When we last won the National League, back in 2019, our victory that day was due in no small part to a heroic display by goalkeeper Rob Hennelly. Yesterday at Croke Park our current netminder Colm Reape put in an even more outstanding performance, with his five goal-stopping saves being in large part the difference between defeat and victory for us.
There was never any question about who our Man of the Match was in yesterday’s National League final. Your votes have emphatically confirmed this, with Colm Reape coming out on top of the poll with a resounding 36% support.
Colm was also named MOTM by TG4 yesterday – I snapped the photo above as he was being interviewed just prior to getting his award – and he’s on the GAA’s Team of the Week.
In addition, he’s been shortlisted for the GAA’s Footballer of the Week award and I’d be really surprised if he doesn’t now follow in the footsteps of Jordan Flynn, Jack Carney and Aidan O’Shea by pulling off that notable GAA double and becoming the fourth Mayo player this year to win the MOTM poll here on the blog and also to win the Footballer of the Week vote. (Diarmuid O’Connor won the latter after the Tyrone game but Enda Hession pipped him to the former).
We had strong performers in every department yesterday, in what, on a second viewing last night, looked like a controlled and quietly assured display by the lads. It was far from a perfect one, though, as those goal chances confirmed, but thankfully the Knockmore man was more than capable of dealing with them.
Others who featured strongly in the poll were Paddy Durcan (13% of the vote), Jack Coyne (12%), Diarmuid O’Connor (9%), Aidan O’Shea (8%) and Sam Callinan (7%). Well done to them all and well done in particular to Colm Reape, our Man of the Match from yesterday’s big game at Croke Park.
Couldn’t really have been anyone else.. Hope he wins GAA player of the week as well. Very deserving!
Even without his brilliant saves, he hit two long range frees and a 45. Great display, congrats Colm. Cert for the championship now.
Hello,
Was very impressed with the after match interview(Link provided by WJ. )I had earlier watched Aidan and he seemed so young to me, but then Colm struck me as a very likeable teenager. Such joy and good nature.
Would like if Mayo could take a chance for this Sunday and maybe have 5 or 6 changes? Just a thought.
Ciaran2.
Well done Colm. The beginning of a long and illustrious career between the posts for Mayo.
Great all round performance from Colm and good luck to him. He had one of those days that goalkeepers dream of when everything goes right
Just after reading Ciaran Whelan and Ciaran 2 post above and I think we should definitely make wholesale changes for the Rossies. I have now come to the conclusion that we might be better to lose to the Rossies as we would avoid a dog fight with Galway and have two games less going into the round robin. The only downside would be our seeding in the round robin. Only one team will miss out in each group so it’s when the last 12 are sorted the real championship will begin.
Why oh why would we field a weakened team to lose to Roscommon, the mind boggles. You step on to the pitch to win, nothing else. Winning is confidence and momentum. Teams have to figure now how to beat us. We aren’t playing one dimensional football tactics anymore. We didn’t exactly over exert ourselves yesterday. Bigger days ahead.
Agree , we should play every game to win.Win all games.
I wouldn’t agree with wholesale changes for Sunday as we are still a team developing our play but no harm to throw in a curve ball… maybe like Hess to the h.f . line. Especially if Tommy is not starting.
He gad a great performance he such a good fine so much potential! See there’s a bit of a witch hunt online about the so called red card. No way was it a red card entitled to stand his ground he did mayo proud!
Dont know why some people would call for changes against a tough rossies side but each entitled their opinion of course ..
go all out I say the championship is where its at and mcstay won’t want to loose against the rossies!
As he said himself we can’t celebrate the league just yet as we need to keep going and they don’t want to loose it home either mayo by 4 or 5 and I would say they will go with the same team maybe a Tommyy conroy start though!
As I’ve said before ya go out to win, end of. The trick for us now with the huge amount of games we could have in order to win it out, is to keep a freshness about the time so that we are performing to a high level. If all come come from injury, and key players don’t get injured, we could be in a great position where we are finishing matches with an equally strong team.
It will require faster changes on the sidelines to be brave enough to possibly take off Ryan and put on Cillian for example.. Ryan could be having a fine game but we could be playing the following Sunday against another top team so we need to embrace that fact we do have a very strong squad and trust them to keep the standards up.. Fionn and Bob are obvious replacements for each other.. Tommy for Aido for example or vice versa.. we will get a serious scare along the way somewhere, but that’s to be expected.. we hopefully will arrive at the business end with minimal injuries and players being fresh.. the realilty is during Dublins winning run, it came down to them being able to get their best 20 into action, and by god did it hurt us at crucial moments.. we can do the same now with the squad we have.. I’m genuinely not wearing green and red rose tinted glasses, however when I weigh up say if we lost Aido, are we in serious danger? No, we have Tommy or Cillian to come in.. if Galway lost Walsh are they in danger? If Derry lost Glass are they in danger? If Kerry lost Clifford are they in danger? I really feel we have high quality players available to step in if key players get hurt or need a rest.. and that’s what could make the difference in the business end
Colm Reape has now completed that notable GAA double, by following up his winning vote for MOTM here on the blog with being voted the GAA’s Footballer of the Week. He’s the fourth Mayo player this year to do this.
@WillieJoe ,…Thats fair good going for the recipients of the voting public of the Mayo GAA blog.. Hopefully we’ll be in a position to dream of a drive for five on Sunday evening for the winner of the Mayo GAA Blog vote on Roscommon fixture… But it’s a team game at the end of the day , and hopefully the Mayo team will prevail on Easter Sunday. But it won’t be easy v the Rossies.. you can be sure they are planning and plotting our downfall after watching from the stands last Sunday.. Hope that we still have a card not yet revealed up our sleeves, we can be sure the Rossies do , after the phoney war in the Hyde last month!
Well done Colm. An absolutely outstanding performance. A special day to cherish for life.