Mayo v Galway, 18/06/16, McHale Park

[Hound]

On O'Shea, I see he's back in the papers today, talking about the match. I think this is a time for going to ground, regrouping, spending time with teammates and management, and focusing the minds on the job ahead, not standing in the glare of the camera and getting into a discussion with the media about what went wrong. That's a discussion for their own dressing room. Why isn't management insisting on this?

Kelloggs paid him a few quid to promote something, so he's well entitled to take them up on it. Not going to make even the smallest iota of a difference to how Mayo play the next day.
Some people will begrudge him his few quid or somehow make out that it impacted his performance, but that's their lookout.

[Lar Naparka]

Don't know about a rumour, but AOS could do with a spell on the bench unless he improves.

Agreed. What sets the management of Dublin and Kerry apart from Mayo's, is that Jim Gavin and Eamonn Fitzmaurice have no problem, with not starting their biggest names, or taking them off if they under perform. Aidan O'Shea seems to be untouchable, no matter how badly he plays.

Disagree. I think it is unfair to single out a player when the whole team is dysfunctional. Aidan won ball early in the game the last day and as usual had no support and was left isolated. That would not happen in a Kerry or Dublin team. There would be lay-offs and points and goals resulting. Regan was left isolated as well. Won most balls that came his way and mostly isolated against 2/3 defenders. When support was there he deftly put Boyle in for a nice point. Says a lot when the only decent supporting runs came from Boyle. In fact you could hear Boyle in first half getting after his team because he knew we were in trouble. Says something else when you can hear players in a championship match with over 20,000 people present.
But mostly there was no runner to pop off too. Disappointingly Cillian had the opportunity to lay it off a few times but went for optimistic long range shots. This is a tactical/coaching thing and pretty basic tbh. It's not rocket science and should have been sorted long ago. A return of McLoughlin and Diarmuid O Connor to hf line should help for a start. But there is no use lumping in Aidan O Shea in various roles and expecting him to make big plays all the time. It's a team game.

You are bang on, moy. What you said here sums up just about all that's wrong with Mayo football and what stopped the team going the whole way at least once in the time since James Horan took over. There seems to be no tactical savvy either on the sideline or out on the pitch and it's a sincere tribute to all concerned that they have done so well in spite of their all-too-obvious shortcomings.
I'm thinking of Donaghy in Limerick in '14 and Aido vs. the Dubs in the replay last year.
Our bucko was moving forward and the outfielder were supposed to send high ball into him. Well, that was in theory anyway.  Seamie, in particular, seemed to have a malfunctioning GPS.  He hoofed it closer to the corner flag than the square most times and nobody else did much better.
When the ball did come Aiidan's way, he had no one waiting to pick up a breakdown from him and he had two or three defenders swarming about him.
Both were target men and that's about where the comparison ended.
Doonaghy planted himself right in front of goal and those outfield rtained down diagonal bal oon him time after time. Caff was on his own and obviously no match for him. Even when he failed to win the ball cleanly, O'Donoughe was waiting for the breakdown time after time.
I can recall anyone in any game doing the same for AOS. Last Saturday was no exception. In spite of the wholesale turnover of managers, Mayo can still be a threat to anyone in the weeks ahead but they can be their own worst enemy, missing up front and messing at the back.
Donegal's two goals in '12, Brogan's one the following year and Donaghy's tap in that day in Limerick were all down to defensive errors. Flynn's all-important goal on Saturday was just the last in a long list of unenforced c**k-up's .
It is very worrying that, while we have probably the most experienced squad in the land, they keep on making the same mistakes you'd accept from a Div 4 team but no higher.

[seafoid]

From a Galway pov the performance of the goalie was very encouraging.  This was a real problem area in the league. The running at Mayo was also encouraging . We might be able to beat Tyrone later on.

[Canalman]

This Mayo team will win the AI in the next five years or so, of that there is no doubt imo. Have a gnawing feeling though Galway could win it before them though.

They are well able to win it this year. Last year they were by far the second best team in the land and possibly the best. They had the pistol at Dublin's head twice last year and failed to pull the trigger.

Have said it here before, I think Mayo will win the AI when they are seriously under the radar and think the qualifiers this year will help no end. No one will want to draw them in the quarter finals, that's for sure.

Think Mayo management now have a glorious opportunity of dropping the two or three established players (sacred cows)  needed to improve the team.

[From the Bunker]

From a Galway pov the performance of the goalie was very encouraging.  This was a real problem area in the league. The running at Mayo was also encouraging . We might be able to beat Tyrone later on.

Careful now! Don't fall into the Mayo trap of looking at games further down the line. Roscommon first before talk of anything else.

[Syferus]

This Mayo team will win the AI in the next five years or so, of that there is no doubt imo. Have a gnawing feeling though Galway could win it before them though.

They are well able to win it this year. Last year they were by far the second best team in the land and possibly the best. They had the pistol at Dublin's head twice last year and failed to pull the trigger.

Have said it here before, I think Mayo will win the AI when they are seriously under the radar and think the qualifiers this year will help no end. No one will want to draw them in the quarter finals, that's for sure.

Think Mayo management now have a glorious opportunity of dropping the two or three established players (sacred cows)  needed to improve the team.

There's no one there to replace the players you're referring to.

[Jinxy]

This Mayo team will win the AI in the next five years or so, of that there is no doubt imo. Have a gnawing feeling though Galway could win it before them though.

They are well able to win it this year. Last year they were by far the second best team in the land and possibly the best. They had the pistol at Dublin's head twice last year and failed to pull the trigger.

Have said it here before, I think Mayo will win the AI when they are seriously under the radar and think the qualifiers this year will help no end. No one will want to draw them in the quarter finals, that's for sure.

Think Mayo management now have a glorious opportunity of dropping the two or three established players (sacred cows)  needed to improve the team.

I'm hearing that for the last 20 years.

[ballinaman]

This Mayo team will win the AI in the next five years or so, of that there is no doubt imo. Have a gnawing feeling though Galway could win it before them though.

They are well able to win it this year. Last year they were by far the second best team in the land and possibly the best. They had the pistol at Dublin's head twice last year and failed to pull the trigger.

Have said it here before, I think Mayo will win the AI when they are seriously under the radar and think the qualifiers this year will help no end. No one will want to draw them in the quarter finals, that's for sure.

Think Mayo management now have a glorious opportunity of dropping the two or three established players (sacred cows)  needed to improve the team.

I'm hearing that for the last 20 years.

Time for a hearing test so...tinnitus?

[larryin89]

"Agree 100% moy about players being isolated - our forwards played like individuals rather than as a unit. Part of that is down to coaching but ffs when players see the ball going in to AOS in the FF, they should have enough savvy to play off him. When we did support the man in possession, we got easy scores - Boyle and Keegan for example. "

It beggars belief and it's getting so frustrating to watch , it's just complete nonsense , very bad coaching . I'd like to ask what do they see as an end result when you pump a ball into AOS , telling both your corner men to leave him on his own , what's going to happen , what's the end result , we can't score unless Aido does everything in this play catch , beat two maybe 3 and gets his shot away . What's the % chance of that , why can't Regan make a dart off the shoulder as Aido is in the air ?

[weareros]

From a Galway pov the performance of the goalie was very encouraging.  This was a real problem area in the league. The running at Mayo was also encouraging . We might be able to beat Tyrone later on.

His kickouts were great but I don't believe Mayo created one goal chance during the game - and one forward scoring from play for something like 78mins tells it own story. It sounds like Kevin Walsh regards him very highly. I would hope that the Roscommon forwards at least test him (lots!).

Congrats to Galway, stunning victory - didn't I say it would be like 1990. Good luck to Mayo in qualifiers and though they've gone back a bit this year, would be surprised not to see them in qtrs and would not even rule out an all Connacht semi.

[GalwayBayBoy]

Jim McGuiness has his say on the game.

Teams rarely feel when the arc of their progression is on the downwards curve until it is already happening. Mayo may not have reached that stage but Saturday's brave coup by Galway has brought this team to the critical few weeks of its life span.
There were five debut players on the Galway team and they were coming into Castlebar with a callow fullback line and a debut goalkeeper. Not many people gave them much hope.

But as soon as the ball was thrown in, they won it, showed good intent and created a goal chance through Gary O'Donnell in the first minute. Now, they still looked tentative and dropped four or five balls into Rob Hennelly's hands in the opening phase of the game. And the interesting aspect was that Mayo set up quite defensively and as a result Galway played possession football.

A few weeks ago, I referred to Derry keeping the ball for the sake of it against Tyrone. And Galway started out like that. But all of a sudden they began running hard lines and produced consistent off-the-shoulder support and they began punching holes in the Mayo defence.
There was a situation where Eamon Brannigan made a good thrust and then Damien Comer did the same and set up Gary Sice and Johnny Heaney. Now they were keeping the ball and recycling it smartly, waiting for strong runners from deep. I thought Thomas Flynn was exceptional from beginning to end in terms of the directness of his approach.

It all meant that Galway had settled within 15 minutes, whereas Mayo looked very flat. It was as if people were waiting for their team-mates to do something to kick-start the collective effort. And a few times Galway went down the barrel of the gun, running through the centre of Mayo's defence. It was alarming to look at from a Mayo perspective.

One of the elements I struggled to understand was Mayo's reaction to Galway's kick-out. Their strategy was strikingly traditional: they had their two big men in the middle, Paul Conroy and Flynn, running to the wing and Bernard Power pinging the ball out to them. It was a really simplistic, bold statement: these are our big men and we are going to out-fetch you.

There were no short kicks-outs or little chips to the half backs. They just put their faith in their midfielders.

I felt it should have been a relatively easy task for the Mayo management to identify and rectify that. All they had to do was break that ball and make sure the two Galway men didn't get clean possession. It was too easy for Galway and after 25 minutes, we were looking at a very poor performance from Mayo. There was very little of the intensity or desire to win that we have come to expect from Mayo.

People are talking about this Mayo team as potential winners in September. Systematically, there was nobody in synchronicity here. Dublin, who are the template, are extremely well oiled and execute so slickly. Mayo just looked so far off that pace here.

And then one of Mayo's old problems came to the surface: the absence of a marquee forward. I feel Cillian O'Connor is a marquee place-kicker but in terms of open play, I don't feel they quite have a player comparable to Michael Murphy or Bernard Brogan or Colm Cooper. It was why I felt the switch of Aidan O'Shea into full forward last summer might have been the answer to their prayers. Used correctly, he could – and still can – ask serious questions.

That said, Mayo still kicked five points in succession in the 10 minutes prior to half-time and there was a moment where Mayo turned Galway over and for the first time the maroon players were jogging back rather than really committing to defence. There was no real sense that we were witnessing a memorable coup by the Galway men because their body language wasn't good in that period. But for whatever reason, the fluency was absent from Mayo's play and everything was sporadic.

Yet again, the Mayo half-back line showed the way to the overall attack. The team had scored 0-8 at half time from 20 efforts: top teams are operating at around 60 per cent, not 40 per cent. This lack of economy has become their Achilles' heel.

And the longer the game went on, the more I felt that it was there for Galway. Once it was clear that Mayo were malfunctioning, then Galway had to throw off the shackles. Except, that is not an easy thing for a young team. It is almost like this fusion between the tactical set-up and the ability to just release and express yourself and be brave. It is the ability to fuse tactical demands and then throw caution to the wind within that framework that can bring a team to success. And Thomas Flynn led the way in this regard.

The funny thing was that Mayo's tactical strategy on their kick-out was to chip the ball 10 metres over their 45 and 10 metres in from the sideline. Flynn identified what Mayo were going to do and he pre-empted it: he got in front of his man, won the ball, soloed down the flank and had the fearlessness and clarity of mind to think: I'm going to bury this.

After the goal, Paul Conroy kicked a brilliant point and the match turned with that flash 1-1. It sent a jolt through Castlebar because suddenly an alternate set of possibilities was there for both teams.

And for we neutrals, this was a great moment because it left Galway three points up with 15 minutes remaining. It was a perfect scenario in which to see if Mayo could respond to this moment of adversity in a match in which they weren't firing and show the country what they are about. But they couldn't respond.
And the interesting thing was that Galway didn't quite take the game by the scruff of the neck either. Instead, they created energy from the scores they got rather than working like demons and then getting scores. The game itself was sporadic but you would see this surge of Galway energy after every score. I suppose the point I am making is that Galway weren't fantastic in this game. But they did keep working and they had belief in themselves. The three full backs did really well and Gareth Bradshaw's leadership was crucial.

Galway are now well placed: they have the tradition and the belief and a very good manager. I think Kevin Walsh intuited what Mayo would do defensively. They didn't panic in possession; they injected pace when they took on the Mayo defence. There was a synergy there even if it didn't always come off. You could still see the trends in terms of what they were trying to do.


Bernard Power's kick-outs were terrific and he gave them a platform to attack. A novice full-back line got out in front of their men and triumphed against a very experienced Mayo forward line. So even if it wasn't a perfect performance you could see enough of Kevin Walsh's fingerprints on the consistency of the performance to make you feel they are well coached.

And that will increase between now and the Connacht final. And a good dry day could make for a terrific match because Roscommon and Galway are exciting teams and are very evenly matched.

But the big question arising from the game is: what the hell happened to Mayo? Where they complacent? Certainly the intensity and focus wasn't there. Nor the ruthlessness . They still haven't sorted the number three position and their forward line will come under further scrutiny now.

They are ranked as the number two team in the country but I didn't see that on Saturday night. The management team obviously don't have intercounty experience and this will come into sharper focus now. The county hasn't won the All-Ireland title in 65 years so these provincial championships, whatever anyone says, are a source of comfort to the supporters. You only realise how much you appreciate something when it is gone.

That dose of hard reality might be beneficial to this group as summer progresses. They aren't Connacht champions for the first time in six summers and they are still searching for that All-Ireland.

I feel that there are critical gaps in how Mayo play the game. To win an All-Ireland you need to be operating at a very high level across a number of sectors: intensity, discipline, leadership, focus, the execution of gameplans (plural), accuracy on frees. You need to have these boxes ticked simultaneously.
And I think Mayo's problem is that they tick a lot of these boxes all of the time but not all of them at the same time – or at the right time of the season. This is still a very talented group of players. The question is: how do they react to this? Can they prove everyone else wrong?

I was surprised by how acquiescent Mayo were – in their home stadium, too. I felt there was a softness there which wasn't evident before. It looked to me like they felt they were going to win the game anyway and then they conceded 1-1 and when it was game-on, they weren't equipped to respond.
Height advantage

Aidan O'Shea, their totemic figure, played between 14 and the middle of the park on Saturday night. It didn't work well because they didn't get enough possession around the middle and the quality of the ball going inside was at times substandard. I would play Aidan full forward in open play and at midfield for the opposition kick outs. I would have another big man alongside him at full forward so that if the best opposition full back is marking O'Shea, then who is going to mark Tom Parsons or Seamus O'Shea or Barry Moran? Mayo need to use their height advantage.

Then I'd have a real sniper – Cillian O'Connor or Conor Loftus hovering around their feet looking to pick off easy scores – the kind of points that Conor Mortimer used to habitually score without anyone really noticing. It's funny, Conor was a polarising figure in Mayo football but he had that natural scorer's knack for picking off simple scores. And he was busy.

On Saturday evening, a lot of Mayo scores seem to be kicked from difficult angles and from far out. And you wonder if that is a consequence of how they are being coached? Is that what they are being asked to do going out onto the pitch? Should they be slicker and more selective or make one more pass to enable easier scoring chances? These are the little gaps in certainty that add up in the end; the things that Dublin, for instance, had ironed out by the first night of the championship.

I am confident Kerry will get up to that level of detail. The question for them is whether their age profile can keep pace with Dublin. Going into Saturday night you would have said Mayo were best placed in terms of physical attributes and depth to match Dublin.

So this is potentially a defining moment in this chapter of the Mayo story and its attendant heartbreak. They have to prove everyone wrong now and push on with their credentials. Or else this becomes the moment where the concerted effort over the last few years, which has brought them so close to winning an All-Ireland on a number of occasions, starts to fade. The key thing is: how do they react to this?
It is a tantalising question. And it won't become immediately evident. The big quest is still there for Mayo but they are on a different road now. So how will they respond to what has been a serious jolt to their collective conviction and ambition?
The thing is, they could potentially get to the All-Ireland quarter finals before they themselves truly discover the answer to this.

[larryin89]

He could spare all the gibberish which I writes in that article in an attempt to set him apart from the rest , which he always does and just say , this is a defining moment in this Mayo teams life cycle . Although I'd also agree with him on the twin towers type tactic , it's unforgivable of management that they let a novice full back line away with settling in so handy.

[Hound]

"Agree 100% moy about players being isolated - our forwards played like individuals rather than as a unit. Part of that is down to coaching but ffs when players see the ball going in to AOS in the FF, they should have enough savvy to play off him. When we did support the man in possession, we got easy scores - Boyle and Keegan for example. "

It beggars belief and it's getting so frustrating to watch , it's just complete nonsense , very bad coaching . I'd like to ask what do they see as an end result when you pump a ball into AOS , telling both your corner men to leave him on his own , what's going to happen , what's the end result , we can't score unless Aido does everything in this play catch , beat two maybe 3 and gets his shot away . What's the % chance of that , why can't Regan make a dart off the shoulder as Aido is in the air ?

A difference between AOS and Donaghy though is when AOS catches a ball his first reaction is to head towards goal. Donaghy's first reaction is to lay off to a teammate.

Okay, sometimes (too often for sure) AOS has nobody to pass to, but other times he allows himself to be surrounded so he can neither go forward nor release the ball - whereas if his mindset was to instantly release the ball I'd say he'd often have a good option.

[rosnarun]

He could spare all the gibberish which I writes in that article in an attempt to set him apart from the rest , which he always does and just say , this is a defining moment in this Mayo teams life cycle . Although I'd also agree with him on the twin towers type tactic , it's unforgivable of management that they let a novice full back line away with settling in so handy.

thats Jimmy still squeezing every last drop out of the great one in a row Donegal team,

[bucko]

Confirmed in the Mayo News today that Cafferky's season is over along with Gibbons. Must be a bad hamstring injury to end his year, really disappointing considering his league form was very good.