Mod Note Post #1 - The 2022 All Ireland Senior Football Championship.

M three

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132178#Comment_119132178

Id take todays ulster final over the one sided procession we saw in both the leinster and munster finals.

Both games were over as a contest after minutes. If anyone wants to start a campaign to "save" football id suggest they start with saving the leinster and munster football championships first.

Treble double

I have always defended Gaelic Football and backed that by saying every game evolves, I found Donegals approach interesting under McGuinness and it was a means to an end and was happy when a team like Dublin adopted a more adventurous approach.

I find today's Ulster final very hard to defend. When you have a sell out crowd present and you can hear people having conversations there is something wrong with the product. Styles make fights and Donegal mirroring Derry today made the game a borefest.

I feel the Ulster teams are over rated and that there is no outstanding team in the province, which leads to tight games which then gets mistaken for a quality provincial championship.

I enjoyed the football played by Galway today and they have real quality forwards. They gave a good trimming to Derry in the leauge and I hope Derry get well beaten in the All Ireland quarter finals so that their style of play isn't adopted by other teams attempting a breakthrough.

kirk.

Derry was hyped they'll win nothing this year and jaysus Donegal playing the ball in the wrong direction would make ya sick

Neither team playing to win and the management is too conservative

M three

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132300#Comment_119132300

Thats just anti ulster commentary dressed up.

Lets see what galways forwards do when they're under pressure in croke park. Galway v derry wouldnt be a sure thing for galway by any means.

Its becoming laughable how much doomsday dirge there is after todays ulster final. The world wont stop spinning, GAA clubs all over the country will be jammed all this week as usual, there will be plenty of fantastic games left for everyone to drool over

Pussyhands

Bonner has to go you'd think. The Derry goalkeeper dropped three balls, one leading to a goal and the other two leading to almost goals. You'd think they'd have dropped a few more in on top of him.

Hammer Archer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132334#Comment_119132334

They'll win nothing this year? Think you'll find they just won their first Ulster title in over 20 years today. Think they'll be quite happy with that.

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132343#Comment_119132343

Objectively the management looks to be dire , did they even have a plan A never mind a plan b which they defo didn't have

Gael85

Derry last won Ulster in 98. Tyrone won Ulster in 2001. Derry beat them in QF that year after Tyrone had won the Ulster game between the 2 sides.

Treble double

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132338#Comment_119132338

I have no bias against any province however I do agree that the provincials are outdated and I think the argument for keeping them because Ulster is strong is ridiculous. If you had a Kerry or Dublin in Ulster it would be every bit the procession that Munster and Leinster are.

I think Galway are showing so far that they are the third best team in the country behind Dublin and Kerry.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132159#Comment_119132159

Plenty of teams used to play a very exciting forward moving quick hand passing game. But of course dinosaurs think its the hand passing is the problem because back in the "golden age" it was all lumping it down the pitch.

Ban hand passing all you want but all it will do is lead to kicks backwards and around the "horse shoe" and that's incredibly obvious.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132351#Comment_119132351

Last time Derry won it, they played Galway in the semi finals.

Galway had beaten Roscommon and Derry beat Donegal.

Hopefully we get the same result if both win their quarters... I think we can rule out Kildare making the final on the other side of the draw though this time 😂

gormdubhgorm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132395#Comment_119132395

Where would you put Mayo though? On paper better panel than Galway. And they nearly always end up turning up again in the qualifiers.

briandebum

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132338#Comment_119132338

I know it's the league & all that but Galway did batter Derry 4-11 to 12 points not too long ago.

tanko

Gooch talking rubbish, someone should remind him that Tyrone won the All Ireland last year, what a clueless pundit.

Treble double

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132425#Comment_119132425

Galway have better forwards and a more reliable freetaker.

munster87

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132434#Comment_119132434

And Kildare beat Dublin...

shockframe

I watched the 2 games today and also watched the Ulster Minor Final in between.

2 of the 3 games were enjoyable and even though Derry Donegal wasn't the greatest of games it did have its moments.

Overall it wasn't a bad day of football. Not that the detractors would be interested in that....

Pussyhands

RTE had all 4 provincial finals. I thought Sky Sports used to have 2 of them usually the Dubs and Munster.

Was there a change in rights?

gormdubhgorm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132590#Comment_119132590

Rogers, O’Callaghan and Walsh all showed class in the three of the four finals I saw. But still people are entitled to criticise the provincial system, playing systems, tactical nous or lack thereof.

Redsoxfan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119131599#Comment_119131599

The football Donegal play under Declan Bonner bears no resemblance to how it was played under Jim McGuinness.

ArmaniJeanss

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132596#Comment_119132596

Doesn't seem to be any overall differences compared to the previous system (in number of matches anyway).

I suspect it's just that Sky didn't pick these games. The process isn't particularly clear, but I suspect that they pick in turn with the matches in groups of two. So at some stage of the process RTE said 'we pick the two Saturday provincial football finals' and Sky responded with 'we pick the Week 3 Munster Hurling Round Robin double header' and RTE said 'we pick the two Sunday provincial football finals' etc etc etc.

So it just happened to fall that way this year. Sky may have wanted specific fixtures of known quality rather than the unknown match-ups that happen in finals.

NIMAN

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132730#Comment_119132730

True, but its still sad to all the midfield and attacking players turn their backs on play and run into a defensive formation when they lose possession.

That is a Jim Mcguinness legacy.

The football is ultra negative, you can't deny that. Did Donegal play football like this BEFORE Jim?

Look, I've said I'm no great watcher of Gaa, so I'm probably in no position to comment, but I watched the game today and if that's what modern football is striving towards, the future looks very grim indeed.

shockframe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132684#Comment_119132684

I wouldn't argue with a lot of that.

I do believe though that Football has become everyones favourite punch bag which is very unfair on the sport as a whole. As I said earlier bad games in other sports get an easy time of it.

The weekend reflects very badly on the likes of Kildare and Donegal. (I'll exclude Roscommon who perform reasonably well given their resources).

Too many of the decent sized counties have gone backwards since the late 90s/early 00s. There'll always be disappointing games like today in Clones but the sport is suffering with the decline of Meath, Kildare, Galway, Cork etc. Hurling has gotten more out of its bigger counties in recent times.

It would be ideal if Galway, Cork or Derry started becoming contenders to the top 4 or 5. It would be huge for the overall state of Football.

Jonah Tali Lomu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132338#Comment_119132338

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119131310#Comment_119131310

This anti Ulster thing is rubbish. People see a bad game and they call it, no matter where it is.

As for your modern patterns of play, that's untrue. Handpassing around until someone gets free of their marker isn't rocket science.

Oh gaelic football will always be there. The reason why..it's a really simple game to play at lower levels. A 45 year old junior B only needs to be able to kick the ball 3 or 4 times a game, handpass it (an amazing skill) and run a bit. Same for children.

You get top level players at county level, and you get a lot of runners too who don't have a whole lot of skill.

Gaelic football developed from cad in Ireland. There were numerous such types of game around the world. It's not that unique. Aussie rules is now a far better game in general as it's played at pace without the whole team behind.

When gaelic football is played at a slow pace it's an awful watch. Saying it'll always be here is neither here nor there. So will cricket etc.

Dressing that rubbish up as something tactical to behold is just blind love for your game.

Cliffyy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119131504#Comment_119131504

That's what makes it worse. With such high skills why do Donegal handpass the ball around at geriatric pace? And underachieve so much?

JRant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119132864#Comment_119132864

While I agree in general I think that's harsh on Kildare. They are doing well in Div 1 and have some quality young players in the team. They just happened to run into a waking beast on Saturday. I'd go so far as to say that outside of Kerry, Dublin would have hopped off any other county in the country Saturday. The speed of movement (both players and ball) was something we haven't seen in a while.

There are a lot of teams putting in good effort to try bridge the gap but it takes time. For the likes of Derry it makes sense for them to be more cautious as it's easier to defend than attack. What they do really well is break with pace and numbers. I'd hope to see them evolve as a team as their confidence grows.

The GAA are slowly changing to that format that pretty much everyone agrees should be in place. The league is getting more prominence and for the most part is a higher standard than the championship. The fact that the council at HQ is run by blazers and money men needs to change or the pace of change will be far too slow.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119133586#Comment_119133586

I would say the "money men" in HQ would love to be rid of the provincial championship. League or group stage All Irelands are worth way more and it's the blazers at county board level who still think Sam is a 32 county tournament are the problem.

Fattybojangles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119129623#Comment_119129623

There is no way a properly organised team would get blitzed like that imagine a Rory Gallagher team getting done like that it wouldn't happen yes the second goal was lucky but 3 4 and 5 were farcical the lack of intensity was comical at times. Jack o Connor set us up last year to avoid conceding goals and be competitive and it worked only for poor shooting we'd have given Dublin a proper game last year only 4 in it at half time not 16.

The only worry I would have for ye is that ye conceded 1-14 against an awful Meath team and 1-15 against an awful Kildare team that won't do against Kerry.

keeponhurling

The issue with scrapping provincial championships of course is you go from 5 trophies to compete for (4 provinces + Sam), to only one (Sam).

I guess the Tailteann Cup goes some way to add a trophy. It certainly ends some of the beat-downs in the early rounds of the qualifiers, which is a big positive.

Fattybojangles

Brilliant from Derry the highlight of the weekend Rory Gallagher has taken a division 4 team and turned them into Ulster champions I remember playing Derry up in Owenbeg a few years ago and they were absolutely rotten it is some progression.

It is not pretty to watch at times but you are there to win not to entertain and I'd much rather my own county had the bottle, belief and organisation of Derry and put it up to better teams rather than producing the pathetic surrender that was devoid of any tactics or defensive structure that we produced on Saturday.