Donegal GAA Discussion Thread

ghostfacekilla

With a bit of luck, we will never see Mark McHugh in a Donegal shirt out of blatant favouritism

Don2012

ghostfacekilla wrote: »

With a bit of luck, we will never see Mark McHugh in a Donegal shirt out of blatant favouritism

I can't even remember the last time M McHugh played well for Donegal.

Alvin Holler

Ollieboy wrote: »

People do realise that Declan Bonner did the job before from 97 to 00 and didn't make a great job

Completely agree, his record as Donegal manager is worse than Rory.! In three years, we only managed to beat Antrim and Cavan in the championship and ended up losing to Fermanagh at home.

In fairness to the him, he was probably too young then and he's put the work in at underage level so maybe deserves another chance. He should be able to put together a better backroom team than Rory. But ultimately we'd be replacing Rory with a manager who is known for ultra defensive football, is a bit of a hot-head on the line and whose selection and substitutions have been a bit odd to say the least.

Ollieboy wrote: »

My real concern is the county board. I don't think they are good enough to get the right man.

Who is the right man though, most inter-county managers aren't good. Rory wasn't a good manager but look at what other counties around us have. Rochford can't even win a Connaught title. McGeeney and Kevin Walsh seem to follow every good performance with a terrible one. Is Cian O'Neill a good manager? Peadar Healy wasn't. Eamonn Burns? I don't think any of those managers would got us massively better results this year. I'd rate Malachy O'Rourke but he has lost to Longford and Down in the past two years.

I guess I just can't get too excited with Rory's departure. I think we're more likely to end up with john joe than a jim. But even more likely we'll end up with something similar.

boxer.fan

Alvin Holler wrote: »

I guess I just can't get too excited with Rory's departure. I think we're more likely to end up with john joe than a jim. But even more likely we'll end up with something similar.

I get what you are saying. Jim is gone & won't be back. John Joe had a bad run with the team at that time. Them lads had no real interest in winning.

Whoever is appointed manager next needs to steady things. The current players have heaps of ability. They will win plenty of games. The erratic nature of the losses, the tactics & all the messing under RG & his team was creating a downward spiral that if left alone would be akin to trying to turn the titanic.

dxhound2005

There are good players in all the counties. Cavan, Derry and Down have good players but those counties have not won an Ulster title between them in the last 20 years. Donegal were in the same boat before Jim. Because of Jim, some Donegal fans developed a sense of entitlement. But you have no God given right to win anything, and changing the manager won't help.

ArnoldJRimmer

dxhound2005 wrote: »

There are good players in all the counties. Cavan, Derry and Down have good players but those counties have not won an Ulster title between them in the last 20 years. Donegal were in the same boat before Jim. Because of Jim, some Donegal fans developed a sense of entitlement. But you have no God given right to win anything, and changing the manager won't help.

How many times are we going to hear this tired cliche? No true Donegal fan believes we have some god given right to be successful. Which is why Rory got a free pass for the first year or two he was in charge. What Donegal fans do want is to see some sort of progress. It became very clear that Rory was bringing the team backwards and alienating an increasing number of senior players who still have a lot to offer Donegal football. Changing manager will hopefully halt the decline at the very least

Redsoxfan

Jason McGee and Eoghan Ban heading to Brisbane for Australian Rules trials.

harpsman

ArnoldJRimmer wrote: »

How many times are we going to hear this tired cliche? No true Donegal fan believes we have some god given right to be successful. Which is why Rory got a free pass for the first year or two he was in charge. What Donegal fans do want is to see some sort of progress. It became very clear that Rory was bringing the team backwards and alienating an increasing number of senior players who still have a lot to offer Donegal football. Changing manager will hopefully halt the decline at the very least

You're not going to get better the season after 10 retirements / withdrawals.

Gallaghers record as manager is actually ok- beat everyone in Ulster and Cork and Galway. Lost the 2 Ulster finals by one and two points having beaten the other member of the big 3 earlier. QFs weren't great but we had a team on the way down against 2 teams at their peak. Difficult to read anything into this year with so many young players.

For the record I'm happy enough that he called it a day and let somebody else have a go. I hate the one dimensional football and Rory doesn't seem to have "it" to get teams over the line in the biggest games.

Another thing he said they put all their energies into the league this year. Cos that's always worked well in the past. Wreck a good U21 teams chances of winning an all Ireland, raise expectations to a ridiculous level, and have the players flat when it matters most. Still, we hammered Tyrone just to make sure they were well up for it in June. It doesn't matter a damn if we get relegated. Playing in Division 2 wouldn't harm our chances a jot.

Take it easy in the league if you're going to be tired in June and July ffs

bob skunkhouse

Personally I think a lot of people are missing a fact in that - despite what we think, we don't actually have a great team there at the moment. We could get Mickey Harte himself in to manage the team, with a backroom staff of Mick O'Dwyer and Jim Gavin and we're not going to get within an asses roar of winning Sam because of the players at our disposal - yet! A few points if I may -  I've gone to a good few games this year and can honestly say that at nearly every game we've gotten cleaned out at midfield. Until we can find at least one midfielder of the ilk of Neil Gallagher, we can forget about any near future success. Have a look at the last 4 in this years championship and all 4 teams boast a significant midfield pairing. 2) People are talking about all the underage talent in the county. How's this justified exactly? What have we won of late to get everyone excited? We got to a minor AI final a few years back, a few Ulster U21's successes and that's it. The Dublin team that lost to the  minors in 2014 are now current U21 champions. They've progressed, we haven't. Kerry have 3 in a row at minor level. Dublin have won 5 out of the last 6 Leinster U21 titles, Mayo last year(albeit a game they should never have won), Tyrone the year before! So what I'm saying is, all this faith in the youth rings hollow enough through the lack of national success. This years minors couldn't even beat an average Antrim team. It's a well known fact that underage success is no barometer to senior success a lá Cavan U21's Galway/Clare hurlers etc etc. Let's not miss the wood for the trees in this case. 3) How many times did Eoin Ban Gallagher run into tackles v Tyrone in the Ulster SF (answers on a postcard, but I counted 4), how many times have we seen EMcHugh do it, or most of our 'young guns' do it? I don't believe it - whoever the manager is  -  that they've been told to just run into a player and 'see how it goes'. Which begs the question, do they have 'it upstairs' to compete at the very top level? When up against well organised teams, or packed defenses, or tougher defenders, it's not good enough to be consistently dispossessed like this. Might be good enough at u14 level catching kickouts and running through teams as if they don't exist, but at inter county football where the match ups are more equal, we need more players with a little more guile than just 'head down and run at the defence' type players.4) With regards to the management for the coming seasons, it's hard not to think that whoever gets the job is on a hiding to nothing anyway. The team is in transition and the people of Donegal need to realise it. There're too many on the team need a few years S&C coaching to bulk up to inter county standard by which time, time and results will run out for the next manager. Personally I don't see any point in bringing in a new ambitious manager who says they're  going to win Ulster and Sam every year. Might be a better strategy to bring in a wily old fox in for 2 years to steady the ship and teach/coach the team a bit, wait for the team to mature a bit and then strike with the ambitious, visionary new manager able for the modern game.

charlie14

bob skunkhouse wrote: »

Personally I think a lot of people are missing a fact in that - despite what we think, we don't actually have a great team there at the moment. We could get Mickey Harte himself in to manage the team, with a backroom staff of Mick O'Dwyer and Jim Gavin and we're not going to get within an asses roar of winning Sam because of the players at our disposal - yet! A few points if I may - I've gone to a good few games this year and can honestly say that at nearly every game we've gotten cleaned out at midfield. Until we can find at least one midfielder of the ilk of Neil Gallagher, we can forget about any near future success. Have a look at the last 4 in this years championship and all 4 teams boast a significant midfield pairing. 2) People are talking about all the underage talent in the county. How's this justified exactly? What have we won of late to get everyone excited? We got to a minor AI final a few years back, a few Ulster U21's successes and that's it. The Dublin team that lost to the minors in 2014 are now current U21 champions. They've progressed, we haven't. Kerry have 3 in a row at minor level. Dublin have won 5 out of the last 6 Leinster U21 titles, Mayo last year(albeit a game they should never have won), Tyrone the year before! So what I'm saying is, all this faith in the youth rings hollow enough through the lack of national success. This years minors couldn't even beat an average Antrim team. It's a well known fact that underage success is no barometer to senior success a lá Cavan U21's Galway/Clare hurlers etc etc. Let's not miss the wood for the trees in this case. 3) How many times did Eoin Ban Gallagher run into tackles v Tyrone in the Ulster SF (answers on a postcard, but I counted 4), how many times have we seen EMcHugh do it, or most of our 'young guns' do it? I don't believe it - whoever the manager is - that they've been told to just run into a player and 'see how it goes'. Which begs the question, do they have 'it upstairs' to compete at the very top level? When up against well organised teams, or packed defenses, or tougher defenders, it's not good enough to be consistently dispossessed like this. Might be good enough at u14 level catching kickouts and running through teams as if they don't exist, but at inter county football where the match ups are more equal, we need more players with a little more guile than just 'head down and run at the defence' type players.4) With regards to the management for the coming seasons, it's hard not to think that whoever gets the job is on a hiding to nothing anyway. The team is in transition and the people of Donegal need to realise it. There're too many on the team need a few years S&C coaching to bulk up to inter county standard by which time, time and results will run out for the next manager. Personally I don't see any point in bringing in a new ambitious manager who says they're going to win Ulster and Sam every year. Might be a better strategy to bring in a wily old fox in for 2 years to steady the ship and teach/coach the team a bit, wait for the team to mature a bit and then strike with the ambitious, visionary new manager able for the modern game.

I didn`t see it as a wise move virtually stripping the U21 team during the league to play senior and said it here at the time. I feel that by doing so it cost them a possible AI plus the benefits that could have brought to their confidence.
It may not have shown up in the league, but in the senior championship in regards to S&C, the majority of those U21s were no where near the level required. Too many were thrown in at the deep end too early imo and must now have lost a lot of confidence because of it.
I don`t get to see much Donegal club football nowadays, but I just do not buy the story that there was no other options. Surely there must be a number of 23 to 28 year olds at least in the county that could have been brought in alongside these U21`s to allow them to develop ?
I totally agree with the need to find at least two large strong midfielders, and just today made the same comment to a number of people on the midfield of the four remaining teams. With the mark introduced teams with strong midfields are pushing up on kick outs forcing keepers to go long, and as we do not seem to have a keeper that can kick a ball to anywhere other than lump it down the middle, midfield for us is even now more important. Something that was made glaringly obvious in the league game we had wrapped up against Mayo until they introduced O Shea midway through the second half. Glaringly obvious to Mickey Harte if not Rory Gallagher though!
I get what you are saying about lads blindly running into trouble and being stripped of the ball, but that to me is not the players fault, it the fault of coaching at especially inter county senior level.
Actually on that subject watching Monaghan and Dublin it was something I thought Galvin has had Dublin working, on and showed during that game.
To me anyway,it looked as if they were using that game to fine tune their tactics for Tyrone.
Dublin knew they had the beating of Monaghan regardless of what Monaghan produced and never carried the ball into the tackle.

boxer.fan

charlie14 wrote: »

I didn`t see it as a wise move virtually stripping the U21 team during the league to play senior and said it here at the time. I feel that by doing so it cost them a possible AI plus the benefits that could have brought to their confidence.
It may not have shown up in the league, but in the senior championship in regards to S&C, the majority of those U21s were no where near the level required. Too many were thrown in at the deep end too early imo and must now have lost a lot of confidence because of it.
I don`t get to see much Donegal club football nowadays, but I just do not buy the story that there was no other options. Surely there must be a number of 23 to 28 year olds at least in the county that could have been brought in alongside these U21`s to allow them to develop ?
I totally agree with the need to find at least two large strong midfielders, and just today made the same comment to a number of people on the midfield of the four remaining teams. With the mark introduced teams with strong midfields are pushing up on kick outs forcing keepers to go long, and as we do not seem to have a keeper that can kick a ball to anywhere other than lump it down the middle, midfield for us is even now more important. Something that was made glaringly obvious in the league game we had wrapped up against Mayo until they introduced O Shea midway through the second half. Glaringly obvious to Mickey Harte if not Rory Gallagher though!
I get what you are saying about lads blindly running into trouble and being stripped of the ball, but that to me is not the players fault, it the fault of coaching at especially inter county senior level.
Actually on that subject watching Monaghan and Dublin it was something I thought Galvin has had Dublin working, on and showed during that game.
To me anyway,it looked as if they were using that game to fine tune their tactics for Tyrone.
Dublin knew they had the beating of Monaghan regardless of what Monaghan produced and never carried the ball into the tackle.

The whole business of carrying the ball into the tackle is a coaching & tactical issue that could have been ironed out in a couple of training sessions. It was clearly done out of frustration when the two attacking drills that had been hammered into them was found wanting.

The kick out debacle may have been a bigger problem however there was a whole winter to work on that.

Surely there is a couple of lanky midfielders in the county who can catch & pass

Minister Boyce

Jim must've read that parody piece about how to write an article like him; he goes straight into the subject matter this week in the Irish Times. No preamble!

Sign of a great coach, always learning..:)

BonnieSituation

Minister Boyce wrote: »

Jim must've read that parody piece about how to write an article like him; he goes straight into the subject matter this week in the Irish Times. No preamble!

Sign of a great coach, always learning..:)

When I was reading it today it was the first thing i thought of.

Minister Boyce

BonnieSituation wrote: »

When I was reading it today it was the first thing i thought of.

His head must be fried with tactics, patterns and formations but in fairness he is always a very good read. (the tactics part that is)

BonnieSituation

Minister Boyce wrote: »

His head must be fried with tactics, patterns and formations but in fairness he is always a very good read. (the tactics part that is)

I completely agree. Always my go to football article. You do genuinely learn from him.

charlie14

We are nowhere near what we were during the recent glory years under JMcG, but looking at the recent Q/Fs, other than Dublin Kerry and Tyrone there are a hell of a lot other counties not much better off than we are.
In Ulster other than Tyrone this year no county is setting the world alight.
Monaghan are not the team they were, Cavan have been a bit of a false dawn, Down did improve somewhat, but that was more or less it.
I was never in any doubt that when the team JMcG put together was reachnig the end of the road then we were facing a major rebuild.
There is a lot of speculation on the manager we need for that, but I do not feel we should just be looking for a "big name"

What we should be looking for is a manager who along with selectors who know club football in the county a back up team with a specialist in the art of tackling who will also work with all county under age teams,(there are a few present players, Lacey for one that would fit that bill imo) a goalkeeping coach who does the same especially on kick outs and a S&C coach doing the same and employ them full time.
We should be doing what Tyrone and Dublin have been doing for years.
Bring lads through that know the system we play too and not just throw in young lads and hope for the best.

Right now we do not need a tactical genius.
What we need is defenders who know what they are meant to do. Not just running back to fill space with them either being walked through or give away stupid frees. A couple of big hard cases in midfield that will allow Michael Murphy to move where he should be, terrorising defences, and a bit of coaching of forwards on getting caught in possession.
Sort out our defence and midfield for now, (and if that means dropping down a division so what) and at least in Ulster, we would not be that far away imho.

charlie14

Minister Boyce wrote: »

His head must be fried with tactics, patterns and formations but in fairness he is always a very good read. (the tactics part that is)

That is why they pay him the big bucks.:)

retalivity

DSH reporting seamus mcaneany is in the frame for the role, alongside bonner as the frontrunner.

ArnoldJRimmer

Chr!st, I'd take Rory or John Joe back over Banty

Redsoxfan

#bantybanter

Murphy14

Banty really I don't think we have the financial resources has for Pat Gilroy heads up a very successful business in Dublin I believe work commitments was one of the reasons we stepped away from Dublin so unfortunately I can't see heading to Donegal

charlie14

retalivity wrote: »

DSH reporting seamus mcaneany is in the frame for the role, alongside bonner as the frontrunner.

No great surprise that Banty is looking to get out of Wexford.
They had a half decent league but their championship was a disaster.
I suppose he can claim to have started the present Monaghan team on the road, but other than running Dublin to a few points in Leinster 2012 afair, he didn`t set the world alight with Meath.

If Banty is the only other serious contender his record he will make Declan Bonner look good.

doc_17

Banty?

No.

Redsoxfan

If the County Board thought the 'abuse' Rory Gallagher got was bad.....

Minister Boyce

Banty's obviously told a trusted confidant that he would give the job serious consideration if the chance arose. I bet he's furious that his supposed friend went and and leaked it to the media:rolleyes:

I'd prefer Mc Eniff back before Banty

downthemiddle

Minister Boyce wrote: »

Banty's obviously told a trusted confidant that he would give the job serious consideration if the chance arose. I bet he's furious that his supposed friend went and and leaked it to the media:rolleyes:

I'd prefer Mc Eniff back before Banty

Any truth in the Pat Gilroy rumours?

Redsoxfan

downthemiddle wrote:

Any truth in the Pat Gilroy rumours?

None.

downthemiddle

Redsoxfan wrote: »

downthemiddle wrote:

Any truth in the Pat Gilroy rumours?

None.

Better than the Banty and Cass rumours though

Minister Boyce

I'm surprised that someone like Ryan Porter hasn't looked to step up from being a No. 2 to No. 1. Appears to be well spoken of during his time here with Mc Iver and other Ulster Counties. Has acheived good sucess under Malachy O'Rourke - The Dgl job would be a good job for him to get his teeth into!!

Redsoxfan

downthemiddle wrote:

Better than the Banty and Cass rumours though

Jim McGuinness doesn't like Chinese food.