Photo: Mayo Mick
Well, having contributed 2-6 to a winning total of 2-12 yesterday, it was always short odds that full-forward Alan Freeman would bag his second MOTM award of the year and so it has proved.
The Aghamore man garnered 50% of the popular vote to win this one – which adds to the gong he picked up at the start of last month for his barnstorming performance against Kerry – with Ger Cafferkey (14% of the vote), Colm Boyle (12%) and Tom Parsons (10%) also getting honourable mention on this occasion. Well done to all of them for the significant contributions each of them made to yesterday’s win and thanks to all who took the time to cast their vote.
Well deserved indeed, and agree with the following three too – had very good games.
WJ, I posted earlier on an older thread, not realising you had moved on. Don’t know if it has come to your attention or not but we landed an All Ireland title at the weekend.
The lads of Our Lady’s Secondary School, Belmullet won the GAA All-Ireland Post Primary Schools Senior D Football Final replay last Saturday, in Ballyshannon by 15 points.
They defeated St. Joseph’s High School, from the modern GAA heartland of Crossmaglen by 5-10 to 2-4. And they took the Br. Edmund Ignatius Rice Cup back to Erris after their well deserved win. Congrats to all concerned, including Kiltane’s Tommy Goals Conroy.
Well done Alan Freeman and congrats to him! To score 2-6 out of a total of 2-12 is a great achievement. What I really like about him is that he shows great leadership qualities when we really need it most. He is a very skilful player as well. To win this award for the second time is really good achievement, hopefully next Sunday will be another good day for him as well!
Well done Alan. Especially delighted for him after disappointing display v dubs but as I have said here previously we should never judge players on the odd game. Its fairer to judge them over a series of games. Would love to see Doc win it next week. He has had a couple of disappointing outings so it would be great for his confidence for him to put in big performance next week.
Is tommy goals still in secondary school?
Well done to the school, I have a good friend teaching there, a win like that wouldn’t be lost on him.
Well deserved!!!! Great performance. More of the same on Sunday please!!
Re Sundays game , I thinking we should move either Parsons or seamus o shea into the back line to pick up, mc guckin if he starts in the full forward line , he done some damage when he moved to full forward with his weight and strength ,Cafferkey is a good full back but mc Guckin bullied him the last day .
Not sure who it was but the just before the Derry goal the scorer levelled a Mayo defender on his way to goal. Really flattened him while powering through with the ball. A bit more muscle is needed on this fella if he’s near goal or he ll kill us for goals. Even though I think Mayo will win, a few sloppy goals against us could mean curtains til ny.
I gave myself a fucking heart palpitation when i first glanced at the name of this wrote. I thought i saw Alan Freeman “out” before i read it correctly . Phew 🙂
that was the Derry number 8 . Think it was Emmet Mcguckin?But ya i thought the same. We cant be allowing people to throw us about the shop . Mind you it did seem like a fowl. Id say it could be a crowded enough back line for the Derry game on Sunday.
Tommy goals doing the leaving this year I believe , scored 2 goals in the final
mayomaningalway..yeah, for a nano second it looked like that! TG
I agree there mayo/meath, our backs were bullied, not fouled for that goal, which was well taken and reminded me of the Murphy goal in the 2012 final. How we stop that type of player without fouling is going to be a challenge but keeping them busy at the other end will help.
Freeezer is the man! I’ve no doubt he will continue to deliver. But we must enable that by first selecting the supporting actors, and then have them read from the same script. i.e. design the plays, and then practice them and perfect them on the training field. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just two or three plays that they all know, inside and out.
In theory, his job is simple, score goals and cause general fuckin mayhem for any FB line. …from time to time, great opportunities not designed will pop up and our FF line should capitalize on those opportunities.
All it takes is for this to happen ~2 to 3 times a game and it can be decisive, when its executed.
We should have a plan B in place for Freeman on Sunday as i assume Derry will double tag him on Sunday , We must have someone ready to take up that space in the inside forward line and spread the work load . I hope Cillian is fit and mc Loughin are back to run at the Derry boys .
Well done Alan Freeman, building on his performances since Salthill last year and now a handful for any defense.
REF: 11 Irish players to take part in AFL trials in London
Just saw this in the Indo…….I dont know what to make of it really. On the one hand, I’d be delighted for them, while on the other, we need to keep them here!
“Mayo pair Stephen Coen (Hollymount/Carramore) and Shehroz Akram (Ballaghaderreen) are both involved, as are Ciaron O’Hanlon (Armagh), Pádraig Lucey (Kerry), Colin O’Riordan (Tipperary), Peter Cooke (Galway) and Conor McKenna (Tyrone).”
They seemed to get some joy in the second half when they played long high balls into our full-back line. We need to be very wary of this tactic as you’d think that they might be trying this early in the semi-final game against us to unsettle our full-back line. Just a word on Alan Freeman’s penalty, I thought he took it really well. He was coolness personified when he stepped up to take it. He has a real soccer style of taking penalties as he runs straight up to the ball which then makes it very difficult for the keeper to know which side he is going to place the ball. As, to win just once, said above it’d be great to see Doc play well on Sunday. His speed could pay dividends for us. I’d love to see him getting back to goal scoring form again, I wonder was the goal he scored against Down in the 2012 quarter-final, his last Croke Park goal?
We should leave the whinging about ref and venue to premiership types and their apologists.
The venue suits us, a bit of practice for later in the year.
Dublin as AI champions deserve top billing, that’s how we will get it.
The issue with referees is not where they are from but what they call. We should concentrate on learning how to play each one of them.
We are where we want to be.
Roll on Sunday, its all about learning on the way.
With so many top class midfielders available in our panel especially with emergence of Jason Gibbons from this league campaign . What’s the thoughts out there on giving Tom Parsons a run at centre forward with a view to championship?
Right on there guys, Willie Joe needs to be more careful in future as regards headings, us Mayo folk are very susceptible to any bit a bad. 🙂
Border Boy, I agree that we need to be more creative in our use of our top players to get the best from them for the team overall. There is no point in tagging a player as a back/forward/midfielder and assuming that he cannot play anywhere else. Some seem to think that because the likes of Andy Moran, Kevin McLoughlin or Keith Higgins once played as defenders they cannot play anywhere else. Sheer utter nonsense. The history of GAA is filled with players who successfully switched from defence to attack and vice versa, etc.Personally my preferred move at this stage would be Seamus O’Shea at midfield with Aiden and Jason Gibbons at centre forward. I think we need Keith Higgins back in defence at least until Chris Barrett returns. One has to wonder can Barrett return to his 2013 form at this stage of the season. I also think that Barry Moran should be tried at full forward in conjunction with Alan Freeman. He has played there on and off for several years and I cannot recall him having a poor game. It might also put less pressure on him than midfield and possibly reduce the risk of injury to which he seems prone. It also gives the option of moving him out to midfield if needed without the need for a substitution. Again the ability to use up to six subs needs to be tactically planned for with 3 – 4 subs planned for each game.
Agree with the placing of Jason at CHF with Barry Moran and Aidan CF starting and SOS and Parsons held in reserve
I have been advocating that K Higgins like a lot of you should be returned to his @All Star position post haste as we have been leaking goals.Donal Vaughan willhave to realise that his primary role is a stopper and needs to tighten up his half back line.We have to get our backs working as a unit like last year we we had a great defensive record hence the awarding of 3 All Stars in those positions.
I do not think the “disappointing display” as you called it was anything to do with Alan or his efforts against Dublin,more so the very poor supply of ball into him.Plenty of times he has shown what he can do with the right ball
As I have said previously I would like to see more of a “defender” in the no.6 shirt to lock down that central area and provide more cover for the full back line. If we had a centre back that held his position more often then there would be no talk of sweepers/withdrawn half forwards etc. etc. I’d like to see Cunniffe tried at no.6 or Seamus O’Shea. A midfield 2 of Gibbons and A. O’Shea with Seamus or Tom behind them would be a very powerful unit. Anything running centrally behind our midfield would be met by an aggressive, hard tackling, powerful player. I believe it would shut down the “scoring zone”, i.e. the middle third of the field out to the 40m line, provide more cover to an under pressure full back line and also force the opposition attacks to go wide down the flanks. If the opposition then decided to go over our half back line and hit long balls into our full back line, well in that situation, the centre back just drops back 10 to 15m to help out his full back. This would reduce the number of goals we are conceeding and make life a lot easier for our attackers.
If we can keep clean sheets we will win games against anyone.
Can Donal Vaughan not be instructed to hold his position, on the other hand, as a consequence of those surging runs he makes, it does result in a lot of Mayo scores or at the very least winning some frees. That said I’m all for first off, minding the house !
It was Shane McHale. McGuickan would have gone no further but for Cafferkey slipping, he got lucky for that goal.
It’s a hard trade off. Going more defensive will stop the other team scoring however you are also limiting yourself on the amount you score by holding back an attacking force. Plus as was mentioned there are the case of frees.
If we were to take a more ‘ultra’ defensive play then teams, for instance Dublin, would win more frees against us around the 45/50 metre line. People might argue that this is not necessarily the case however refs will invariably give frees if fellas are constantly hitting the deck becasue of too many heavy hits, swarm tackles etc. And with a long range free taker like Cluxton on fire it will lead to scores.
Not as many maybe but on the other hand we still have to score more than them to win. But where do we get our scores from if we are so defensive?
Tom Parsons at CHF would be very interesting. He loves to drive at goal.
I think that could be a good idea. He is mobile, very good in the air, he doesnt hang onto the ball like AOS, he picks good passes and is able to take a score.
COC. fit for Sunday some reports muscle spasm in back more said it was leg.
Great to see a Mayo man win this award again!
GAA.IE FOOTBALL PLAYER OF THE WEEK
1. Alan Freeman (Mayo) – 799 votes (49%)
2. Brian Hurley (Cork) – 527 votes (32%)
3. Ross Munnelly (Laois) – 314 votes (19%)
Tipp leading by 22 points to 14 in injury time last Sunday.
Wicklow get 3 goals while tipp stand waiting for the whistle. By far the best team in division 4 were caught because they seemed to think it was over.
There’s a lesson in it for any team in sport, when cluxton was sent off against Mayo the Midwest radio lads were saying it was a shame because Mayo needed to be tested. We see how that worked out, if mayo are leading on Sunday I hope they keep looking to bury any chance of a Derry revival.
Jh can’t do it, it’s the men on the pitch that are responsible, lets see somebody on the pitch take charge and tell them to keep going.
Also Shane was clearly fouled – McGuckian led with his forearm as he hammered into him, in full view of the ref too, so Derry got lucky in more ways than one for the goal.
Any word on cillian’s injury
When you have 2 wing backs like Boyle and Keegan that will bomb on and create overlaps why dio you need your centre back to do likewise? If you look at Vaughans contribution to the attack it is not as impressive as you would think. Firstly, he turns over a lot of ball in our attacking positions and this results in not only our half forwards being caught out in a more advanced position and therefore unable to track back with the counter attack, but also, it leaves a great big hole in a crucially central area of the pitch where our centre back should be. Secondly, although he gets the odd point from play, he misses more than he scores and as such, going by the percentages of successful shots, he is a liability to us as he is taking on shots that other players are better able to execute.
Now don’t get me wrong, Vaughan is a terrific athlete and there is a place for him on this team but given how many goals we are leaking I don’t believe he can do the job for us at no.6.
Congrats Cloud9 – that was a great win.
Posted above ****COC. fit for Sunday some reports muscle spasm in back more said it was leg.
That’s Freezer’s second one of the year too and it’s also the fourth one won by a Mayo player this year – Lee Keegan and Kevin McLoughlin have won it too. In each case they won the respective MOTM poll here on the site prior to winning the GAA Player of the Week award as well.
We are a very knowledgeable bunch WJ 🙂
Yeah it’s great to see us pick up these awards, especially to see some of our forwards winning them as well. We won four All-Stars in both 2012 and 2013 but only one of these went to one of our forwards, Alan Dillon in 2012, so the more forwards we have showing All-Star form the better for the year ahead.
My point exactly He s entitled to the odd “disappointing” display. Whether you choose to blame others for the supply in or give credit to the Dublin full back for an excellent performance or even dare to suggest that Alan actually didnt play that well isn’t too relevant at this stage.
He’s a great ball winner, but his shooting v Derry wud hardly merit a call up for CHF. We’re lucky to have so many talented mid-fielders, but unfortunately bar Big Bird at full forward, the others are simply mid-fielders, leaving JH wit the enviable team selection head ache!
Well said Pebblesmeller,agree with you totally i have been saying the same thing for months. I think Donie Vaughan would be more suited to midfield, would give us more mobility and would be able to express himself.