?

You - "Anyway, despite scoring 2-17 we still have no marquee forwards."

[From the Bunker]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

Who said that?

You - "Anyway, despite scoring 2-17 we still have no marquee forwards."

And where in that line does it say we have Marquee Forwards?

[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.

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.

Yes. I couldn t believe we did not go for the insurance point. But during the whole game some of our decision making was terrible. Really Jack McCaffrey should have put us out of our misery and taught us a right lesson. But we ve had enough lessons already. The point might well get us into a semi yet.
But JH was saying after the game about doing crazy things on the pitch. We ve heard James saying this before. Fans are saying it as well but James is the manager and responsible for some extent at least for the craziness.
I know I ll get ate but I ll say this anyway.
When a young player questioned Horan last summer about not getting a run v Roscommon he was dropped from the panel the following week. For what appears to be his impertinence. Yet a player of immense talent and importance is allowed to repeat the same damaging mistakes game after game. How does that work I wonder>

[Zulu]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

Who said that?

You - "Anyway, despite scoring 2-17 we still have no marquee forwards."

And where in that line does it say we have Marquee Forwards?

Ah right, so you use the word 'despite' in a different way to the rest of the world?

[From the Bunker]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

Who said that?

You - "Anyway, despite scoring 2-17 we still have no marquee forwards."

And where in that line does it say we have Marquee Forwards?

Ah right, so you use the word 'despite' in a different way to the rest of the world?

I think we both see what we want to see. But to put the record straight.

Mayo don't have Marquee forwards and despite this they scored 2-17.

Is that more clearer for you.

Now that we have that settled. Well done on tonights win. Your side never gave in and it augurs well for the year ahead.

[whitey]

Exactly like the semi final in 2012-open goal chances to kill off the game and Mayo didn't take them.

I heard (via Midwest) that the "goal scoring specialist" missed an absolute sitter too.  It was so bad the commentators were actually laughing......

[Zulu]

Fair enough FtB, I took you up wrong. My team is your team by the way, I'm not from Mayo but I'd love to see you win it more than any other county. But I get frustrated when Mayo supporters blame JH or something else when the simple fact is you don't have the forwards to win the All Ireland. You have great footballers but Andy Moran is the only forward you have that would definitely make the Dublin forward line, COC too perhaps but beyond that it's hard to see who else.

[moysider]

Jesus, you hardly think tonight is proof Mayo have marquee forwards do you? COC, Doherty and Freeman were all poor enough at putting chances away and these are the guys you're hoping to step up. Mayo 1-9 are excellent but anyone who thinks you've quality forwards is cracked. Mayo have good footballers in the forward line but a Connolly, Costello, Brogan x 2 or Flynn you do not have.

Who said that?

You - "Anyway, despite scoring 2-17 we still have no marquee forwards."

And where in that line does it say we have Marquee Forwards?

Ah right, so you use the word 'despite' in a different way to the rest of the world?

Well I read it he meant that even though we have no marquee forwards we still managed to score 2-17.

Look, Sligo have better marquee forwards than us. Seriously. Marren, Kelly and Murphy are generally considered better ffs than anybody we tog out. But who would you fancy to progress through the summer?

However Kevin McLoughlin was the best forward out there tonight. I don t agree with his role tonight but he has been quality this league and would have to be picked on any team. Unfortunately smart and all that he is he doesn t have enough brain to compensate for others. I hope nobody ever calls McLoughlin a marquee forward though. Would be an insult.

[Zulu]

Kevin McLoughlin is a fine footballer but Flynn and Connolly are better so he wouldn't make the Dublin team for me. I don't know why Mayo aren't producing better forwards but that's what I'd look at if I was in charge of Mayo football. Dublin are now producing genuinely class footballers where as they never did before so it can be done.

[moysider]

Fair enough FtB, I took you up wrong. My team is your team by the way, I'm not from Mayo but I'd love to see you win it more than any other county. But I get frustrated when Mayo supporters blame JH or something else when the simple fact is you don't have the forwards to win the All Ireland. You have great footballers but Andy Moran is the only forward you have that would definitely make the Dublin forward line, COC too perhaps but beyond that it's hard to see who else.

James has done so much right it is hard to be critical, but....

These are James' chosen forwards and he sets them up tactically. Tonight any team in the top 3 devisions would have defended our ball into the ff line. This team scored 10 goals before tonights game but struggling to recall many from long ball tactic. I realise we have to vary the running game and hit the full forward line but to do that you need players that can kick the ball well. McLoughlin and O Connor and Gallagher the few I think that can do that.