Down Club Hurling & Football

[mournerambler]

My ratings on todays game, think we must get things in perspective we just beat galway by 5 points comfortably which didnt look too achievable 2 years ago. Appreciate where we have come before you start to come on and rant and rave,

B Mc Veigh 6 - Solid although at times his kick outs are very erractic, dont think he has confidence to hit them short.
L Howard - Unlucky with injury
D Gordon - 6 Did what he had too, will never be out in front but will compete with anything in the air, caught a couple of nice balls.
G Mc Carten - 6 - Still unsure on gerard, nice lad but not the same drive or cut as dee or dan.
A Brannigan - 4 - Gave away serious number of silly fouls and does not look at all comfortable on the ball.
K mc Kernan - 8 - Most improved Down player since James took over, looks confident, assured in possession and has great engine. Also has improved his physicality in the tackle.
D Rooney - 5 Only back from injury and it will take time, doesnt need to get involved in off the ball stuff as much as he does
K King - 5 lot of ground still needed to be covered by Kallum but a reasonable shift today.
P Fitzpatrick - 5 - Take away his goal at the end didnt feel he contributed an awful lot. When the ground hardens im sure we ll see more of his old self.
D Hughes -8 - Easily one of Downs most important players at present, he drives forward when in possession and always looks to do somethin positive not negative.
M Poland - 5 - Below par day for Mark despite the fact he hit a great score early on and I feel Aidan Carr could be in with a shout of no11.
C Maginn 6 - workman like performance which ended with him gettin a well deserved goal in the 1st half. Doesnt get near enoughcredit for his work off the ball
C Laverty 6- Thought the wee man did very well in an environment (ie heavy pitch, windy day) which is not really tailored to suit him! Kicked a couple of nice points into the bargin.
B Coulter - 6 - Unfortunately Benny knows what he wants to do but the legs cant do it anymore, would like to see benny rested more at this time of year rather than flogged to death. Still our biggest scoring threat up front
M Clarke - 8 - Probably Downs best player again, he never wastes the ball when he is in posession and took some heavy heavy treatment today and got very little protection!

Subs - C Garvey 6 - good to see him back as we dont have too many man markin defenders at present
J Colgan - 6 - Did ok, Im not sure about him in the middle of the field. Good head on him though to slow things down.
A Carr - 5 - Gave away a few balls but was on the ball a fair bit in such a short period of time!
P Mc Comisky - Set up the goal
L Doyle - If only he could stay fit.



Roll on next weekend which is sure to see fans crawl out from everywhere to see armagh take their beating. A win next week will leave Down safe and let the monaghan and armagh men to battle it out with galway for aRelegation

You must have been at a different game than me, some strange ratings, eg. Kalum King had a great game & was surely worth more than a 5 & I feel Marty Clarke was nowhere near the 8 you have given him imo.

[SHEEDY]

i think if we're being honest if we had have been playing anybody half decent we would have beat today. how many times was possession wasted and needlessly kicked away. the above ratings are very harsh on brannigan, rooney and fitzpatrick but kind to mckernan and clarke. as much as i admire lavery at club level, he is never a county player. apart from benny we have no ball winners in attack. imo murtagh and carr have to start next week to add abit of power and strength to the forwards. still 3 pts isnt bad start but the next few weeks will tell us were we're really at.

[redandblackareback]

My ratings on todays game, think we must get things in perspective we just beat galway by 5 points comfortably which didnt look too achievable 2 years ago. Appreciate where we have come before you start to come on and rant and rave,

B Mc Veigh 6 - Solid although at times his kick outs are very erractic, dont think he has confidence to hit them short.
L Howard - Unlucky with injury
D Gordon - 6 Did what he had too, will never be out in front but will compete with anything in the air, caught a couple of nice balls.
G Mc Carten - 6 - Still unsure on gerard, nice lad but not the same drive or cut as dee or dan.
A Brannigan - 4 - Gave away serious number of silly fouls and does not look at all comfortable on the ball.
K mc Kernan - 8 - Most improved Down player since James took over, looks confident, assured in possession and has great engine. Also has improved his physicality in the tackle.
D Rooney - 5 Only back from injury and it will take time, doesnt need to get involved in off the ball stuff as much as he does
K King - 5 lot of ground still needed to be covered by Kallum but a reasonable shift today.
P Fitzpatrick - 5 - Take away his goal at the end didnt feel he contributed an awful lot. When the ground hardens im sure we ll see more of his old self.
D Hughes -8 - Easily one of Downs most important players at present, he drives forward when in possession and always looks to do somethin positive not negative.
M Poland - 5 - Below par day for Mark despite the fact he hit a great score early on and I feel Aidan Carr could be in with a shout of no11.
C Maginn 6 - workman like performance which ended with him gettin a well deserved goal in the 1st half. Doesnt get near enoughcredit for his work off the ball
C Laverty 6- Thought the wee man did very well in an environment (ie heavy pitch, windy day) which is not really tailored to suit him! Kicked a couple of nice points into the bargin.
B Coulter - 6 - Unfortunately Benny knows what he wants to do but the legs cant do it anymore, would like to see benny rested more at this time of year rather than flogged to death. Still our biggest scoring threat up front
M Clarke - 8 - Probably Downs best player again, he never wastes the ball when he is in posession and took some heavy heavy treatment today and got very little protection!

Subs - C Garvey 6 - good to see him back as we dont have too many man markin defenders at present
J Colgan - 6 - Did ok, Im not sure about him in the middle of the field. Good head on him though to slow things down.
A Carr - 5 - Gave away a few balls but was on the ball a fair bit in such a short period of time!
P Mc Comisky - Set up the goal
L Doyle - If only he could stay fit.



Roll on next weekend which is sure to see fans crawl out from everywhere to see armagh take their beating. A win next week will leave Down safe and let the monaghan and armagh men to battle it out with galway for aRelegation

You must have been at a different game than me, some strange ratings, eg. Kalum King had a great game & was surely worth more than a 5 & I feel Marty Clarke was nowhere near the 8 you have given him imo.

MR If you think about it.. watch the hi lights later and you ll see that in nearly all our scores m clarke plays a role.. I still think people expect too much off him but his vision and pass completion % are 2nd to none. these all performed with some beefed up red neck from the west hanging out of him.. And finally no i was at the same game as you and I personally feel our midfield was and will be a serious issue in the bigger games if we r going to pick up silverware. Against an extremely limited galway middle they should be standing out.. Joe bergin was running the legs of King and only the introduction of Colgan possibly saved us a point... But as I say only my opinon..  would actually be very worried about it for next saturday night..     

[Pangurban]

A poor game in terms of quality, Down bad Galway worse at doing the simple things well. Serious amount of misplaced passes and turnovers in middle third of the pitch, which would be a serious problem against Armagh. However at this stage of the season we are in a good place and progressing in the right direction. Would like to see Carr and Murtagh feature against Armagh, to see if they provide the spark thats missing

[artisan2010]

I thought McVeigh had a good game and was particularly solid under the high ball on what could'nt have been an easy day given he swerling wind.
Maybe its looking over the shoulder to where we have come from but in the not to distant pass we would have lost that game.  Some good tackling and blocking in the last few minutes before the goal secured the points

[PAULD123]

Galway certainly put the effort in and it looked quiet flattering on the scoreboard and the the fact that they closed to within 2 points near the end. But when they attacked us they left holes behind which our boys ran straight through and scored. Most of the game there were 10-11 Galway players in their own half closing down play and making things tight. Better teams won't be content to sit with 10 men behind the ball and that means in other games Down forwards will have more space to exploit.

But I have to have a rant. I am getting sick of the stupid way the advantage rule is written. And frankly I don't even blame the ref, its the rule that is the problem. The advantage rule in Gaelic is like soccer. The ref sees a foul and decide to award it or play advantage with whatever happens next allowed to happen. In rugby the advantage is signalled and the ref plays on for a short while to determine if it really was an advantage and if it wasn't he goes back to to award the original free.

The first one works in soccer because you can clearly see if there is an advantage or not, you can't in rugby and also you can score much easier from a free in rugby. Gaelic in that respect is closer to rugby, a free anywhere 35 yards out is close to being a  certain point and secondly you can not generally predict advantage when the ball is flying through the air. The rule should be like rugby where the ref can play on for 2-3 seconds then call it back. Croke park need to see the sense in this. I was so annoyed at the weekend about it. So many bad calls by the ref but most not his fault. he can not possibly know what will happen next when he signals advantage. As I see it, it is just plain wrong.

[conormac]

A good win yesterday - you can only beat whats put in front of you.  I think redandblack is a bit harsh on Brannigan.  Bergen playing at wing half forward was winning every kick out and getting plenty of space when Rooney was on him in the first 10 minutes.  Fair play to the management who changed this after Bergens point and put Brannigan on him who broke every ball away from him and this led to their keeper having doubts about trying to pick him out.  The move also helped Rooney who went on to have quite a decent game.
Brendy's kickouts were good as was his distribution from hand a couple of lovely kick passes to Hughes with the outside of his boot, handling solid as always.  I thought Hughes was superb for the first 40 minutes or so, glides accross the pitch with ease.  Like most of the forwards in the second half reverted to giving silly balls and forgot the basics.
Overall impressed with the much maligned defence who worked hard together as a unit, midfield kept on going throughout and didn't give Galway anything easy.  Forwards tracked back hard but leave an almighty amount of ground for the 2 man forward line.  Sometimes yesterday boys were looking up for the kick pass from our own 50 and the closest men to them in our half were on our 14 yard line.  Do we not trust our defence enough so that 4 of our 6 forwards are defending like mad around our own 50, leaving us to revert to the hand pass accross the pitch which could lead to alot of danger if broke up.
Looking forward to seeing the team progress much tougher outings ahead

[Leo]

Not too far off the mark RABAB
Maybe a bit too kind to Mc Kernan and not kind enough to Pete Fitz. Also thought Colgan was super when he come on - commanding, composed and super block set up the goal ( and fair play to Mc Comiskey).To be fair , the management called it well today.Important to focus on 2 points next week.

Think he is well off the mark with Kevin McKernan, a very athletic player who looks great on the ball but who loses his man too often. There were huge holes in our defence yesterday - and in Castlebar - when he went missing. He has great ability but where do you play him?

[whitegoodman]

That is the question, the lad has great natural ability but i dont think u can afford to play him chb as there are 2 many holes appearing unfortunatly.  I would put Rooney at CHB and try mckernan on the wing again and if its not working there its the bench im afraid.

Id like to see the following for nxt wk

McVeigh
McCartan
Gordan
Howard
McKernan
Rooney
Garvey
King
Fitzpatrick
Hughes
Poland
McGinn
Coulter
Murtagh
M Clarke

If Howard isnt fit then brannigan.  Probably a little harsh on lavery but remember the league final last year and andy mallon had him in his pocket whenever he came on and suits him down to the ground.  Think murtagh would give him or donaghy alot more trouble.  Mark Poland under pressure from Carr as well and mccumisky, lavery and clarke all pushing to get on.  Pity we didnt have as many options at the back.

[Banana Man]

i see fitzpatrick got star man in the irish news there

[extra time]

cant really figure out critism of keepers kicking. obviously worked at in training with at least 5 players looking for alternative to long kick. about 8 were played directly to players looking for it. first. at last theres an alternative to the long ball. had these tactics been employed agst cork ....... well you know the answer.

[PAULD123]

Yes the kicking was much more sensible yesterday, and yes I think against Cork & Mayo we would have won both games if we'd kicked out like that. But remember the problem with short kicks is that you sacrifice territory, and law of averages say on at least a few occasions the opposition will get it back, meaning they will have possession in scoring positions.

But generally there were many improvements yesterday. The half back line improved, midfield and our break-ball play around the middle. Also excellent was the continued development of our squad players. The problem was around the opponents 45 where we failed to pass wisely and couldn't penetrate. But lets not worry about an off-day for one of the best sets of forwards in the country. And that fact that Galway put 10-11 players behind the ball is not a situation we will face every week. Overall the weak stuff is being worked on and improved. That is the target for the league - To avoid relegation and to improve on the weak points.

[snoopdog]

just a general query lads. Do Down have a kit man?
they must be the only county team in the country that dont all wear the same Kit.
Even for the All Ireland final they looked like they all brought their own kit.
I know it makes no difference on the scoreboard and is a bit petty. But can they not get matching shorts and Socks.
I see Clarke prefers the hooped socks.
Like is it too much to ask to wear a matching kit, they arent a junior club with no money.
also when will the county board get rid of that horrible yellow thing they had to wear in the All Ireland final. I know its the ulster colours but really how many counties bother with that anymore.
Its disgusting. Bring out an all black strip for such occasions.
fcuk me it aint rocket science.

[Banana Man]

just a general query lads. Do Down have a kit man?
they must be the only county team in the country that dont all wear the same Kit.
Even for the All Ireland final they looked like they all brought their own kit.
I know it makes no difference on the scoreboard and is a bit petty. But can they not get matching shorts and Socks.
I see Clarke prefers the hooped socks.
Like is it too much to ask to wear a matching kit, they arent a junior club with no money.
also when will the county board get rid of that horrible yellow thing they had to wear in the All Ireland final. I know its the ulster colours but really how many counties bother with that anymore.
Its disgusting. Bring out an all black strip for such occasions.
fcuk me it aint rocket science.

there definitley was a kitman, sure didn't he get stopped in the van driving it on red diesel 

[snoopdog]

just a general query lads. Do Down have a kit man?
they must be the only county team in the country that dont all wear the same Kit.
Even for the All Ireland final they looked like they all brought their own kit.
I know it makes no difference on the scoreboard and is a bit petty. But can they not get matching shorts and Socks.
I see Clarke prefers the hooped socks.
Like is it too much to ask to wear a matching kit, they arent a junior club with no money.
also when will the county board get rid of that horrible yellow thing they had to wear in the All Ireland final. I know its the ulster colours but really how many counties bother with that anymore.
Its disgusting. Bring out an all black strip for such occasions.
fcuk me it aint rocket science.

there definitley was a kitman, sure didn't he get stopped in the van driving it on red diesel 

your right. Ha Ha. sure how can the county afford matching kits when the cant even afford the right fuel.