Photo: MichaelMaye.com
The result of the final Man of the Match poll from our 2015 League campaign is in and it’ll come as no surprise to learn that the winner by a proverbial country mile is Barry Moran, who put in a towering performance for us against Donegal at MacHale Park yesterday. The big Mitchels man hoovered up a whopping 61% of the vote, with Kevin McLoughlin (13%) and Seamus O’Shea (5%) also attracting support in the poll.
Barry joins Kevin Keane (for the Kerry and Tyrone matches), Aidan O’Shea (for the Monaghan and Dublin games), Seamus O’Shea (the Derry game) and Tom Parsons (the Cork match) in the select group of MOTM award winners over the course of this year’s League campaign. Well done to all of them.
Brillant performance all for nothing cos his forward colleagues couldn’t find the posts
Well done Barry, it’s great to see him getting back to form. It’s interesting to note that most of the motm awards have been won by our midfielders, lots to work on so in the coming weeks.
Great to see Barry having a good game. Hopefully he’s able to keep it going. Think Kevin Mcloughlin deserves a lot more credit. His work rate was massive. Tackling was top class and he was brilliant going forward
Credit to Barry, thought he had a storming second half and deserved it.
@Cian I agree with that. Thought some of McLoughlin’s tackling was superb yesterday and he put in a all round good shift.
The Donegal goalkeeper was very unsettled with the kick outs.. pressure up front meant he couldn’t go short and every time he went down the middle big Barry was picking them out of the sky.. great display of fielding and chipping in with the odd score was a plus. Well deserved and I hope he stays injury free for the season to show his full potential.
Well done to Barry. It’s good to see him flying again. Someone said in a recent post that you never can tell what will happen in sport, maybe these narrow defeats and draw will stand to Mayo this summer. I hope for all involved that they can clear up the injuries and get them all on the training ground together to figure it out. It would be nice to see Evan regan,coc and aos in the ff line and rearing to go.
Just think of parsons, gibbons, SOS , Aos and Barry and all our forwards all fit at the same time and our half backs allowed to go forward as before when they get the chance! Would Roscommon or Galway stop them? Maybe this long break will do them good, I’m not sure Mayo would best Dublin without a full fit squad on Sunday week if it had come to it, it’s hard to say but I doubt it. It may have been the 12 wides we kicked that will do us a big favour in the long run, a good long break and destroy all comers once we get rolling.
Well done Barry on well a deserved MOTM recognition. Good to see our midfielders coming out on top in the league and hopefully this form can continue into the championship. However, it must be so frustrating for our defenders and midfielders to see such incompetence in front of the posts after the gut busting efforts they put in to winning possession.
Well deserved just hope stays injury free history. McLoughlin missed 14 yard free probably cost him MOM in end. Mayo would of faced Dublin this weekend not Cork so don’t think that team were ready (or fit enough just yet) for that game.
I’m disappointed we didn’t put Donegal away but no particularly perturbed about not making the league semis. The priority now has to be on nursing the likes of Regan, Parsons, Moran, Dillon and O’Connor back to health.
We’re going to face a far tougher challenge in Connacht this summer.
Interesting to note that all the MOTM winners are all big men. Shows how important size is in modern football. I think we need to add more extra inches to the forward lines to compete with the blanket defences which are out there. Well done Barry, great game.
Some fine fielding and shooting from Barry on Sunday and hope to see more of that from him in the summer. The Donegal keeper baffled me….needed instruction from a Donegal backroom team member every time he took a kick out. It was only when we pushed up on him he was forced to kick long where big Barry was able to catch the ball…..if only we could have finished up front.
I am not overly disappointed with missing a semi final but the performance up front is worrying. That said add in Cillian, super sub Dillion and possibly Evan Regan (without blowing him up too much on the basis of one point v Kerry) then I believe we will be much sharper up front.
Club league starts next week so no rest for the wicked. We will have 5 rounds and a round or 2 of championship ran off before we hit the prom in Salthill. Mayo are off to Portugal next week for warm weather training although our temps this week don’t look too far behind those on the Algarve 🙂
We are well covered for Backs and Midfield. I would like Higgins to keep concentration for full games , tends to let his man drift a few yards away from him on one or two occasions in games and he usually marking the best forward. A lot of talk about our Full Forward Line. For a Full Forward Line to work they must get early low ball if they are small and for AOS , Kirby a little higher but it must be early and quality, AOS was on the edge of the square four or five times last sunday but the ball was not delivered, SOS and our half back line first option is to run with the ball in hand rather than first look to see of a early delivery to the Full Forwards is on. Full Forwards as result get frustrated and start to move away from the danger area in order to get into the game, It is much easer to let the ball do the work and preserves energy. All I’am saying is to mix it more and keep the opponents guessing. We have become a little easy to read and running with the ball in hand makes it much harder to score as we are helping the other teams with their blanket defense as our runners are tracked as they run forward leading to congestion and no room to shoot and few goal chances
Well done to Barry Moran. We can gain a serious advantage on teams if we learn how to use our big men.
1. AOS is being worn out playing centre back, midfield, centre forward and full forward. We need a settled centre forward and a middle eight play that at least 50% of the time is looking to ping the ball in. I watched Kerry – Tyrone. End of second half Kerrys middle players sole function was to kick the ball long into the target men. If the player in posession was not settled to kick it immediately the ball was moved to a team mate who would kick it in. Darren OSullivan, Cooper, David Moran they were all looking up to ping it in long.
2. Kirby was left fierce isolated and the ball to him was not great.
3. We could do with a pacy big wing forward coming on the burst to add a difficulty for defences. Prime candidate Tom Parsons.
Generally I see value in having three big men mixed with three smaller men.
Wouldn’t mind seeing a forward line of:
10. Kevin Mc – (If can perform like yesterday excellent)
11. Cillian – (Clearly we have no attacking general out around the middle of the pitch)
12. Tom Parsons – (Driving runs from wing forward and another kickout option)
13. Evan Regan – (Needed badly for right sided frees at which we are awful)
14. Kirby – (Occupy the usually bigger full back)
15. AOS – (Roving in between the lines of full forward and half forward. He can be either a target man or take ball on the burst)
If you move the ball quick into that forward line it has the accuracy, size and pace to do damage.
Calling Joe Brolly, Jarlath Burns and other doom and gloom merchants.
Take a look at the recording of this match for as good an example of midfield play as you could wish for.
Towering fielding – we kept saying, he can’t catch this one, but he did; towards the end we were murmuring, shades of Willie Joe! All this topped off with three great points, and intelligent distribution.
Whatever Barry does for the rest of the summer, or the rest of his career, we will all remember this one.
Kevin Mc was excellent but it was a joy to see fielding like that. Haven’t seen such a display from any midfielder in a long time. It’s a great skill to watch. Well done to Barry.
I was at match Sunday and to be honest it was only junior standard comparing to the Galway V Roscommon Under 21 final. It was one of the greatest displays of GAA football I have seen in 20 years. Our 2 so called managers in Mayo senior set up should take a leaf from this display. Either team on Saturday would have bet the daylights out of what I witnessed on Sunday. Imagine 1 player could not send over a 10 meter free over the bar, and another player tried to get a goal when it was easier to pop it over the bar. Anyhow it saves us getting another walloping in Croker. As for going forward, we are going nowhere. Some players on this panel are not fit for senior football, but you can be assured the managers pets will be kept.
Well done Big Barry
Can’t leave True Grit’s exaggeration uncalled. Said free was on either 14 or 21m line about half way out to sideline, and the idea that U21 teams could get a fraction of the ball they’d need to beat a top 8 senior team with the strength difference is crap. Of course its easier to kick a point any day, that was a new panel member who will probably learn that if ye go for goal do so with conviction. He probably got a shock at getting his first goal chance for Mayo. Many Mayo supporters are like those of the English soccer team, is that how we want to be. At the start of JH era the same negative stuff was being touted and as soon as we won some big games in Croker all that changed. Same vibe after scraping past Rossies last year and up again after Galway game. Up down, up down like bloody yoyos. Ye won’t find Kerry fans at that mullarkey. Can we not wait and see what Connaught championship brings and if we lose, the back door. Nobody including Kerry fans thought they’d win last year but they proved the most adaptable team. Omens not great for Mayo but it’s only the bloody league – Kerry fans don’t give a damn if they have a crap league.
Yep Id tend to agree with YA shuffly but I’d have to admit to a bit of reaction myself at times, it’s the nature of your typical Gaa heart on your sleeve type supporter.
We go way over the top in Mayo positive and negative depending on the latest result be it a challenge game v Monaghan or an all Ireland final.
And where as I think our support is the best around I believe we could do more, its not going to make an average team brilliant but if you notice things like when the support got right behind mcgloughlin as he was tackling a Donegal buck over by the stand side, he was not goin to give it up and the more the crowd backed him the more ferocious the tackling got. It can give them a right sense of pride when they hear your behind them 100%.
We’re definitely the most passionate supporters but the swinging high and low gets to me at times.
5 M of M Awards to our big midfielders even if AOS was not a nominal midfielder. The other 2 to K Keane at full back. Worryingly no awards for our more natural forwards unlike last year and nothing for our rampaging half back line either. Definitely suggests a change to our style of play.
Shuffy Deck.
Call a spade a spade. No amount of excuses will change what we saw on the last 3 games. Mabye the change of time in Cork put us off, or the extra time last Sunday, In truth we are not even the 8th top team at the moment. If you were Tuam last Saturday then you would see how scores can be taken from 50/60 yards out. We cannot take them from 25 yards out. Don’t always blame the messenger. The proof of the pudding is in the eating,and we have seen enough of this, this season so far. Don’t worry about what the Kerry followers were thinking, its the team who does the playing and that they did. If we were A I champions we would not be worried about 1 bad game, when we have every game ending like the last 3 then its time to be worried. As for JH. At least he did not ever put out a team that did loose 3 games in a row.
But sure technically speaking we didn’t lose 3 on the trot. Last Sundays result was a draw!
So we play 4 midfielders, 2 in the forwards. AOS might stay in FF if others look for him earlier. If anyone to lose out of the 4 it’s SOS, slowing play too much allowing blanket to get back. Make it a strong spine with Parsons Centre forward & AOS at full. Parsons got a chance and grabbed it, same with Barry. Need SOS to feel his place is under pressure. Other option is Barry & Tom midfield & SOS on the wing as he’s not enough of a playmaker for Centre Forward. Re rampaging HB’s Donie was very good v Donegal. Agree about Boyler & Keegan. One of them could get dropped. Cody would do it. Unless the reason is management instructions are having negative impact on their games. Maybe need to adapt for one or 2 players ala Ferguson with Cantona in another code. Do we still have a sports psychologist on board, worth getting him back for championship, even be useful for the management. Bet Dublin still have theirs.
True Grit, who are these 8th top teams ahead of us at the moment?
True Grit – it’s not correct to say that we never lost three games in a row under JH. In fact, we lost four – in the 2013 League campaign. We beat Kerry in our opening match that year then we had four straight losses (each one worse than the other) before beating Donegal and Cork in our final two games. That was enough to qualify us for the semis that year!
^^^You could also say we technically lost 3 ‘competitive’ games in a row under him in 2013/14 aswell
I would more include the FBD as a ‘pre-season’ friendly tournament more than anything, so I’d count the Dublin AIF loss along with our two league losses to Kildare and Tyrone in Feb 2014 as losing 3 competitive games in a row.
And sure even if you want to include FBD league we lost our last match to Roscommon and our opening two league matches, so there’s 3 in a row again. And two instances, WJ outlines the other above!
In fairness though it’s hard to take anyone seriously who says we are not in the top 8 at the moment! With all due respect that is simply hilarious stuff.
4 AI semis in a row, and still in Division 1! Love it
True Grit – Comparing a game at senior level between Mayo and Donegal where time on the ball is at a minimum and where you have many behind the ball and a free flowing
u-21 game in Tuam is laughable in my view. Maybe Galway should send out their u-21 team so against us in Salthill.
Good man Big Bird.
Gaa.ie Football Player of the Week as well.
Well deserved.
Galway U21 Team for Salthill. Just can’t wait for that one ha,, ha ..Well done Barry delighted with your success. SOS in no danger on this team. He needs to look up more and pass early, play smarter. Nobody can question his ambission.