Johnno may, like the rest of his Blueshirt chums, have enough on his plate with political matters right at the minute but he has taken time out to do his customary talking up of the opposition ahead of our first round qualifier clash on Saturday week.
As you’d expect, it’s all of the blah variety – need to put a performance on, no matter who you’re playing it can be difficult, nothing easy about playing Longford, underestimate them we’ll be in serious trouble etc. etc. In other words, all the usual stuff but, on this occasion, he really needn’t have bothered. Our performance in Markievicz Park did more than enough to give any county hope that they could turn us over and saying that we need to put a performance on the next day is more than a little bit obvious. Even for a Blueshirt.
I see, meanwhile, that Glenn Ryan isn’t being at all downbeat about his side’s chances and is pointing to the home draw as being an important factor in how the match might go. Would Johnno have expressed similarly positive thoughts had we got to host the tie? I think we all know the answer to that.
On a separate note, Liam Horan has been on to remind me about the statistics seminar he’s chairing this coming Saturday (19th) in the Clarion Hotel, Liffey Valley, where the throw-in has been set for 10 am. The gig is being organised by Statzpack.com, who have developed a number of tools for collecting and analysing key stats in a variety of sports, Gaelic football included. Entry to Saturday’s event costs €10 and, if you’re interested, more details are available here.
Here’s a stat WJ – every time Kerry played Longford in the qualifiers they won the All Ireland. Based on this hypothesis Mayo has the all Ireland in the bag. Now I might be clutching at straws but …a man has to clutch at something ; )
No team has had success in the back door except teams that had players on the team who had already won senior All Ireland medals.
Good article form Sean Rice in the Mayo News. http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10006:whatever-happened-to-mayos-plan&catid=26&Itemid=54
Jucer, that was a good read by Sean Rice. As a matter of interest that team he has selected at the bottom, what years does it cover as i find it interesting there are six of the 89 panel on it, a team i think that is often not regarded highly enough.
As a matter of interest, who doesnt rate the 1989 team highly enough? That years All Stars gave them 5 positions, Irwin, Brown, Flanagan,Willie Joe and Durkin. McStay should have got one but for some reason that eludes me Tony McManus of Roscommon got the no. 15 spot. Cork got 6 spots. Perhaps if they werent knocked out the first round the following year or losing to an average Ros side in ’92 we might give them even more credit. Five All Stars was a decent recognition to a workmanlike team.