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OP can update the thread title to 26.

I'll take a stab at towards who could be selected.

If Kerry win the All-Ireland final

Shane Murphy (Kerry)
Jason Foley (Kerry)
Donnacha McHugh (Mayo)
Enda Hession (Mayo)
Charlie McMorrow (Dublin)
Dara McDonnell (Louth)
Mike Breen (Kerry)
Mark O'Shea (Kerry)
Joe O'Connor (Kerry)
Brandon Kelly (Westmeath)
Paudie Clifford (Kerry)
Kobe McDonald (Mayo)
David Clifford (Kerry)
Dylan Geaney (Kerry)
Ryan O'Donoghue (Mayo)


If Mayo win the All-Ireland final

Jack Livingstone (Mayo)
Jason Foley, (Kerry)
Donnacha McHugh (Mayo)
Enda Hession (Mayo)
Charlie McMorrow (Dublin)
Dara McDonnell (Louth)
David McBrien (Mayo)
Mark O'Shea (Kerry)
Joe O'Connor (Kerry)
Brandon Kelly (Westmeath
Darragh Beirne (Mayo)
Kobe McDonald (Mayo)
David Clifford (Kerry)
Dylan Geaney (Kerry)
Ryan O'Donoghue (Mayo)

The selection process as ever the winner  gets 7 or 8.  Semi-finalists Louth and Dublin should get at least 1.

All star to Westmeath winning Leinster against the odds and I believe only David Clifford scored more from play in the championship than Brandon Kelly. Finally I think it will be a rare year of no Ulster player getting All Star.

As much as it pains me to say it, would probably be unfair in Con Kilpatrick not to get one. Absolutely brilliant against Armagh in the Athletic Grounds and against Kerry.

I think Kilpatrick might lose out with Tyrone not getting closer to the business end - Keeper and Midfield seem to be two of the areas where a player's team nearly always has to get to a semi-final to have a chance.

Con O'Callaghan not scoring from play a big surprise and it wasn't like Kerry were great defensively matter of fact if they give up that amount of chances to Kobe McDonald,Ryan O'Donoghue and Darragh Beirne they will be more clinical.

I'd imagine Foley is a shoe-in for the All-Star full-back position unless he has an absolute disaster of a final. He's probably got a bit of an unfair advantage in the All-Star race in that he doesn't have to play against Clifford in any championship game. Agree about the number of chances today but it would be just like Kerry to tighten up on that significantly in the final.

Showing goalline clearance again, looks over but the camera on the bck stanchion and not in line. so is the rule partially over or all over?

3.1

A goal is scored when the ball is played over the goal-line between the posts and under the crossbar by either team.

I read that as fully over but who knows.

I have yet to see an angle that proves it conclusively one way or another. In those circumstances I think it's hard to criticise the officials whatever decision they give.

Pretty sure I saw/heard before that the ball has to be fully over the line for it to be a legitimate goal.

The rule on square ball is also a very tough one for the officials, especially when it's a from play situation compared to from a dead ball situation. The natural instinct when the ball is in play is for an umpire to concentrate on following the flight of the ball especially in a situation where it looks like a player is shooting for a point. It's one thing to call a square ball accurately from a video or even a still picture but it's a far harder task to do in real time especially when you're not expecting it (like in the case of a shot at the posts dropping short)

I wonder if there would be merit in the rules committee looking at trialing possible changes or alternatives to this especially in play given it seems to be a rule that is missed by officials with a fair degree of regularity. The other option is the VAR route but I really don't think there is all that much in the way of appetite for that. 

Dubs goal chance to go 1-14 to 1-8 up was a turning point

Overall Dublin's big regret will be their finishing between their goal chances and the wides.

At the other end no Paul Geaney, Dylan Geaney having a quiet game on the scoreboard and Clifford being mostly well held on the scoreboard by his standards but the rest of the team stepped up with the scores.

Would read very little into today's performance as good as it was.  Mayo not operating on Kerry's level. If Dublin beat Kerry then it's up for grabs. 

Yeah today's performance has to be hugely asterisked against it given how bad Louth's overall performance were. Was a real wheels came off the cart level performance from them.

The performance that would have me concerned was the Cork game. Cork were rancid yet Mayo only beat them by 5 points and it was very late in the game before Mayo looked like they had the win secured. I just can't see the Mayo full forward line getting the same level of scores against either Dublin or Kerry.

Is that Laverty for good? Just about beat wexford in the Div 3 league final. Got beat by Wicklow, Great performance v Donegal, beat senseless by Armagh. Will they improve any more nxt year?

He had that gut punched look about him again, similar to after the Armagh game, I dunno how many of those a manager and a team can stomach.

Today was worse. Armagh was a beating from the start.


Today was a bad beating, after being well in control, after half-time. A high to a very bad low.

A serious collapse.

Yeah I don't think you can compare the two beatings given where both teams are in the overall standings.

A good day for the Tailteann Cup and a Great day for Wicklow football.

I'd say it was a pretty great day for the Tailteann Cup in the end - especially as things were looking a bit bleak at half-time. Wicklow the first Division 4 county to win it - surely the football folk in a lot of the other Division 4 counties will be taking encouragement from that.

Massive blow to Down and I'd say any talk of being too good for the Tailteann Cup/deserving to be playing Sam Maguire will go vey quiet for a good while. A long way from the highs of beating Donegal. 

Capacity of the various Ulster Council Grounds

Clones 29,000
Breffni 25,000
Newry 20,000
Athletic Grounds 18,500
Celtic Park 18,500
Ballybofey 18,000
Brester Park 18,000
Healy Park 17,500

Corrigan 3,700

They should not build a very small stadium, but should show some modest ambition for Antrim, which has twice the population of other Ulster counties. Build a comfortable stadium of the same size as other Ulster counties and try and get people to fill it. Then use the Irish government money to make Clones comfortable.

I think a small stadium (sub 10,000) might make the most sense for both Ulster GAA and Antrim GAA, especially when you remember that a new Casement stadium is probably not going to lead to much in the way of increased overall ticket sales.

The starting point is surely to look at the number of matches to be held in Casement and the likely gate for all those matches.

How much benefit would having a stadium with a similar capacity to the Athletic Grounds for games be to the Ulster Council ? If an identical Athletic Grounds were to magically pop up on the Casement site tomorrow, what's that going to do for the Ulster Council in terms of the number of extra tickets sold for games in the next 2 decades? I'd argue that there would likely be very little in percentage terms in the way of extra tickets sold overall. 

From an Antrim GAA point of view how many times has Corrigan been filled in the almost 15 years since Casement closed? For the Armagh sold-out game last year what sort of demand was there over capacity? Realistically what sort of crowds are the Antrim county teams likely to attract for any home league and championship games over the next 10/20 years?

Rather than go down the ass-end approach of we have £150 million pounds to spend, what's the biggest stadium we can get with this money, take as a starting point the actual business case for building a new stadium.
Look at what is best for the GAA overall. Build the best stadium that will suit the people who will be using it the most. Sure allow for growth but realistic growth not the pie-in-the-sky nonsense of pretending that building a new stadium is going to magically sell bucket loads of extra tickets. The last thing Ulster GAA needs for this project is a repeat of the situation like the Pairc Ui Chaoimh/Pairc ui Rinn shambles where the footballers end up playing in the smaller stadium because their support is so small.

Use the money left over for more "boring/sensible" spending in terms of hiring coaches, improving county and club grounds accross the province.

Well at this juncture in the sport all the guys are top fitness wise. Would agree Kerrys kickout movement and understanding is like something like youd see in NFL.

Would love to know how many set plays and running patterns can be called upon and how the signalling works.

This is what puzzles me.  Given how important it is to win your own kick out, and the dire consequences when you get it totally wrong, why aren't teams running set plays - like a QB passing to a WR?

Bill Walsh and Joe Montana would script the first 20-30 offensive plays before each 49er game.  Can't GAA teams prepare in a similar way?

Is it impractical to huddle quickly before each kickout then send the 11 players out to run a set play like wide receivers?

Comparing GAA to NFL in terms of setting up a playbook is something of a stretch.

In NFL:

after each stoppage, all defensive players line up in roughly the same formation.

Roughly half of those players hold a horizontal line at the restart, and will never go deeper than that line.

It is perfectly within the rules for attackers to block the runs of defenders.

And even with the advantages created here in terms of set plays, teams go 4 and out more often than they score.

Thank you.  American football I know.  Gaelic football I don't know.  That's why I asked if my criticism was practical.  It all seems so easy sitting in front of the tv set!

Losing ones own kickouts appears to be the biggest handicap in the new game.  By now I would have hoped teams would figure this out.  Perhaps some problems don't have easy solutions...or no solutions at all.

From a GAA perspective, I do wonder if they want kickouts to have, at times, a Keystone Kops look to them.  I've written before that I believe this makes everyone look bad.  Cheap goals off botched kickouts seem like being in a kissing booth with the ugliest girl in town.

The big difference between NFL and GAA is the professional v amateur aspect especially as relates to training time.

I'd say NFL teams spend significantly more time training every year compared to Gaelic footballers.

I know GAA players put in serious hours but it's a whole different kettle of fish while also holding down a job. I'd say the scope for practising set plays is far more limited in the GAA compared to the NFL.

Reality finally hitting the deluded Ulster Council cheerleaders in the face.

When Ulster finals completely off the cards and with the other stadiums the Ulster Council already has access to for playing semi-finals, I can't see there being any sort of logic in building anything with capacity over 10,000. I really wouldn't be surprised if in the end it was something like a 6,000 to 8,000 sized stadium. The fact that this article is talking about the London money being in doubt strikes me as the kind of thing a GAA insider would be briefing to a "friendly" journalist like Fogarty as preparation for a much reduced size of stadium.

On the plus side this has likely saved Ulster GAA and possibly even the GAA as a whole from ending up being stuck with absolutely massive amounts of debt and paying off literally millions in interest for years on end i.e the Pairc Ui Chaoimh situation but even worse.

Counties should celebrate their provincial wins, or just wins over more illustrious neighbours. I hate this "ye thought ye had won the All-Ireland after beating Mayo in Castlebar." There's a puritanical streak in some GAA commentators that probably stems from Jansenist-Ultramontane mindset that frowns on having a bit of fun, and making sure if they did have a bit of celebratory fun to make sure they feel right guilty and ashamed afterwards so they will think twice about it in the future. Now dat'll teach ye not to be celebrating jn April and knocked out then before the silage is even cut. Everyone laughin' at ye.

My advice would be enjoy every fecking minute of it, celebrate every score and every big turnover. Certainly enjoy every win especially if it's over a rival or for silverware. You're not playing that long altogether and god forbid it could end at any minute with a bad injury or worse.

It's a hobby at the end of the day and there for enjoyment.

As against that my grandfather would always says no great team ever celebrated a provincial title past a week.
I still think there's a lot of truth to it. None of the great GAA teams ever seemed to get all that excited about winning a provincial championship - basically it was just a step along the way heading on to the serious business.

You need luck to win anything, Louth have certainly been getting their fair share, but good luck to them, they've overcome any adversity they've faced to date. They'll be very confident of taking Mayo.

Kerry are also lucky that David Clifford is a phenomenon that stays largely injury free, having a player like that means you can afford to be brave with everything you do or want to try - a point the Pods/media rarely seem to mention.

When Kerry badly needed a few scores on Saturday, they got the ball to Clifford and he done the exact same thing 2 times in a row and got a fisted point each time. He can be relatively quiet but then sparks into life when Kerry need him most.

Yep definitely felt a bit like them drowning and he throws them the aul life preserver.

Unreal. One (slight) criticism would be surely he could be an option for a kickout the very odd time if they're really under pressure with the size of him and leap he has. That last kickout (although he did end up getting on the ball) surely you try to open up the middle and launch one down his throat? He'd be very well rested compared to others given he never tracks back beyond the half way line

Funny you mention the kickout -  just saw a stat there that 16 different Kerry players won possession from a kickout in their game. That was probably on both Kerry and Tyrone kickouts but I don't think Kerry are short of kickout options.

Yeah they're not short is right, just a thought that occurred to me at the time why not have him as an option when under pressure which they were for that last one, worked out alright in the end though.

The more I think about it 16 different players on one team winning a kickout in a game really does show how the game has changed. There's probably a fair chunk of teams in the past that wouldn't have 16 different players winning a kickout over an entire championship, possibly even a year.

Someone last week was saying about Kerry playing with 4 midfielders but I think this says a ton about how hard it is to defend kickouts when pretty much every player on the pitch is a possible target as long as the keeper has a decent kick.

Was at the games
Jeez Monaghan missed Beggan , he plays they win 99 times out of 100.
Fair play to Louth though they stuck in
Got lucky with keepers in last two games and I fancy them to do a job on Mayo
Second game though Galway were cruising after their goal and then simply crashed .
Would see a few of their veterans stepping back .

Louth really got lucky going from Beggan in goals to a 19 year old making his intercounty debut. There was a fairly stark difference in the overall quality of the kickouts which was made worse by Louth's big men around the middle. They also missed him as a scoring threat. Saw he scored 0-21 in the championship this year before yesterday.

Can see a lot of the older lads in Galway packing it in - they've a fair few over 30 at this stage ; especially as Joyce seemed stubborn about staying on in his post-match comments. Conroy, Comer, Walsh, Gleeson, Silke, and Molloy are all over the 30 mark and I'm could be missing more. Whatever about the penalty, Galway were 6 points up and let Dublin score 3 points in a row before the penalty to narrow the gap.

Of course Monaghan missed Beggan but them's the challenges in the game which Monaghan failed to meet on the day. Westmeath had their nr.3 keeper, a young lad in  against us and he did grand. I think Mayo had a debutante against us. Monaghan needed to have a sub keeper ready to perform the kick outs especially in the last 1/4, the rest of the team there to support him and they failed against 14. For example the defensive tackling intensity in the 2nd half  was píss poor, very standoffish. They needed to up the intensity as Mayo did v Meath.

I thought the young keeper did well stepping in for Beggan 60% on his kick outs and some good saves. 

The very standoffish play mirrored what Roscommon did in Clones recently it was very surprising to see Monaghan do that in All-Ireland Quarter-final. Did Louth going down to 14 men bring some complacency or did the 3 games in 14 days use up a lot of the energy and Monaghan struggled to produce the
intensity they normally give in these knock out games?

I'm not saying he had a bad game - it was a tough spot for the lad to come into and while they might have won 60% of their own kickouts, if you looked at all the kickouts over the 4 games at the weekend, there's clearly degrees of quality in terms of a won kickout. One thing for a team to win a kickout under serious pressure from the oppostion facing your own goal with no good options to get it forward by foot or by hand compared to being pinged the ball running forward into space with options around you.

A lot of those 60% of won kickouts were at the poorer end of the scale in terms of setting up easy go-forward ball.

I think the problem for Monaghan was that it was a drop-off from the likely extremely high level of overall kickouts they would have got from Beggan.

You need luck to win anything, Louth have certainly been getting their fair share, but good luck to them, they've overcome any adversity they've faced to date. They'll be very confident of taking Mayo.

Kerry are also lucky that David Clifford is a phenomenon that stays largely injury free, having a player like that means you can afford to be brave with everything you do or want to try - a point the Pods/media rarely seem to mention.

When Kerry badly needed a few scores on Saturday, they got the ball to Clifford and he done the exact same thing 2 times in a row and got a fisted point each time. He can be relatively quiet but then sparks into life when Kerry need him most.

Yep definitely felt a bit like them drowning and he throws them the aul life preserver.

Unreal. One (slight) criticism would be surely he could be an option for a kickout the very odd time if they're really under pressure with the size of him and leap he has. That last kickout (although he did end up getting on the ball) surely you try to open up the middle and launch one down his throat? He'd be very well rested compared to others given he never tracks back beyond the half way line

Funny you mention the kickout -  just saw a stat there that 16 different Kerry players won possession from a kickout in their game. That was probably on both Kerry and Tyrone kickouts but I don't think Kerry are short of kickout options.

Do GAA plus show the games in full at any stage this week or where can they be watched back?

No. The tapes go via Shannon to Hangar 51.

Jokes aside If you have GAA+ then you have access to replays for a while. Or pay €15 should work

https://www.gaaplus.ie/payment/PC15-26-F-AIQF2

Can you watch  one of those QFs  For Free , even though you  didn't originally pay for it?

I was typing and didn't see your post.

I think someone who had an account with gaa+ when it was GAAgo said something to me a few years ago about logging into their GAAgp account and being able to watch a game they hadn't paid for back.

You'd think that it would be some good/cheap/easy PR for GAA+ to do this.

The numbers taking advantage of it probably wouldn't be huge but it would cost either very little or nothing.