Kerry and Mayo have both reached Round 5 of this year’s National League campaign unbeaten, with the Kingdom currently edging top spot in the Division One table on points difference. They’re the form teams so far in the top division this spring and on Saturday evening at Austin Stack Park in Tralee they’re set to come face-to-face. This will be the first time the counties have met in a competitive fixture since just before the Covid-19 pandemic struck two years ago.
In this episode of the Mayo News Football Podcast, we look ahead to Mayo’s meeting with Kerry in Tralee on Saturday night. Rob Murphy hosts the show and he’s joined by podcast regular Stephen Drake, as well as by Mick Foley of the Sunday Times and Tony Leen of the Irish Examiner to preview this highly anticipated Division One top of the table clash. The significance of the fixture for both teams is considered, the impact of Jack O’Connor’s return to the hot seat in Kerry is assessed as are the challenges he’s set to face in the position while Mayo’s positive form so far this year is also analysed.
This episode of the Mayo News Football Podcast is now online and is available to listen to on iTunes, SoundCloud, Podomatic and Spotify. You can also listen to it directly on the Mayo News website as well as here on the blog using the SoundCloud player below.
The podcast is on Patreon as well, where club members enjoy exclusive access to bonus episodes and much more besides. The Patreon variant of this episode is an extended one, focusing on defensive play and, in particular, what makes for a good full-back in the modern game. The clubhouse chat then turns towards the topic of the contenders for All-Ireland honours in 2022.
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The Mayo News Football Podcast is produced and edited by Ger Duffy Media.
Do Kerry not at this point have a bit of work to do to make this a “rivalry”?
It’s been Dublin, and it’s starting to look like it might be Tyrone.
Nice that we seem to be living rent free in their heads though
@FrostTHammer: In fairness, they hammered us in the last competitive game we played against them. And we’ve only beaten them in the championship twice since 1951.
I would have Kerry amongst the frontrunners, now that O’Connor seems to have sorted out their tendency to leak preventable goals.
@It Means Nothing to Me
There’s was in fairness quite a bit of mischief in that post.
By my count though, since JH took over first, we’ve meet Kerry 6 times and Dublin 10 in championship. In both cases there’s two replays, so it’s 4 years and 8 respectively, so in 11 years we’ve met Dublin twice as much
What’s striking though is in that same time, 2015 was the only year where they made a final without beating us along the way. By contrast we’ve only actually beaten them once on route. So while, for them, we’re a team they’ve had to overcome on route to meeting their goals, that hasn’t been the case for us.
They’re a good team but let’s not forget there won’t be a whole pile of difference in personnel between the team they put out Saturday night and team we beat in the 2019 league final
Yeah, they’re fair points. I don’t think we’re a million miles off them at the moment, it’s just that we still concede a worrying amount of goal chances IMO, and Kerry above all teams are very clinical on those. For that reason, it’s a bit weird when I see lads here saying that we have nothing to fear, that they are overrated etc. We could very easily be fighting relegation if we had conceded two more points during the first two games.
If we can tighten up a bit at the back (and the return of some key personnel would help a lot there), we won’t be too far away come championship time. Horan seems to have mixed up the running game a bit, hitting more long foot passes, which hopefully might reduce the space for opposition teams to hurt us (as Tyrone did brilliantly last year).
I don’t think the outcome of this weekend’s game will be a huge indicator of what will happen later in the summer, we only need to look at Tyrone last year for evidence of that.
Looking forward to see the Kerry team sheet to see if there are any key absentees which could give Mayo a huge boost. ;-).
@It Means Nothing to Me
I don’t think we’re a million miles off them at the moment
– I don’t think they’re a million miles off us at the moment. We’re the yardstick here, we’re team off back to back finals, we won the last two meaningful meetings between us and one of those was for a trophy. The one thing that stands out from the last ten years or so, is they consistently haven’t reached our level. For them to win the all Ireland this year they’ll have to at least reach our level.
We’ve earned the right to be bullish over the last decade IMO and if we don’t start to own it, we’ll be here in 20 years time, discussing all Ireland’s we just lost at the sight of a green gold jersey.
This is what the Kerryman fears most, counties like us losing the fear of their aura
Sure we haven’t gotten over the line, but if we can take anything from the last decade, it’s that our castle isn’t built on sand, the foundations are good, we’ll win one eventually and we should take pride in what we have achieved and built
Now with all that said, I don’t actually think we’ll win tomorrow. Kerry are just finding scores easier at the moment. Although if the rumours are true that might change
@FrostTHammer: Eh, Kerry have beaten us in the last two meaningful meetings between the sides- in the 2020 NFL and the 2019 championship tie in Killarney (which put the real value of our league final win over them earlier that season in context). And they’ve beaten us in the championship more often during the last ten years than we have beaten them!
While I admire the optimism shown on here at times, I don’t think we’re the yardstick for anything, except possibly in the context of the Connacht Championship. Tyrone are the present All-Ireland champions and have earned that mantle, IMO.
I think we should talk quietly and carry a big stick, personally. The amount of people on here who thought we’d stroll to victory last September should come as a big warning to us.