Photo: MichaelMaye.com
The votes are in and counted and the result is a decisive one. Keith Higgins has, by popular acclaim been chosen as our Man of the Match from yesterday’s roasting of the Rossies at Croke Park.
In truth, there were plenty of players in Green and Red who put in strong performances for us yesterday. Aidan O’Shea (with 19% of the vote), Tom Parsons (7%), Donal Vaughan (5%), Kevin McLoughlin (4%), Seamus O’Shea and Brendan Harrison (both 3%) all played prominent roles for us on a day when the team as a whole delivered in spades.
But – that goal, that wonderful goal:
Well done to Keith and to all of the lads who contributed to yesterday’s ruthless dismantling of the neighbours. The poll leaderboard is below.
Well done to Keith, keep up the great work, he is such a joy to watch when he is in full flow!
It was great to see Tom Parsons doing well too. He handled a serious amount of ball early in the game. We really missed him last week and in the first-half of the Clare match.
He was my motm for sure, he makes everything look better when he glides through the opposition with that cocky head on him, well done Keith, and was immense in the drawn match too, Maigheabu
Keith is a legend, great to see him playing with zest and energy again, roll on Kerry
Have to say that was some performance by Keith. From beginning to end. I suppose being from a border town helped his motivation. Surely heading for all star number 4?
What about Shane Nallys performance yesterday sweetest left peg in Mayo after Ciaran Mac!!
Great performance by Keith and so many others yesterday. Had a quick look on the Kerry fan forum to see what their thoughts on our upcoming match were. Done Vaughan will surely draw some motivation from one Kerry supporters comment below
dingledude Avatar dingledude
Junior Member
**
22 hours ago
Quote
Kerry will not be complacent, but we need to reach 80-90% to see off Mayo, their full back line are suspect under the high ball, Cafferkey replaced by Vaughan today, but Vaughan is not a full back, Donaghy to nail him up on the crossbar, and beat seven shades outa him. Roscommon panicked and played like a division 2 team they have become, they were never serious contenders. Mayo at their best will only give us 35 minutes of a warm up game to prepare for the ?Dubs?
Read more: http://kerrygaa.proboards.com/thread/6780/ireland-semi-final-kerry-mayo?page=3#ixzz4pCnt6vE1
Ya ..not quite as good as Keith tho !!! Super footballer and very modest and well deserving of the man of the match
Congratulations Keith, fantastic game. An inspired performance. I have to admit I voted for Aidan simply because of his colossal effort especially in the first half. From the throw in he was magnificent and you could see his teammates grow in confidence and lift their own game.. when Aidan is in form he inspires all round him.
Well done to Keith , he had a great game . Got my tickets today we will be there to roar on the green and red, and hopefully witness Mayo beat Kerry .
Keith was like a bullet yesterday..Well deserved motm..Must say tho thought Vaughans early point was great..Tapped on the ball to Parsons from kick out and bombed up the pitch to put it over the bar..He really shines in Croke Pk..
Gliding past lads 10 years his minor like they didnt exist.
He has been and continues to be the epitomy of consistency.
Aiden was excellent too but keith was easily the MOTM.
On a side note what a childish, crass tweet from Mickey Conroy. Cringe!!
What a superb display by Keith and the whole mayo squad. Now can anyone give me a good re cope for cooking a shirt
Pat Spillane says h e will eat his shirt if we win Sam this year
I want to make sure it’s cooked to perfection so he doesn’t get indigestion
Micky Conroy should know better He was at the wrong end of a few hidings in Croker in his time
Keith was on fire
What a servant to Mayo football
Proud of him and all the lads
Roll on Kerry
Keith even managed to combine his attacking forays with being solid defensively.
This was Keith Higgins best ever game in my view. The way he can find gap in a defence and power through is in my view the most important weapon we have if we are to win Sam.
He manages to do it so often even when extra numbers are back.
Well done Keith and well deserved. Thought he did a good job minding the D in the drawn game and brought it on another level altogether on Monday. Won’t get any joy like that from Kerry but that for another day’s debate. This week is about savouring a hugely impressive performance.
Congrats to our wonderful panel of players on a magnificent performance in Croke Park on Monday. Now for Kerry! We have already beaten them in the National
League in Tralee back in February. I was proud to have been there.
I’m sure you all remember the hulabaloo about Aidan O’Shea and the dive to secure a penalty against Fermanagh in the qualifiers last year. How many of you saw the dives taken by Dublin players Cooper and McCaffrey in the game against Monaghan on Sat evening? There was hardly a mention of it on The Sunday Game. We will not gain full respect until we have secured Sam. I for one will really enjoy watching Spillane choke on his shirt!
Keith is an absolute unique footballer among footballers with that lightening scintillating burst that puts him out of sight in a flash. Imagine if he was on the other team ……he’d be an awful pain in the neck and not least for his longevity! It would be an injustice of a sort if all of these players weren’t to be awarded the ultimate.
John McHale….don’t mind a recipe…. feed it to him raw and make sure he smollicks up every last crumb.
Great performance and great tone there in person to see it.
One thing I noticed on the sweeper last day – will need to be positioned a lot closer to the Kerry full forward (whoever that is). Sweeper the last day played about 10 yards in front and not close enough for breaks off accurate long ball in. Was not a problem against Ros, although the few decent balls in were won by Murtagh.
I had a wee tot up of Cillian scores for the championship so far and he ha 3-49. An absolute massive amount and we’ve yet to play the semi final. I know a lot of this is from the extra matches but still. Some amount. All 3 of his goals are from play and of his 49 points, he has 35 frees, 12 from play and 2 ’45s’.
Saw this snippet on the Kerry boards.
“The last 2 teams to win replays with extra time in Limerick won All Irelands – Cork v Limerick in 2010, Kerry V Mayo in 2014, Mayo V Cork 2017 ????”
Keith represents what is best in Mayo football. Young players should look to him for the desirable qualities of what makes a great GAA athlete. His ethos of honest hard work coupled with skill, leadership and humility make him the ideal template for aspiring young players. Well done to Keith. He is a credit to his family and his county.
I notice Daragh O’Shea is for once talking us down before a game with Kerry, I mean literally. He’s after shaving 4 inches off Keith’s height and reckons he’s only 5′ 7″. Them feckin Kerry bucks, you couldn’t be up to them and who knows what devilment they will be up to in the next 11 days.
I’d say Eamon FitzMaurice shredded about 40 pages of A4 last Monday evening. Not even he would have expected that from Mayo. Did we show our hand too soon ? Hopefully not. I am looking forward to another tweak next Sunday week, something new, something different! How about a bit more of Shane Nally ?
CAstlebarExile, nice stats from the Kerry boys but we had any number of them last year as well. Last year was the year of the underdog, Leicester City, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (another famine team) and the victory that had me firmly believing we were going to win was on the same day as our replay against Dublin.
The Western Bulldogs won the AFL Premiership for the first time in 62 years over the city slickers the Syndey Swans. Their team song is “Sons of the West”. I was following it on the train on the way up that morning and I felt that the parallels at play meant the stars had aligned and we were definitely going to win. The rest is history as they say.
7 All Ireland semi finals in a row, that is unbelievable consistency, if we could just win one these lads would get the credit they absolutely deserve.
East Cork Exile – you can add Hibernian and the Scottish Cup to that list if you want.
RahoonSean, I think we probably have shown our hand a bit sooner than we’d have liked. That performance on Monday was intended for Kerry, in my opinion. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any more surprises on the horizon and it doesn’t mean Kerry will be unbeatable. Kerry are cute and will pull every trick in the book the next day, but I still think they are soft through the middle and if we can get a hold of midfield, then there’s nothing to say we can’t take them on.
Roll up Roll up i’m gonna be playing #YerraBingo on twitter until the semi final comes round! See can you get the full house of cute kerry hoorism!!
Higgins in HB line adds a new dimension to our attacks from deep.
Don’t really go along with this showing our hand worry. We may win or lose the next day, but we had to get a decent performance to have mental strength going in to a semi. I don’t think we would have had that with a poxy win the first day. Kerry know us, but we know them also.
Our media guys should be in training at the moment to ensure the Mayo propaganda machine matches the Kingdom. And could we start by keeping Liam MacHale off air.
I had an awful dream last night. After an epic semi final we beat Kerry by a single point, setting up another show down with the Dubs. We turned on the greatest performance in history and are 17 points up with 68 minutes on the clock. Spillane is eating his shirt up in the commentary box while Brolly has climbed onto the roof of the Hogan stand about to fling himself off in grief and rage at Mayo winning Sam. Just then there’s a bright flash from the east and the air raid sirens start blaring. The big orange orangutan in the White House has finally done it and pressed the red button, therefore robbing us of the walk up the steps to collect big ears. As I sat back in my seat waiting for the end, I heard over the tannoy system the GAA announcing that in the event of there being any survivors that they wouldn’t be issuing refunds.
Hopefully most of that dream comes through…
Mayo post training meetings for the coming week,
Wed – Watch the extra time v kerry in limerick.
Fri – Watch the extra time v kerry in limerick
Sun – Watch the extra time v kerry in limerick
Wed – Watch the extra time v kerry in limerick
Fri – Watch the extra time v kerry in limerick
Now lads are ye ready for Sunday!!!!!!!
that’s a very silly thing that conroy has done, we just let our football do the talking. he should remember whos up next.
Congrats Keith. Deserved MOM.
That magical goal will go down in GAA History.
To keep heads and focused once again for sun week. In This Together.
dreamysleepynightysnoozysnooze, would agree with you there. I do think it may have been intended to keep that sort of plan in the locker, but hand may have been forced by the replay, and perhaps seeing the opportunity to try it out in the white heat of battle. By god was it effective.
To be fair to Roscommon – the first goal was a double hop. That said, I think the other 3 were coming anyway as was the rest of the onslaught. If we had beaten them by 10 points less than we did, it would still have been a hammering.
As regards MOTM, I’ll be honest with you this is one game where it was most difficult to pick a single player. I selected Barrett, just because I thought he stood out very much for me, but it could have been Kevin Mc, Keith, Aido, Seamie, Tom or Harrisson, with Jason Doc, Boyler and Donie also being in with some honourable mentions.
As for the next day – well I suppose this leaves Kerry with wondering how to do their match ups, a similar issue to what we have. I would not be so singularly focussed on Donaghy – this is a team game and Donaghy can either be played as the big man up front, or the big man in the middle. I think he’s less mobile around the middle but still a dangerous beast wherever he’s placed. I would be more concerned about trying to negate the influence of David Moran or Buckley, both of whom are quite possibly the best in the country for the positions in which they play. I’d have Tom on David Moran, and Leeroy on Buckley.
As for how to stop Donaghy – it’s not about beating him to the ball, it’s either preventing the supply into him, or making sure you get it off him or preventing him from doing anything useful with it when he gets it. Concentrating on the “put a big man on him” game is something that we have the players for unless he’s played in midfield, and if he is, then Tom Parsons is the man for that. If he’s in FF, Donie would be my preferred option.
I’ll row back on some of what I’ve said before about Keith as sweeper – I thought he did well on Monday in that type of role, but its a position I feel Kevin Mc has done better in. I recall the drawn game vs Kerry in 2014 when Keith was being played as a sweeper, and we were getting destroyed. When Keegan went off and we had to drop the sweeper function, we actually took the game to Kerry and nearly had it won, but for the addition of Donaghy at FF and tired legs on our side. For all of the criticism levelled at Ger Caff, he should not have been left on toward the end of that game as he was being played injured – a factor most have forgotten will have likely influenced how he played during the Replay in Limerick.
So – what do we do with Keith, and how do we setup?. I’ll be honest, I don’t really know. That said, I have faith in Rochford to have his homework done on this and to setup in the most appropriate manner.
Do we push up on Kerry’s kickouts?. Hard to know – if I’m to nick something from the excellent “Dont foul” blog – it looks as if they varied them against Cork, and I don’t have the stats for Galway.
https://twitter.com/dontfoul/status/882150784540049410
So – fair play to Rochford and to the team – they’ve certainly answered their critics this week, though if we don’t take Kerry down, I’m sure the knives will be out from many who have been silent since Monday.
Up Mayo.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that a Ballyhaunis man is “man of the match” in a game where Roscommon are hammered. Not too many Roscommon “tourists” in Ballyhaunis on Monday evening I noticed and their cars and horns were missed! Funny that, I didn’t notice any traffic diversions when I was going through Ballinlough.
Now we move on.
Hon Mayo.
D Clarke
Harry donie Lee
Durcan bolye Barrett
Seamie. Parsons
Diarmuid. Aos Higgins
K Mac cillian andy
is it time to put leeroy into no 11 and go for it