The Mayo News has oodles on The Match for those of you with masochistic leanings. With Mike Finnerty on TV3 duties, Sean Rice did the match report and he also has an analysis piece where he thumbs through our many failings. As does Kevin McStay who, like Austin Garvin in his analysis, points to the dearth of top-class players within the county. (How true is this? If the crop we have gave 20% more in terms of effort – which, on current form, looks a reasonable target – how far would we get in the championship? A bit further than Round 3 of the Qualifiers, I reckon).
I like Peadar Gardiner’s honesty when he says that the players didn’t perform to the level that they’re capable of and that “stupid mistakes” cost us the game. Peadar wasn’t responsible for either failing the last day and the way he totally blotted out that annoying Dooher lad was one of the few highlights of the day from a Mayo perspective. You’ll already know that I don’t like Johnno’s post-match comments and while he does hint about the possibility of a future upswing in our fortunes “even in the short-term”, it’s easy to interpret what he’s saying as the first shot in a campaign to talk himself out of the job while inflicting the minimum amount of political damage on himself.
On a lighter note, Daniel Carey’s Dublin Letter is good fun – I particularly liked the bit about the Tommy Murphy Cup possibly being more difficult to win than Sam – and, finally, An Spailpín does a thought-provoking quo vadis piece in his usual considered way.
And that’s it – roll on the FBD and all that.
To say we are not good enough like is said in the Mayo News is too easy.
Of course we don’t have the talent of a Kerry.
We have a talent pool the equal of Dublin, of Tyrone, of Galway and other successful counties. It is the way we nurture that talent that is galling.