Photo: Limerick Leader
The County Board have confirmed tonight that Kerry’s Donie Buckley is set to join James Horan’s management team for 2013. The Castleisland native, who turned down an invitation to become a Kerry selector this year, will come in as a direct replacement for the departed team coach Cian O’Neill.
There’s a lovely irony in the way that James’ reaction to Kerry’s poaching of the man with the bad back has been to land as his replacement an individual highly regarded in his native Kerry for his coaching skills. Terry Reilly has said on Twitter tonight that, in his interview with James for tomorrow’s Irish Examiner, the manager describes the new appointment as one that “will take Mayo football onto a new level”.
That league opener with Kerry at McHale Park next February was always going to be a tasty encounter, what with it being our first competitive match since the All-Ireland, Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s first test as Kerry manager and Cian O’Neill’s return to Castlebar. With Donie Buckley now added into the mix, it just got a whole load more interesting. Roll on February. Roll on 2013.
Nicely done. Welcome aboard Donie Buckley
Don’t know about “will take Mayo football onto a new level” Buckley was with Kerry last year when they let All Ireland slip and is he better or worse than Cian O’Neill? i guess we’ll find out next year.
With the current money problems within Mayo GAA could Horan and co not go local on the new coach?
Yeah surely there could have been a local recruit for the crucial role. Let’s hope the miles and travel don’t get in the way to much. Let’s give Donie a welcome open minded start. Roll on February.
Who are the local coaches that are of the same calibre as Cian O’Neill or Donie Buckley?
Do you want the best or do you want the cheap option?
Word in Kerry is divided, players loved him, always something different at training and he kept them fresh and interested. However in the negative camp word is that he is a preponent of the handpassing game and alot of people blame him, rightly or wrongly for that All Ireland and Kerry resorting to possession football, i.e concentrating on keeping the ball when in a winning position and not driving on for the jugular. Dont know if that is fair or not, but its what they are saying.
The question for me about this is, is Donie in to refine our current style of play or are we going to start afresh with a whole new way. We were, imho only a few points off an all Ireland so I think we should be setting about refining what we do and not a wholesale reform. We are missing 2 scoring forwards who can play in a team, and maybe a CHB as well as refining our play a bit
You’d have to think that it’s a refining job we’ll be doing for next year and not starting afresh. Like we did this year we need to bring in a few new faces to challenge for starting positions and we need to think about how we could use existing players more effectively.
By the way, that Irish Examiner piece quoting James Horan on Donie Buckley’s appointment is here.
It’s a shame that O’Neill left but Donie Buckley will bring new ideas and after a long tough year, the panel might need to hear a new voice to lift them again.
We almost reached the summit under O’Neill. If we can build on the base that he left and if Donie Buckley can add a few percent, we might all be celebrating next September.
East Cork’s water cooler talk is interesting. O’Neill made an impact, that’s for sure, but he has tended to stay a year or two in any appointment and this is as much as we can hope for. Presumably some of his methods can still be utilised by the management team unless Buckley adopts an approach that is diametrically opposed to O’Neill’s. I would like to know what exactly it is that Buckley brings to the coaching set up, but, one thing that he will bring and that I am sure will rub off, will be the mind set, the Kerry mind set, of having worked with guys who have a cartload of all Ireland medals, and who are winners to the core. In this sense the appointment can be seen as a step up.
A big welcome to mayo for Donnie Buckley. A fresh voice and new training ideas will be good for the players I imagine.
With Andy Moran back and one or two new players involved and another year of physical conditioning done by the panel I suppose mayo will be strong again in 2013.
We need muscle at midfield for certain games. Second half against Dublin when they were all over us and nobody could stop them winning ball, would kilcullen lad be up to it? Others are good but too light against tough opponents.
And another point, tactically,some of our fellas kicking high ball to short players that were outnumbered in the final was something we should have learned not to do ages ago. Tactics may be something mr Buckley can look at for this team.
Tubberman says:
October 23, 2012 at 9:01 am
Who are the local coaches that are of the same calibre as Cian O’Neill or Donie Buckley?
Do you want the best or do you want the cheap option?
Barry Solan was a more local option however he wouldn’t have came cheap either.
Yeah, Solan could have been a good replacement as well.
Not sure if he was sounded out, but he’s based in Dublin versus Donie Buckley in Ennis so there wouldn’t have been any big cost saving there.
Do we know for certain that Barry Solan was or wasn’t approached, was he available or not, or was he willing or not? Unless someone knows those answers, which I highly doubt would be made public anyway, we might as well just roll with it. Until we hear otherwise, all we can assume for the moment is James got the man he wanted.
And with that in mind, here’s hoping Donie joins Mayo for a successful year.
I wonder who will get ypoty sorry about spelling their all saying that the Meath lad will get it bit unfair as Meath where Knocked out championship at round four.
Convert aos into a ff who will deliver a huge threat in front of goal. If buckley could do that it would solve a lot of problems. I dont know where we will get forwards of the kind that will set the world alight outside the current panel. We need to maximize the talent we already have. That is why I advocate putting aos in front of goals and using other lads around the middle. A coach like buckley should be able to bring about these kind of improvements.
Ah yes, convert AOS, the solution to all our problems. John O’Mahony near ruined him at full forward, I cannot understand how people want him in there again. Sure Horan put him, and a few aimless balls in on top of him in the last 10 minutes of the final and it didn’t work. He’s a midfielder through and through. Develop him there.
AOS is not a forward we seen that at minor,U21 and senior level. He’s a midfielder and one of the best around.
I agree with last two comments about leaving A O’ S at midfield, we need him there, maybe a little leaner and fitter and he would would have no equal. As for forwards, throw a few more into the mix, develop a better understanding with midfield and a bit more movement off the ball. A higher work rate and an increase in intensity all over the field and 2013 could be our year !!
Leave Aidan at midfield. If he recovers the fitness level he had reached by the time Mayo visited Tralee in the league, he will be the outstanding midfielder in the country. He wiped out both Bryan Sheehan and Kieran Donaghy that day. Not many can lay claim to that kind of achievement.
First time commenting here since before the All-Ireland. I have to say that as depressing as the first ten minutes of that game were, the remaining sixty still give me some cause for optimism. It’s easy to say that we’re deluding ourselves, that Donegal missed other goal chances and should have hammered us like Kerry did in the two finals. That’s hindsight talking. We missed our own chances too. The point is that when the game was on, Mayo fought hard, came back and kept it alive to the end. That’s a basis for the future whether the doom-mongers like it or not.
I’m encouraged too by the complete lack of whinging or self-pity displayed by James Horan or any of his players. There is fight in this team and they are not finished.
Some height and muscle in the full-forward line has got to be the priority now. We made the two national finals in 2012, and on both occasions we were blunt in the line that needs to be sharpest. If big, tough full-forwards are not around, then James will have to look at the surplus of decent midfielders he has. Gibbons? Seamus O’Shea? Pat Harte? Danny Geraghty (and whoever emerges in 2013)? Another puzzle to be solved. But we’re further on than most teams in the country, and that’s not a bad spot to be in.
And getting Donie Buckley on board makes things very interesting indeed. Plenty of Kerry people would have been quite happy to see Buckley in charge of the county team. With Cian O’Neill going the other way, there’s plenty of intrigue ahead.
Willie Joe – thanks for your efforts on this site this year. It’s hard to imagine life without it!
F’deelin Converting AOS is not the soution to ALL our problems – just one really big one – the lack of a really serious threat in front of goals. And throwing him in there for last 10 minutes in an All Ireland that was already lost and it not working out is certainly not grounds for condeming it as a strategy.
I saw AOS destroy full backs including Finian Hanley (Galway) in Tuam when he first joined the Mayo panel. Everyone at the time thought that he was a revelation in that position. Granted he performed poorly afterwards under JOM but this had little to do with his position on the field. During that period he was just poor no matter where he was played for whatever reason.
My point is very simply that we have a lot of midfielders – Seamus O Shea, Geraghty, Gibbons, Moran, Harte and possibly Vaughan. I am not convinced that any of these lads would make a good FF. And I do not know of anyone outside the panel who might fit the bill. Remember there were severe rumblings when Mickey Harte moved Sean Kavangh to FF but boy did it pay off. I think AOS is a superb footballer well capable of adapting to playing up front – with the help of a really good coach.
On the issue of midfielders I think the way the game is developing the future midfielders will have to be a different type of player – fast, mobile, huge stamina, relentless tacklers etc more so than high fielders. I also think that we will have several midfielders possibly four or five with complimentary skills.
And lastly Aidan may well be able for this now but given his physical attributes (he is a big guy!) he might find it extremely hard to keep up the levels of fitness and stamina needed for midfield as he gets older. I think he would have a much longer career with Mayo in a position where stamina was less important than strength and skill.
Just a few thoughts!
When you need to improve or aspire to be the best in anything, you have to study and adapt the ways and mindsets of the best. The appointment of Donie Buckley is thererfore a huge step in the right direction. We weren’t far away from the complete article this summer and I think that with his and Kerrys’ heritage, in their ability to expect to win and their record in doing so will give us that missing ingredient.
Welcome Donie Buckley and now lets look forward to 2013
Did Pat Harte play FF for Ballina the other day? From scan reading the paper it seemed to suggest he did, and played well too.
I would imagine Donie is an ambitious man,and if so ,he didn’t agree to come to mayo if he thought he couldn’t achieve something .Let s welcome him,he just might know a thing or two.
Looking forward to mayo and Kerry great if it on a sat evening does anyone know
All stars announced we got a haul of 4:
Cafferky, Higgins, Keegan, Dillon – well done lads well earned!
feel sorry for Clarke, B Moran and Mcloughlin as felt they were very strong contenders
No cc tha ky.-mo game is down for a sunday, we hav 1 measly game on a sat nite in c,bar and tha,s against the mighty lillywhites, i dont know wat all the fuss is of having lights in the ground for to play 1 game a year, a bloody joke. As for aoshea ,he has to stay in midfield, who will partner him i dont know ,thought b. moran went missing abit wen he went up against better players in dubs an donegal, need to find to 2- 3 players to add to this squad nx. year , mayb kilcullen, parsons can get the hunger back nw. tha the team is up near the top and will be in the mix… by the ways diehard i dont recall tyrone winning anything since they moved sean kav. to fullfoward,gets alot of scores allright, but no silverware,stand to b corr. on tha.Anyways welcome donie buckly on board and was talk,n to an ole mate of mine from castleisland [n.y.days] and he told me the kerry players loved work,n with and tha wat happen was tha he buckly had to go for knee oper. an had to take time off and that wen he was ready to come back they a other fella in train,n team but offered buckly a selector role which he refused.. So it looks like kerrys loss is mayo,s gain.
Some good information there John Mo.. if a little difficult to decode 🙂
My wife’s a Tyrone fan. Sean Cavanagh played full forward in the winning team of 2008, scoring 5 points in the final from play. Holmes, McGinley and Kevin Hughes were the midfielders that year. No more than Donaghy, he came out when he needed to, but he won a serious amount of ball in there, and (after a little reading) scored something like 33 points in that years championship.
Having said that, I don’t think Aidan O’Shea should be moved in there, I’m not 100% that he has the agility for it.