Mayo GAA Discussion

Home advantage is usually the main advantage in these cases. Maybe less so in our own case.

How are you getting 8 days versus 6? Derry played Saturday evening, we played Sunday.

On the ball there as usual

Haha!

I've long being a critic of Brick,I dont really know what he offers as a purely defensive player.

He does look to kick early and often, yesterday it ended in a free for Ryan.If it hadn't been called for a free Ryan was bearing down on goal.

A young Brickendon was first choice for Horan and now McStay,I'm guessing them lads know better than any of us.

Brolly is a gobsh1te.

He can be, but he can also come up with some great quotes and I doubt there are many Derry supporters that would disagree with that one right now. By the look of them, few of their team would either.

As Press Run said you could look at this as a possible ambush, but I cannot see it. If Derry were at home they might put in a shift, but as they are the look like a team that would be more than happy out of the championship than facing into a QF the following week.

For me Cork would have been a trickier game for Mayo than Derry. The four I would see going through are Mayo, Galway, Tyrone and Cork.

The problem with Dublin is that by finishing top of the group they are back in Croke Park for the QF and even if Mayo had beaten them, other than them having to play an extra game this weekend, it would still have been in Croke Park as they would have had a home game for finishing second in the group.

As to what the championship will look like in a few weeks I haven`t a clue. The QFs alone will be in the lap of the Gods

I dunno, that free might have been soft but any of the decisions we might have gotten were evened up by decisions that went against us (a few soft frees the other direction) or what should in my view have been given to us as a penalty for a footblock (accidental or not, it’s still a footblock). Us getting the 45 probably evened it up but I don’t think anyone can say that we were net beneficiaries over the course of the game.

There’s every reason to believe Ryan would have retained possession and was goal side of both Dublin players so would have been through on goal there too.
I felt it was a good pass by Brick and sometimes you need to take those chances and he’s a decent passer and has demonstrated this before as part of his game.
As for the patient possession game, I would certainly agree. I know it’s not as exciting to watch as Horanball but we’re conceding fewer goal chances and have more in the tank for the last few minutes and are therefore better able to stay with the opposition teams at that point. Dublin were making tactical substitutions perhaps earlier than we were, and I believe that’s primarily because we were able to stay with them and forced them into making the changes rather than the other way around.

Anyway, onward to Derry on Saturday night. It will be hard to play with the same intensity 6 days after that but we have to play it and we’ll have to win it if we have any designs on having a say in this years championship.

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We’ll have to agree to differ on the footblock. Ryan was down for 2 or 3 minutes (while play continued) after that incident and dropped the next free a few minutes later short. He was clearly physically hurt from the incident which is precisely why the footblock rule is in place. Ryan should have asked Aido to take that free as in my view he was still out of sorts having only gotten back up on his feet about 2 minutes prior.

Yes we will probably have to agree to disagree. As far as I know the foot block relates specifically to the use of the boot. Ryan getting hurt was more down to the collision with a much bigger man IMO. After seeing all the replays I couldn't see intent from Fenton to cause injury, he's generally a very clean player. So I wouldn't have given a free but I'll concede that another ref may have as it was a messy collision and difficult to be certain in real time.

What does the path look like after this weekend for the winner of ourselves or Derry? Is it an open draw for the quarter final or how does it all fit together?

If we win, we play Armagh/Donegal/Kerry in a QF

But it was yourself that put up the photo showing it clearly wasn't a foot block. I don't have an official definition of a "foot". But it definitely doesn't include half-way up someone's leg. It was clearly the back of Brian Fentons leg (i.e. the calf muscle) that blocked the ball.

I don't know how anyone can criticize Brick for the pass. He saw the opportunity and it was a perfect pass. He had the ball was on the mayo half back line. It wasn't going to be as simple as Mayo playing around with the ball for another minute and then just miraciously get a shot at goal as the three minutes of injury time are about to elapse. You have to take some chance to get reward. If it were Ciaran McDonald, Diarmuid Connolly, David Clifford, Daragh Canavan, Shane Walsh etc., they would be regarded as genius for setting up what should have been the winning point. But the real issue is that all the players that were in the vicinity of Ciaran Kilkenny, when he caught that last ball, did not all catch him and fling him to the ground and sit on top of him to make sure that all momentum for Dublin going forward was absolutely diminished. The way he and his colleagues did to us some years ago, even though they took a black card for it. But it worked for them.

It wasn't going to be as simple as Mayo playing around with the ball for another minute and then just miraciously get a shot at goal as the three minutes of injury time are about to elapse. You have to take some chance to get reward

That's exactly how simple it was - look back on the last couple of minutes, we had retained the ball for the previous minute with Dublin putting zero pressure on us. We could have done that for another 90s and then made the pass to shoot a winner. The difference between taking a chance then and taking a chance 90s later is that one is a chance for a lead score, the other is a chance for a winning score (although I also agree that we should have dealt better with KK).

Anyway, I'll leave it at that