As it was the first solitary shot to be fired in this year’s football championship, yesterday evening’s match over in New York has the GAA bit of the sports pages more or less to itself this morning. They’re all much of a muchness, really, with only the Times carrying one brief quote from Johnno saying how the Yanks had caught us off guard in the opening ten minutes but that he was pleased with the performance, and in particular with how the debutants had fared out. Here they are then: the Times, the Indo, the Examiner, Setanta, Hogan Stand and RTE. It was in the latter that I spotted this cracking picture (courtesy of Inpho) of the two lads on the terrace at Gaelic Park.
My fellow blogger Thereisalightthatnevergoesout also provides his thoughts on last night’s action and, as I threatened in advance that I was going to do, I did a post-match audio piece as well. I’m looking forward to doing one of these while still in the ground just after the Connacht final is over, with only a croak left in my voice and my blood still on the boil. Keepin’ it real, that’s got to be the aim.
The mini-league is off and running too but because there was only the one game, there’s no point in putting up a league table (the fact that I’m 21st out of 25 after this game is, I think, another good reason for not doing so). It’s a bit like the Grand National after the first fence, as we’re all bunched in there with five points or so separating top from bottom. This competition is going to be different from the league one, though, in that because there will be fewer games each week, what will decide placings will be the preciseness of one’s predictions, not just in terms of getting the winning teams correct but also their exact margins of victory. In this respect, I sense that another season of underachievement could well be on the cards for me.
well done WJ on ‘live’ online and after match report.
A minor statistic the crossed my mind at the end of the match (and something you picked up on in your audio) is that after a slow start we hit the pedal and ran up an 11 point margin by half time but only managed to increse that to 15 by the end of the game. As you say we only outscored them by 9 points to 5 in the second half. Almost the opposite of the way the games ran in the league where a stronger 2nd half performance was a major feature in many matches.
Anyway just a small point really and I’m sure there are lots of reasons to explain why it wasn’t more including some good saves by the NY keeper and sometimes a big safe lead tends to see an easing up of the effort and so on … On the posiitive side lot’s of good scores from play … am I correct to say we only scored 1 point from frees?.
Those poor starts are becoming a habit –a bad one.
Need some steel in the backs-burst out with the ball rather then handpassing.
Our footballers are too fancy,we need them to be mean.
In 2006 we saw how Brady controlled the Kerry full forward with a few thumps !!!!
Nice teams win nothing
Just had a quick glance at Sat’s Irish Times piece by Keith Duggan, I could be wrong as I was only given the paper for a few mins but I am sure that Johnno said he won a league medal playing with Eugene Rooney. Rooney was the goalie in 1970 league winning team, was Johnno on that team?
well he played minor in 1971
http://www.mayogaa.com/pgal/football/1970-2.htm so unless he was moving around in a time warp like the current storyline of ‘LOST’ then unlikley he picked up a league medal in 1970. Then again he has conducted a few football miracles in his time … maybe another one this year if he could swing it !!!
Ma-Yoman – I think it was a free each by Alan Dillon and AOS and a fifty from Killer; all the rest were from play.
Well spotted, OTR, re Johnno’s 1970 remark. He might well have been in the squad then but if he was eligible for minor in ’71, you’d have to say that would have been unlikely (did county teams have big squads like they have now back then?).
I’ve checked the results archive on the site and, according to this, Johnno didn’t make his debut until late in 1972 (against Westmeath in a Division 1B league match on 22nd October that year – a match we drew, BTW), by which time JJ Costello had replaced Eugene Rooney between the sticks. Curioser and curioser …
was at the game ,poor quality really never a contest ,am afraid there could be problems for mayo at the back,i believe still have no central defence expect to see james nallen at no 6 when the pressure is on ,at full back major ?who .more questions than answers yesterday