Dublin V Donegal 6th Aug 6pm Sky

[The Aristocrat]

All the momentum with Donegal, a lot tougher games than the Dubs have had. It will be close and maybe Donegal will shade it.

[From the Bunker]

All the momentum with Donegal, a lot tougher games than the Dubs have had. It will be close and maybe Donegal will shade it.

Donegal have the momentum of one win in a row!

Well at least you are a bit more humble than Charlie Redmond.

[The Aristocrat]

All the momentum with Donegal, a lot tougher games than the Dubs have had. It will be close and maybe Donegal will shade it.

Donegal have the momentum of one win in a row!

Well at least you are a bit more humble than Charlie Redmond.

Tougher games. 2 v Monaghan, Tyrone and Cork. Ulster final was tight up until the last couple of minutes. Dublin have played no one, possibility of playing without 3 all star defenders, just have my doubts about the Dubs this year.

Don't get the Redmond thing, never seen him post here.

[From the Bunker]

All the momentum with Donegal, a lot tougher games than the Dubs have had. It will be close and maybe Donegal will shade it.

Donegal have the momentum of one win in a row!

Well at least you are a bit more humble than Charlie Redmond.

Tougher games. 2 v Monaghan, Tyrone and Cork. Ulster final was tight up until the last couple of minutes. Dublin have played no one, possibility of playing with 3 all star defenders, just have my doubts about the Dubs this year.

Don't get the Redmond thing, never seen him post here.

Small mercies!

[J70]

All the momentum with Donegal, a lot tougher games than the Dubs have had. It will be close and maybe Donegal will shade it.

Uh-huh.

[From the Bunker]

You'd have to fancy Dublin. Undefeated this year and playing at home!

On a separate note, What will the capacity of Casement Park be when built? 40K?

This would be an ideal venue for Donegal v Dublin on a clustered weekend like the one this weekend?

Have a game in a real neutral venue.

[Fuzzman]

McBrearty's performance v Cork will help him and maybe Donegal will actually kick him earlier ball. It's just a pity Murphy isn't playing better as having both of them staying in there would really test this Dublin defence to see are the replacements up to the job.
I would fear Gallagher is too chicken to come up with something different like McGuinness would and they will play the Dubs like the Ulster final. It will be ugly but Dublin have the players to kick points from 40 yards all day.
Dublin's only weakness is in their defence so if you're gonna challenge them then be brave and go for that weakness.
Giving them easy restarts is a bad idea as they use the ball so well. Rock is their top scorer so not giving away cheap frees is also crucial but hard to do.

I'd love to see Donegal at least going for it a lot more than they have done so far this year.

[yellowcard]

Would be surprised to see anything but another easy win for the Dubs. The Dubs owe Donegal for 2014 and but for that smash and grab victory the chances are they would be hunting down their 4th title in a row this year. This game will spell the end of an era for many of this Donegal side.

[J70]

McBrearty's performance v Cork will help him and maybe Donegal will actually kick him earlier ball. It's just a pity Murphy isn't playing better as having both of them staying in there would really test this Dublin defence to see are the replacements up to the job.
I would fear Gallagher is too chicken to come up with something different like McGuinness would and they will play the Dubs like the Ulster final. It will be ugly but Dublin have the players to kick points from 40 yards all day.
Dublin's only weakness is in their defence so if you're gonna challenge them then be brave and go for that weakness.
Giving them easy restarts is a bad idea as they use the ball so well. Rock is their top scorer so not giving away cheap frees is also crucial but hard to do.

I'd love to see Donegal at least going for it a lot more than they have done so far this year.

He doesn't really have time though, even if he could come up with a half-decent plan. The thing about McGuinness was that he saw and ruthlessly exploited a weakness in the Dublin game plan with three weeks of preparation. Does such a weakness now exist? Yourself and one or two others are pointing at the Dublin full back line and suggesting sticking Murphy in there with McBrearty, but the problem is that that makes us even weaker in the middle of the field, which could leave him stranded away from the one-way traffic down the field. Add in the fact that Murphy is ironically probably the player best equipped to play in the kick passes that himself and McBrearty can exploit. Unfortunately, when it comes to Murphy, we're always robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The other option is to try a 2011 job on it, but Dublin now know how to punch the holes with the runners and men not carrying the ball into contact, and, as you say, have enough players who can hit the long range points that it would take to accumulate 12 or 13 points to win such a game. And if we stick to trying to walk it across the 45 like we did against Tyrone, I doubt if we would break the 10 point mark ourselves.

On kickouts, if we push up, then we're going to get hammered in the middle of the field. And Cluxton only needs to player to momentarily get a couple of yards space to hit him with the kickout. Whereas with us, its short to Paddy McGrath or Anthony Thompson, or else 50-50 down the middle.

Another thing, we are going to need goals. And we are not exactly scoring lots of them this year. Oran MacNiallais has three. And I think that's it. None in our last three games. Didn't create a single goal chance against Tyrone. Had a McElhinney half-chance against Cork. One or two half-chances in the replay against Monaghan, but went for points instead given the circumstances.

We limped out against Mayo at this stage last year. I think we're better now, but the Dubs unfortunately have too many options whereas we don't (we bring Anthony Thompson and Martin McElhinney back on after being substituted; the Dubs have forwards who would walk onto many other teams who can't even get a game).

[ZeitChrist]

Unfortunately for Donegal I think Dublin will win this rather easily after a possibly cagey first half. Donegal still have plenty of talent in their squad, but tactically it's all over the place. McGuinness pulled off a masterstroke in 2014 and outwitted Gavin on the sideline. I don't think Rory Gallagher is wiley or brave enough to pull off a McGuinness-like ambush.

[Captain Obvious]

Yes the biggest issue with Donegal will be management as Gallagher is no McGuinness. Dublin won the league semi final by 10 points in April I don't expect under Gallagher to have improved their system or learnt much from that defeat so expect another comfortable Dublin win.

[J70]

What we need is a swirling gale force wind and driving rain. Drag them down to our level! See if they can handle Ballyshannon in February type elements!

[J70]

I think a lot of 2014 was down to Gavin and Dublin's arrogance though (well, if not arrogance, then naiveté). McGuinness correctly predicted that they wouldn't change their gameplan and prepared accordingly, but their gameplan was perfectly suited for Donegal to exploit given our style of defend in numbers and sweep forward en masse after the turnover. Maybe we charged forward a bit more than usual, especially in the second half, but there wasn't a whole lot of difference between that and, say, the early stages of the 2012 AI Final or the 2012 semi-final against Cork or any number of other games. Eamon Fitzmaurice, on the other hand, decided to fight fire with fire in the final and turned it into a defensive slugfest, ultimately decided by one vital break that went Kerry's way. Now maybe Fitzmaurice learned from Gavin's mistake and might have similarly been caught had they met Donegal in the semi instead, but who knows? (at least until the books appear!  ). However, Kerry HAD come up against that style in 2012. Dublin hadn't (2011 version doesn't count!).

[dublin7]

I think a lot of 2014 was down to Gavin and Dublin's arrogance though (well, if not arrogance, then naiveté). McGuinness correctly predicted that they wouldn't change their gameplan and prepared accordingly, but their gameplan was perfectly suited for Donegal to exploit given our style of defend in numbers and sweep forward en masse after the turnover. Maybe we charged forward a bit more than usual, especially in the second half, but there wasn't a whole lot of difference between that and, say, the early stages of the 2012 AI Final or the 2012 semi-final against Cork or any number of other games. Eamon Fitzmaurice, on the other hand, decided to fight fire with fire in the final and turned it into a defensive slugfest, ultimately decided by one vital break that went Kerry's way. Now maybe Fitzmaurice learned from Gavin's mistake and might have similarly been caught had they met Donegal in the semi instead, but who knows? (at least until the books appear!  ). However, Kerry HAD come up against that style in 2012. Dublin hadn't (2011 version doesn't count!).

In 2014 Jim McGuiness was planning for Dublin from the start of the season as he expected to win an Ulster title. Rory Gallagher has one week.  After playing on Saturday they won't be doing any heavy training this week so he can't make any dramatic changes to the team tactics.

Also in 2014 dubs went into that game over confident and panicked in the 2nd half. Dubs won't have that over confidence this time & with Cian O'Sullivan in the sweeper role they won't be caught on the break in the same way again.

[Jinxy]

You'd swear the game in 2014 was a tactical masterclass akin to Muhammad Ali's 'rope a dope' strategy.
Donegal were a whisker away from getting the mother and father of all hidings.
Yes, Dublin did panic in the 2nd half but by rights the game should have been over by then.
If McGuinness had Dublin figured out, he did a good job of hiding it for the first 30 minutes of the game.
I remember watching it with a group at home and the consensus was that Donegal would do well to avoid complete humiliation, such was Dublin's dominance in the 1st half.
I'd readily admit that the game is 70+ minutes, and Donegal fully deserved the win in the end, I just wonder how much credit McGuinness should get for that.
Was Tom Cribbin hailed as a tactical genius when Westmeath overturned a massive deficit in the 2nd half to beat us last year?
Did he 'figure us out'?
Or did we simply lose a game we should have won comfortably.