Donegal GAA Discussion Thread

Ceist_Beag

Sendings off and a black card killed us, final score 1-15 to 2-8 to Tyrone. Sounds like an opportunity lost given their dominance in the first half and lack of discipline here as well costing us dear.

Nidgeweasel

Urgh.

Really starting to grate me this lack of a breakthrough at U-21.

Tbf from what I heard it sounded abit like the minor game in 2013. Missed chances proving costly.

Tyrone know how to win at this level, hopefully next year can see our guys take in abit more of the 2014 boys to the starting starting 15 and kick on. Hopefully Declan stays on.

Redsoxfan

harpsman wrote:

God alot of negativity on here considering its the league and we're safe from relegation. None of our performances this year were anywhere near as bad as Laois in Letterkenny in 2012 or Meath in Ballybofey in 2014 and those years didn't work out too badly. You might as well start calling for heads after a McKenna cup match. Who knows-maybe the players are doing stamina work the weeks of these games and are only at 70-80%. Anyway its a bit premature to be calling the management "clueless" based on what we've seen so far.

harpsman wrote:

Now they might turn out to have a terrible championship, just saying DONT READ ANYTHING INTO THESE MEANINGLESS MATCHES.

What did Rory show last year? We were clueless and legless when it mattered and the signs were there during the league. If you are happy to wait it out for the summer, fine, but there's nothing else to talk about for now except what we see on the pitch. 'Hard training' is one of the laziest excuses out there. What are the rest of the teams at!

And the League might be meaningless but it's a lot more meaningful than the McKenna Cup.

Who was the manager in 2012 and 2014? A better man than Rory, that's for damn sure.

Redsoxfan

Sounds like another missed opportunity at Under 21 level. Still, Monaghan gave Armagh an absolute trimming and were Ulster Minor Champions in 2013 (beat Tyrone late in the day) so should be a good Final. We blew it against that Tyrone minor team in the first round.

Rory Gallagher's cousin kicked two points for Tyrone.

#roryout

Murphy14

Nidgeweasel wrote: »

Urgh.

Really starting to grate me this lack of a breakthrough at U-21.

Tbf from what I heard it sounded abit like the minor game in 2013. Missed chances proving costly.

Tyrone know how to win at this level, hopefully next year can see our guys take in abit more of the 2014 boys to the starting starting 15 and kick on. Hopefully Declan stays on.

We have seriously underachieved at U-21 I think Declan Bonner has had his time with this group of players remember we missed out at minor level last year at semi final stage also a fresh face might push this group on next year

Redsoxfan

I think we should have done better against Cavan (in those years when others were in charge) as they never went on the win an All Ireland whereas Tyrone won it all last year.

The Ulster Minor title and Final appearance was more than any other minor manager had achieved in a long time.

Dunno if Declan deserves to be cut loose after this year - is there an obvious candidate to take over?

Nidgeweasel

Murphy14 wrote: »

We have seriously underachieved at U-21 I think Declan Bonner has had his time with this group of players remember we missed out at minor level last year at semi final stage also a fresh face might push this group on next year

We definitely have.

Blew it in 2014 and were hamstrung by Maxi curran last year. Similar to Rory for the seniors in the ulster final.

Declan has only had one year with this crop. Happy for him to go at it again. Missing a few players too last night but no excuse, what was out there was good enough to win.

Big worry is some good players now come through u-21 as serial losers. That's a kink which needs beating out.

Redsoxfan

Nidgeweasel wrote:

That's a kink which needs beating out.

Jebus.

Nidgeweasel

Redsoxfan wrote: »

Jebus.

I'm thinking Paddy Hegarty chasing them around open country with a thick branch, ala Sister Assumpta in Father Ted.

Nidgeweasel

Monaghan tomorrow.

Be some shite.

Redsoxfan

Nothing better to do so I will head up.

Nidgeweasel

Redsoxfan wrote: »

Nothing better to do so I will head up.

Surely there must be something you could do RSF!?

Couldn't be as bad as O'Donnell park again...... or could it.

Alvin Holler

It's going to be grim, especially in this weather.

Could do with a win as we'll probably be playing dublin next week in croker.

Hopefully Stephen McBrearty will get some game time and we don't play Leo as a one man full forward line today.

doc_17

Nothng can be as bad as O'Donnell Park!

Redsoxfan

Alvin Holler wrote:

Hopefully Stephen McBrearty will get some game time and we don't play Leo as a one man full forward line today.

Stephen exactly the sort of player we need if we are going to play along the same lines as we did against Dublin.

I actually like the idea of Leo at full forward every so often (over, say, Big Neil or Marty O'Reilly) but when the nearest player to him is 50 metres away it's not going to work.

Nidgeweasel

#roryout

The Assistinator

Nidgeweasel wrote: »

#roryout[/QUOTE
I have absolutely no confidence in this management after that a joke of a result incidentally is Rory the luckiest manager in the country right now a semi final to look forward too

henke

4 straight losses and into a semi final. Makes good sense that ha. Shocking result can't be throwing away a 7 point lead. We had the chance there to send Monaghan down.

babybuilder

Dublin next in semis. Will be meaningless unless he plays some of the younger players.

eddie73

I must say I am disappointed with this result. I think should we have won, we would have been playing kerry in the semis. We would have relegated monaghan and effectively ended their season. We would have gotten a serious monaghan monkey off our backs. I dont know why, but it seems to be a team that we just cant deal with.

Now we face dublin in a league semi final. We are facing our 5th defeat in a row unless we beat the dubs. I know that this is not impossible, but it is as good as if we dont get some confidence from somewhere. We beat a terrible down team, a cork team at home who were relegated today and we had one good result against mayo. The rest is not pretty. Roll on the summer? not.

DDC1990

eddie73 wrote:

I must say I am disappointed with this result. I think should we have won, we would have been playing kerry in the semis.

Regardless of the result ye were playing Roscommon. Rossies had ye on head to head.

doc_17

Rory Gallagher hasn't a clue from what I saw there today. He also wasn't helped in the last 10 minutes by Christy and Murphy. Murphy lost possession so many times innthensecomd half. And what were Christy and Colm A doing over that far side of the pitch for that last score? Toye should have pulled the man down.

Murphy14

4 straight defeats in a row and our reward is to play Dublin in croker in the semi team looks short on ideas and confidence as for the management substitutions of Mc Elhinney & Reilly was baffling two men who are good ball carriers one positive was having Frank back a better balance to the team with him. Not looking forward to summer with any confidence

Murphy14

4 straight defeats in a row and our reward is to play Dublin in croker in the semi team looks short on ideas and confidence as for the management substitutions of Mc Elhinney & Reilly was baffling two men who are good ball carriers one positive was having Frank back a better balance to the team with him. Not looking forward to summer with any confidence

squareball1988

Lads and Ladies, what was that? League or not, that was a must win match ahead of Ulster. Big psychological blow to Donegal.

I'd like to see us give the Semi Final a decent stab. But I just don't see it. Rory doesn't seem to have any desire to play football based on the past 4 games. It's been quite pathetic.

eddie73

doc_17 wrote: »

Rory Gallagher hasn't a clue from what I saw there today. He also wasn't helped in the last 10 minutes by Christy and Murphy. Murphy lost possession so many times innthensecomd half. And what were Christy and Colm A doing over that far side of the pitch for that last score? Toye should have pulled the man down.

I would rather lose a game than go down that road to be honest. I think that if you throw away a 7 point lead, it is not tactics but something else that makes you lose a game.

Redsoxfan

Nidgeweasel wrote:

#roryout

Plenty of room on my bandwagon Sir.


March report from Castleblayney forthcoming, just waiting on Customs outside the town to finish dipping.

downthemiddle

I wouldn't be as full of doom and gloom as some other posters. I am concerned by the manner in which we have collapsed in the last 20 minutes in three of the last four games. I hope this is a result of our late start in the championship and that we are gradually working towards full fitness. We looked very fatigued at the end of todays game, surely we can't be that far off the pace fitness wise, there has to be a logical explanation.
I felt for 50 minutes today we contained Monaghan well. We looked more solid at the back and Hugh McFadden anchored things well. We had Monaghan in trouble on their own kick out by defending it zonally. It led directly to the goal. The movement was good on our own kick out and we were winning primary possession with both long and short kick outs. We stopped making these runs in the final quarter and deservedly paid a heavy price.
Defensively we looked solid for the most part and contained Monaghan well until the legs went. Having Frank back was a big help in this regard.
Our attack does concern me. We are often slow and ponderous and don't have enough players running angles off the shoulder at pace. We are too lateral too often. This results in the ball carrier getting isolated too often. The number of scores we have conceded in the last two games from turnovers has been scandalous.
The impact of the bench today was poor also. Christy and Colm both gave away cheap ball and yet again a sub giving away cheap possession cost us the game. The loss of Eoin McHugh, with what looked like a nasty injury, was also costly.
We need to maintain our intensity for the full game, we need to bring more pace and penetration to our attacks and we need to stop turning over the ball cheaply. These are all issues that can be cured on the training ground. We have had good runs in the championship recently on the back of mediocre league campaigns. We have, quite possibly, our strongest squad ever. If the management address the issues we have reason to be optimistic.

squareball1988

Don't worry. Rory has a plan for us. He just doesn't know what it is yet.

downthemiddle

squareball1988 wrote: »

Don't worry. Rory has a plan for us. He just doesn't know what it is yet.

I prefer to take it one game at a time.
I'm not looking forward to playing Dublin again. Their negativity last time out, playing 14 men behind the ball, is killing football.