Search for New Mayo Manager

[Lar Naparka]

No, it was one of the players who left the plans behind, not them.

No, that's what the two lads are saying now but when the controversy about the demand for their resignation broke, what was reported and unchallenged was that the two managers had left their own plans behind them.
Now, I can't say what really happened as only those directly involved know the truth. What I've said is what I read- no more and no less.
But it's kinda strange that the players would have made an issue out of this if it had been one of their own that forget his instructions.
Why would the players blame H&C for anything that wasn't their fault?

And, while I'm at it, what player ever needed to have his instructions about what to do on the field of play written down and handed to him.

[Jinxy]

I dunno, perhaps the players felt that it was up to the management to put in place a system that ensured such documents were controlled?

[maigheo]

Eugene Rooney was the ex Mayo goalkeeper not Eugene Lavin.Connelly and Holmes wanted to release the letter last year but were stopped from doing so by the co. board chairman

[INDIANA]

Extraordinary article yesterday.

Especially since we now know the players have final say on the goal- keeping selection.

Hard to believe David Clarke has gone back

[Jinxy]

Also Lar, the incident you describe re the tactical plans being left behind in the hotel and how you came to hear about it, gives the lie to the notion that the players have maintained a dignified silence since H & C left.
There are 40 odd players in a squad, therefore large swathes of the county would have heard about things that went on inside the camp in the year since.
I'd wager that H & C hear a lot of this type of stuff too.
If I was being blamed for something incorrectly and I knew that this was due to an erroneous version of events that was being peddled around the county, I'd have no problem setting the record straight.

[Cunny Funt]

There's a curse on Mayo football all right - but you can't blame the Church for this one




From Eamonn Sweeney on the independent.

Martin Breheny's interview in the Irish Independent with Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly is probably the Irish sports scoop of the year. It's certainly one of the most fascinating and revealing insights into the inner workings of a GAA team you're likely to read.

While it might be pushing it a bit to describe the interview as Shakespearean there's no denying that it contains copious elements of history, comedy and tragedy. First and foremost, it's the definitive history of the events which led to the Mayo players demanding that Holmes and Connelly be sacked at the end of the 2015 GAA season.

Their account makes it obvious that certain players had problems with the management from the get-go and were keen to seek confrontation at every opportunity. On this reading the player revolt was merely the culmination of something which had been brewing from the very beginning.

Why? Holmes and Connelly believe it arises from an unwillingness on the part of the players to take responsibility for their part in the team's persistent failure in big matches. They note that when, after taking over, they asked senior players why they felt Mayo had come up short in recent seasons. The players, "told us match-ups were wrong, opposition analysis was poor, there was a lack of adaptability and they had no defensive plan. They also highlighted some errors for goals and also occasions when they had turned over the ball too easily."

Holmes and Connelly observe that this meant the players were largely blaming "factors outside their control" for their underachievement. In fact, they were implicitly blaming the management of James Horan, something which seems to give the lie to the argument that player objections to the new duo were founded on a perception that there had been a drop-off in standards since Horan's time.


On one level this is an unlovely saga. The player letter sent to the Mayo County Board is an unpleasant mixture of self-praise - "We the players have set extremely high standards in the context of our individual and collective approach . . . The experience and knowledge gained by the players . . . will be an invaluable asset to the County Board teams" - and veiled threat: "We wish to avoid making the resolution of these issues any more public or rancorous than it needs to be and we encourage the County Board to try and deal with this matter in private and not in the public arena." This request that the stab in the back be carried out in the dark rather than the daylight is not much of a tribute to the characters of the people who signed the letter.

Yet the story is not without its comic elements. Only the most stony of heart could suppress a giggle at the pettiness of some of the complaints levelled against Connelly and Holmes by the players during their reign. The player who complained because the bus had gone through a small town in Donegal rather than round it on the way to a game in Derry, the complaints about being 15 minutes later than usual to the dressing room because of a Mass, Aidan O'Shea complaining because he wasn't allowed to appear in a reality TV show. They're funny in the way that prima donna complaints always are.

And the element of tragedy? Well, Holmes and Connelly reveal that Seamus O'Shea demanded that his clubmate Rob Hennelly be picked in goal ahead of David Clarke because O'Shea preferred his kick-outs. They quite rightly told O'Shea that his job was to play and theirs was to manage.

A year later and Hennelly was picked ahead of Clarke for the All-Ireland final replay, a decision which struck most people as mysterious but which was justified on the grounds that the Breaffy man had a better kick-out. The decision by new manager Stephen Rochford turned out be the one which cost Mayo the All-Ireland. We have no way of knowing whether O'Shea repeated his preference for Hennelly to the new manager or whether it would have swayed Rochford if he had done. Yet one solution to the biggest mystery of the Mayo football year certainly seems to suggest itself.

It would be a bitter irony that players who had blamed defeats on their previous management teams ended up being deprived of the ultimate honour because of a terrible miscalculation perpetrated by the manager they'd chosen themselves.

Another great Mayo mystery has been the consistent underperformance of Aidan O'Shea in big games. Despite a massive reputation and undoubted talent he has been utterly peripheral in four All-Ireland finals. A possible solution to that mystery also seems to be vouchsafed by the Holmes-Connelly revelations.

Whether giving out because he wasn't let train with Sunderland or spearheading a complaint about the exclusion of a player from the panel of 26, O'Shea does seem overly keen on the kind of distractions which can prevent a player from fulfilling his potential. The former managers' comment about the number of Twitter followers mattering less than the number of All-Ireland medals may not be expressly aimed at the Breaffy player but people will draw their own conclusions.

Holmes and Connelly believe that the egocentricity of certain players is preventing Mayo from taking the final step towards All-Ireland glory. It's certainly true that Mayo 2016 were strikingly similar to Mayo 2015 and 2014. They did make the All-Ireland final but this was largely because Tipperary were their semi-final opponents. Against Dublin in the decider their performances were the same as they had been in the 2015 and 2014 semis against Kerry and the Dubs, drawing the first game and squandering a winning position in the second. For the third time in five years they lost an All-Ireland final. Whoever is in charge you get roughly the same level of performance from the Mayo players.

This tends to be a very good level of performance. That Mayo team is as gutsy and hard-working as any team in Irish sport. They can never be faulted for their commitment. Yet something is missing. And perhaps that something is an inability to fully face up to the pain of defeat.

Last year's coup could be seen as something which prevented them from having to spend a bitter winter answering the hard questions from their supporters. You saw the same thing at work on an individual level this year when, with the final barely over, Rob Hennelly was tweeting about his indomitable spirit and determination to bounce back when he might have spent more time thinking about the mistake which had cost his team the All-Ireland title they fervently desire. Aidan O'Shea and Lee Keegan were also quick to take to Twitter in a way which would have been unthinkable from Kerry or Kilkenny players.

Darragh ó Sé has written very well on the painful times Kerry players go through when they underperform and the recriminations they have to cope with. It sounds unpleasant yet perhaps it's something which is necessary if teams are to drive themselves on to success. Mayo's players seem somehow unwilling to undergo the requisite process of painful personal inventory. Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly's revelations, in an honest interview with an excellent journalist, reveal the extent to which for the Mayo players the buck always stops with someone else.

Invoking the 'they're only amateurs' excuse won't wash. Holmes and Connelly were amateurs too but the players had few qualms about publicly humiliating them. They deserved to have their say, not least because when the inevitable self-justifying autobiography is published by a Mayo player, some more accusations will no doubt be rolled out. Tom Cunniffe's recent public contrition about the treatment of the two men may well be genuine but it does smack a bit of wanting things both ways. Self-exculpating statements from the players are no doubt in the pipeline. They may even in their heart of hearts welcome the controversy as another distraction from the one fact about Mayo football which really matters. That fact is that they are fine footballers but they are also failures.

Not by the standards of almost every other football team in the country but by the "extremely high standards", which, in their letter of no confidence in Connelly and Holmes, the players said they set for themselves. Deep down they know that.

There's a curse on Mayo football all right. But you can't blame the Church for this one

[maigheo]

Extraordinary article yesterday.

Especially since we now know the players have final say on the goal- keeping selection.

Hard to believe David Clarke has gone back

Never let the facts ever get in the way of anything you post.

[Syferus]

No, it was one of the players who left the plans behind, not them.

No, that's what the two lads are saying now but when the controversy about the demand for their resignation broke, what was reported and unchallenged was that the two managers had left their own plans behind them.
Now, I can't say what really happened as only those directly involved know the truth. What I've said is what I read- no more and no less.
But it's kinda strange that the players would have made an issue out of this if it had been one of their own that forget his instructions.
Why would the players blame H&C for anything that wasn't their fault?

And, while I'm at it, what player ever needed to have his instructions about what to do on the field of play written down and handed to him.

This is what I was talking about before. Leaks about shite like instrutions, rumblings of discontent, subtle digs that can only have come from one source. The players were on the offensive against the two managers long before this interview. They chose the best possible time for Mayo to air what was a shameful episode for Mayo football. They have every right to their say because their reputations are now dirt in their own county because of the revolt. They don't deserve that.

If the county takes on board the lessons that can be learnt it will be better for it. If not..

[bannside]

AOS not coming out of this well. Pretty obvious he has too much to say and might be better focusing on his own game. Eamon Sweeney hit the nail on the head when he pointed out OS had contributed very little in the four finals....in fact he was very wasteful on too many occasions to the detriment of his team.

Football has changed.  It's almost all a running game now and about total possession at all costs. AOS is neither a footballer or a runner. Kevin Mc Loughlin worth would be greater in terms of overall contribution.

AOS is a superb fielder but unless the new rule change regarding the mark means kickouts will start going back into that territory, the Mc Loughlins of this world will be much more suitable to the game going fwd than the likes of AOS.

Messi isn't that big.....

[Captain Obvious]

Martin Breheny a excellent journalist? what next to be told Joe Brolly is a excellent columnist 

[heffo]

If Bernard Brogan emailed Jim Gavin or the Gooch to Fitzmaurice expressing surprise at a players exclusion from the match day 26 would you say they'd do it a second time?

What did the rest of the high performance environment think of Big Aido fecking off to the States to do a reality TV show in the middle of the National league?

[IolarCoisCuain]

The worst thing is that I have better things to do my time. But, you know how it is. Let's look a little more closely at the Sweeney piece.

Martin Breheny's interview in the Irish Independent with Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly is probably the Irish sports scoop of the year. It's certainly one of the most fascinating and revealing insights into the inner workings of a GAA team you're likely to read.

In old-style journalism, a scoop was the notion getting a story ahead of your rivals. So, for this to be a scoop means that your rivals are eager to publish it and the news is hard to obtain in the first place. Exactly how many sports editors rent their garments when they saw Breheny had Connelly/Holmes story? Not many, I would guess.

Also, a scoop is remnant of a bygone age. There are no scoops anymore, because stories are copied with impunity in the information age.

As for one of the most fascinating and revealing insights into the inner workings of a  GAA team, can I suggest Michael Foley's Kings of September, or Jim McGuinness's Until Victory Always or Denis Walsh's Hurling: The Revolution Years? They were pretty fascinating and revealing insights into the inner workings of a GAA team. You can give The Road to Croker a skip though.

While it might be pushing it a bit to describe the interview as Shakespearean there's no denying that it contains copious elements of history, comedy and tragedy. First and foremost, it's the definitive history of the events which led to the Mayo players demanding that Holmes and Connelly be sacked at the end of the 2015 GAA season.

No. One side of the story can never be a definitive history. That's just rubbish.

Their account makes it obvious that certain players had problems with the management from the get-go and were keen to seek confrontation at every opportunity. On this reading the player revolt was merely the culmination of something which had been brewing from the very beginning.

Correct. But why, Eamon, why?

Why? Holmes and Connelly believe it arises from an unwillingness on the part of the players to take responsibility for their part in the team's persistent failure in big matches. They note that when, after taking over, they asked senior players why they felt Mayo had come up short in recent seasons. The players, "told us match-ups were wrong, opposition analysis was poor, there was a lack of adaptability and they had no defensive plan. They also highlighted some errors for goals and also occasions when they had turned over the ball too easily."

Incorrect. Note, by the way, how Sweeney hedges by saying "Holmes and Connelly" believe. If this were a definitive history, he would start that sentence with "It arises from..." But he knows full well this isn't definitive, so he hedges.

As for the resistance to Holmes and Connelly, I'd agree that arose from the get-go alright. A writer of a definitive history of what happened might pick up the phone and find out if anything unusual happened in the appointment process that may have caused that initial reluctance to believe in Pat and Noel but hey - facts, schmacts, as the US President-Elect might say.

Holmes and Connelly observe that this meant the players were largely blaming "factors outside their control" for their underachievement. In fact, they were implicitly blaming the management of James Horan, something which seems to give the lie to the argument that player objections to the new duo were founded on a perception that there had been a drop-off in standards since Horan's time.

So, the players blamed Pat and Noel because subconsciously they thought it was all Horan's fault? But of course! Why, it's obvious, really.

On one level this is an unlovely saga. The player letter sent to the Mayo County Board is an unpleasant mixture of self-praise - "We the players have set extremely high standards in the context of our individual and collective approach . . . The experience and knowledge gained by the players . . . will be an invaluable asset to the County Board teams" - and veiled threat: "We wish to avoid making the resolution of these issues any more public or rancorous than it needs to be and we encourage the County Board to try and deal with this matter in private and not in the public arena." This request that the stab in the back be carried out in the dark rather than the daylight is not much of a tribute to the characters of the people who signed the letter.

There's no nice way to write a Dear John letter. It should be pointed out that Eamon's belief in washing dirty linen in public, rather than private, is a position not in line with general thinking.

Yet the story is not without its comic elements. Only the most stony of heart could suppress a giggle at the pettiness of some of the complaints levelled against Connelly and Holmes by the players during their reign. The player who complained because the bus had gone through a small town in Donegal rather than round it on the way to a game in Derry, the complaints about being 15 minutes later than usual to the dressing room because of a Mass, Aidan O'Shea complaining because he wasn't allowed to appear in a reality TV show. They're funny in the way that prima donna complaints always are.

Of course, if you're listing player complaints you'll only list the complaints that paint the players in the worst possible light. If Brian McDonald had spoken to the press in 1992 I'm sure player complaints about pushing cars in training or hooters blasted in your lug wouldn't have been mentioned, but arguments about team selection would. Again; we're only getting one side a complex story here, and a complex story that does not, and can not, have a happy ending. The only reason I'm commenting on all this is that people taking free and lazy shots at Mayo grinds my gears.

And the element of tragedy? Well, Holmes and Connelly reveal that Seamus O'Shea demanded that his clubmate Rob Hennelly be picked in goal ahead of David Clarke because O'Shea preferred his kick-outs. They quite rightly told O'Shea that his job was to play and theirs was to manage.

A year later and Hennelly was picked ahead of Clarke for the All-Ireland final replay, a decision which struck most people as mysterious but which was justified on the grounds that the Breaffy man had a better kick-out. The decision by new manager Stephen Rochford turned out be the one which cost Mayo the All-Ireland. We have no way of knowing whether O'Shea repeated his preference for Hennelly to the new manager or whether it would have swayed Rochford if he had done. Yet one solution to the biggest mystery of the Mayo football year certainly seems to suggest itself.

Aleppo is a tragedy. Football is a game.

I think the decision to drop Clarke for Hennelly was the wrong one, but you can't say that decision alone cost Mayo the game. Dublin responded better after the drawn game. Maybe they should be given some credit for that?

It would be a bitter irony that players who had blamed defeats on their previous management teams ended up being deprived of the ultimate honour because of a terrible miscalculation perpetrated by the manager they'd chosen themselves.

Now I could be wrong, but I'd say Rochford was the players' third choice. Sssh!

Another great Mayo mystery has been the consistent underperformance of Aidan O'Shea in big games. Despite a massive reputation and undoubted talent he has been utterly peripheral in four All-Ireland finals. A possible solution to that mystery also seems to be vouchsafed by the Holmes-Connelly revelations.

Whether giving out because he wasn't let train with Sunderland or spearheading a complaint about the exclusion of a player from the panel of 26, O'Shea does seem overly keen on the kind of distractions which can prevent a player from fulfilling his potential. The former managers' comment about the number of Twitter followers mattering less than the number of All-Ireland medals may not be expressly aimed at the Breaffy player but people will draw their own conclusions.

The big games argument is like the natural scoring forward argument. Mayo never have a natural scoring forward until they do. Aidan O'Shea never turns it on in a big game until he does. I look forward to the day when Mayo are next in an All-Ireland final and the opposing coach says "look lads, this game is 15-on-14. That Aidan O'Shea might as well at home, tweeting and pulling his wire." God, I hope I can score a ticket for that one.

Holmes and Connelly believe that the egocentricity of certain players is preventing Mayo from taking the final step towards All-Ireland glory. It's certainly true that Mayo 2016 were strikingly similar to Mayo 2015 and 2014. They did make the All-Ireland final but this was largely because Tipperary were their semi-final opponents. Against Dublin in the decider their performances were the same as they had been in the 2015 and 2014 semis against Kerry and the Dubs, drawing the first game and squandering a winning position in the second. For the third time in five years they lost an All-Ireland final. Whoever is in charge you get roughly the same level of performance from the Mayo players.

"Roughly the same level of performance" sounds like a bowl of cold gruel, doesn't it? Football in August for six years straight is beyond the wildest dream of three-quarters of the country. Oh but that's me making excuses again, isn't it? Sorry boys. Excuse me while I flagellate myself.

This tends to be a very good level of performance. That Mayo team is as gutsy and hard-working as any team in Irish sport. They can never be faulted for their commitment. Yet something is missing. And perhaps that something is an inability to fully face up to the pain of defeat.

Last year's coup could be seen as something which prevented them from having to spend a bitter winter answering the hard questions from their supporters. You saw the same thing at work on an individual level this year when, with the final barely over, Rob Hennelly was tweeting about his indomitable spirit and determination to bounce back when he might have spent more time thinking about the mistake which had cost his team the All-Ireland title they fervently desire. Aidan O'Shea and Lee Keegan were also quick to take to Twitter in a way which would have been unthinkable from Kerry or Kilkenny players.

Eamon made a reference to Shakespeare earlier. I don't know if he's seen or read King Lear, but if he did he may discover that what people say doesn't always express their actual feelings. It's a wild theory but, you know, it was him that brought up Shakespeare in the first place. Fly from the kitchen if thou canst not take the heat.

Darragh ó Sé has written very well on the painful times Kerry players go through when they underperform and the recriminations they have to cope with. It sounds unpleasant yet perhaps it's something which is necessary if teams are to drive themselves on to success.

Oh thank God. Something practical at last. Reader, has your county been under-performing? Play your part by making sure to give a countyman a bollocking over his shooting, tackling or some other thing anytime you meet him on the street, and keep the mincing little pansy in his place.

Mayo's players seem somehow unwilling to undergo the requisite process of painful personal inventory. Pat Holmes and Noel Connelly's revelations, in an honest interview with an excellent journalist, reveal the extent to which for the Mayo players the buck always stops with someone else.

Invoking the 'they're only amateurs' excuse won't wash. Holmes and Connelly were amateurs too but the players had few qualms about publicly humiliating them. They deserved to have their say, not least because when the inevitable self-justifying autobiography is published by a Mayo player, some more accusations will no doubt be rolled out.

"reveal the extent to which for the Mayo players the buck always stops" is a painful construction. The subs should have caught that rascal - if the Indo has any subs left, of course.

I don't know any auto-biography is inevitable from anyone on the team. I would say Eamon would bite the hand off any of them if he were asked to ghost it though.

Tom Cunniffe's recent public contrition about the treatment of the two men may well be genuine but it does smack a bit of wanting things both ways. Self-exculpating statements from the players are no doubt in the pipeline.

No more than the auto-biographies, I don't see any self-exculpating statements from the players. Not least as I had to look up "exculpating" in the dictionary myself, so I doubt any of the lads have a bog clue what it means either. *

They may even in their heart of hearts welcome the controversy as another distraction from the one fact about Mayo football which really matters. That fact is that they are fine footballers but they are also failures.

Not by the standards of almost every other football team in the country but by the "extremely high standards", which, in their letter of no confidence in Connelly and Holmes, the players said they set for themselves. Deep down they know that.

There's a curse on Mayo football all right. But you can't blame the Church for this one

Well, if the Palm Sunday Mass hadn't been late then the feed wouldn't have been late, and if the feed hadn't been late the boys would have been in better temper eating it, and if the boys had been in better temper eating it maybe they would have got on better and if they'd got on better maybe Lee Keegan would have hit that shot a little better and if Lee Keegan had hit that shot a little better Mayo could have gone on to win Sam. So it is the church's fault, clearly and obviously. Somebody give Bishop Brennan another kick up the arse there.

We're all failures until we're winners Eamon. Let's see what 2017 brings.

* Exculpate. To show or declare to be not-guilty of wrong-doing. 17th century origin, from medieval Latin exculpare, to free from blame, itself from ex, out, or from, and culpa, blame. OED.

[Syferus]

I'll just respond to this idea you and a few other Mayo people are pushing that this isn't a scoop or it isn't anything worth talking about, Iolar. I'm pretty sure every sports editor on every sports website or paper in the country would have loved to have the story Breheny got yesterday. The response here alone is testament to the fact it has a lot of interest in the wider GAA community, and indeed in Mayo because it involves the flagship sports team of the county and comments by people who were managing it 12 months ago cannot simply be wrote off as ill-informed or rumour.

Like it or lump it, this is one of the few bits of mainstream GAA journalism that actually shines a new light on an exsisting story. I'd hope for more of this in the future from the Independent and other outlets, even if the target ends up being my own county at some point. Engaging stories are exactly what makes the GAA so endlessly interesting. It's too rare that people talk frankly in this sport.

[Mayo4Sam]

For all the people saying, "Why didn't they say all this a year ago?", would that have been preferable?
Seems to me they didn't want to disrupt the preparation for 2016.
This is the right time to say it, if you're going to say it at all.

There was no proper preparation for 2015 because of the shambolic appointment process by the County Board.
The 'not saying it a year ago argument' because it would disrupt the preparation for 2016, is exactly the same as doing it now and disrupting 2017.

'Outside influences' seems to me to mean former management.

Losing the dressing room is usually rarely unanimous but almost always fatal for a management.

So the question regarding all of this is: Qui Bono?

I disagree.
Rochford has a year under his belt and no one will even remember this by the time the NFL starts.

Well I'm writing down ideas for some abuse to roar based on the contents of the article, actually.

You're lucky it came out Dec 2016, a year later and you wouldn't get to use it in the NFL


For what its worth, H&C say this piece is for the good of Mayo football, its quiet clearly not, its for them to get their side of the story out, I've lost all respect for them. Nothing good can come out of this for us.

A couple of points
- AOS emailed about a player being left off the 26, why is this a surprise? In any line of work a senior person can question the reasoning behind a decision, he did it in a private manner. The key word being private - hardly the work of someone looking to outset the applecart
- SOS wanted RH instead of DC because of his kick outs,why is this a surprise? The goalie has a huge impact on how a midfielder plays, you'd expect them to have an opinion and voice it. Players can push for other players to play because they have legitimate reasons and think its for the good of the team. I would expect senior players to voice those opinions.
- Dillon was upset at being dropped, why is this a surprise? And spoke to H&C, presumably confidentially, to have himself back no the team. Do H&C think leaking that will do mayo good in the long run? Or will it cause a division between two friends?
- Mayo have a core group of strong minded players, why is this a surprise? Every county does, every successful team does. Do you think Heaslip, Sexton, Best and Murray don't voice their opinions? What about Keane or Vieria? Kavanagh, Michael Murphy, Marc and Thomas?

The whole article is nonsense

[Syferus]

For all the people saying, "Why didn't they say all this a year ago?", would that have been preferable?
Seems to me they didn't want to disrupt the preparation for 2016.
This is the right time to say it, if you're going to say it at all.

There was no proper preparation for 2015 because of the shambolic appointment process by the County Board.
The 'not saying it a year ago argument' because it would disrupt the preparation for 2016, is exactly the same as doing it now and disrupting 2017.

'Outside influences' seems to me to mean former management.

Losing the dressing room is usually rarely unanimous but almost always fatal for a management.

So the question regarding all of this is: Qui Bono?

I disagree.
Rochford has a year under his belt and no one will even remember this by the time the NFL starts.

Well I'm writing down ideas for some abuse to roar based on the contents of the article, actually.

You're lucky it came out Dec 2016, a year later and you wouldn't get to use it in the NFL


For what its worth, H&C say this piece is for the good of Mayo football, its quiet clearly not, its for them to get their side of the story out, I've lost all respect for them. Nothing good can come out of this for us.

A couple of points
- AOS emailed about a player being left off the 26, why is this a surprise? In any line of work a senior person can question the reasoning behind a decision, he did it in a private manner. The key word being private - hardly the work of someone looking to outset the applecart
- SOS wanted RH instead of DC because of his kick outs,why is this a surprise? The goalie has a huge impact on how a midfielder plays, you'd expect them to have an opinion and voice it. Players can push for other players to play because they have legitimate reasons and think its for the good of the team. I would expect senior players to voice those opinions.
- Dillon was upset at being dropped, why is this a surprise? And spoke to H&C, presumably confidentially, to have himself back no the team. Do H&C think leaking that will do mayo good in the long run? Or will it cause a division between two friends?
- Mayo have a core group of strong minded players, why is this a surprise? Every county does, every successful team does. Do you think Heaslip, Sexton, Best and Murray don't voice their opinions? What about Keane or Vieria? Kavanagh, Michael Murphy, Marc and Thomas?

The whole article is nonsense

Jesus ye haven't high hopes for 2016 so.