Is Peter Crowley totally finished?
He retired last year I think. Would Morley be a weak spot at 6?
Canât see him having the discipline or physicality to hold the centre
I was talking to a Kerry football connoisseur a couple of weeks ago and he was giving out about the likes of Moynihan and Burns still getting a game.
Says they arenât up to it.
Burns wasnât even starting for Crokes in the 2017 All-Ireland club final if I remember correctly. Never got the hype around him. Is Moynihan related to Seamus? He was the main man against St. Peterâs in the 2017 schools final I think.
Moynihan is a fine player; Kerryâs issue is not the likes of Burns or Moynihan, itâs the one that is repeatedly pointed out- their backs are largely unspectacular. Decent footballers but not great defenders.
Maybe Okunfor could do a job as a man marker.
Fergal Byronâs chap making his league debut tomorrow for Laois. Time waits for no man.
Jack Barry still getting a game for Kerry is hardly reassuring from their pov.
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Truth is, Mayo were more concerned with being seen to stand up to you than sticking to what they were supposed to be doing
Philly McMahon
Thereâs a reason why teams keep losing finals and I always felt we had stronger leaders in our squad and a better environment
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February 19 2022 2:30 AM
I read something recently about Englandâs âGolden Generationâ; â Beckham, Owen, Lampard, Gerrard, Ferdinand, Terry and Cole â and how generally they performed below the sum of their talent when it came to the big tournaments.
Michael Owen had an interesting take on it.
âThe media and crowds had this bulldog identity â they wanted to see the players chasing everything, being physical, playing at a hundred miles an hour and showing passion.
âBut that was not the way successful international teams played. When we tried to slow the play down, we would be criticised for a lack of passion and showing no fight.â
At half-time in the 2020 All-Ireland final, we were going down the tunnel at the same time as the Mayo players, one of whom was Cillian OâConnor.
Heâd just missed a free and, ever the opportunist, I reminded him about it as he walked past.
Within two seconds, I had three of them on top of me, raring to go. Frothing at the mouth.
It petered out in a couple of seconds but they were raging. Childish? Maybe. But there was a method to it.
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They went off to cool down while I went into our dressing-room delighted with myself that I had three of them out of their zone, thinking about me instead of something actually important.
I like to read different studies on why certain teams are successful and others arenât, despite the apparent similarities, and one of the ideas that fascinates me is the notion of an âidentity vacuumâ.
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Now, the great thing about these theories is you can apply them to anything in hindsight.
But hear me out.
Because my working theory is that Mayo suffer this particular affliction and itâs part of the reason theyâve failed to get over the line and win an All-Ireland.
Michael Owen said something similar about that England team.
âThe media shaped how we saw ourselves,â he reckoned. âThere was no other version provided within the team. Players were scared of making mistakes and being vilified by the media.
âThe performances became more about quietening the media rather than a sense of our own story.â
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How does that happen?
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Your teamâs identity comes from two things: your leaders and your environment.
If either arenât quite right, players arenât always sure what they stand for and outside influences â media, fans, individual interests â become an issue. You get distracted.
The leaders in your squad are the chiefs. They influence the group by telling stories, literally or by their actions.
They personify the identity of the whole effort. How the squad sees itself. What theyâre about. Theyâre a touchstone for all your behaviours.
Everybody else takes their lead from them. Now thatâs not something you can contrive. Itâs a naturally occurring phenomenon.
It wasnât even something I noticed when I played, but I can look back and recognise it now for what it was.
What you canât have is your collective identity being determined by someone who puts themselves before the team. A leader with an ego.
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We were blessed. Stephen Cluxton was captain for most of my career. Jim Gavin was manager. Everything both of those fellas did was done in the best interests of the team.
People talk a lot about values now when it comes to teams.
We knew exactly what our values were because when we looked to the sideline or back to our own goalmouth, we saw the people to epitomise what we did.
I never got that same feeling from Mayo. Donât get me wrong. They have some brilliant players, guys who have stood up and produced stunning performances in huge games.
But Iâm not sure who their chiefs are.
You can never really tell what goes on inside another teamâs camp. But you sense things.
Iâve always felt that we had stronger leaders than Mayo and a better environment.
Between the 2012 All-Ireland semi-final and last yearâs semi-final, we played Mayo 17 times and their inability to win any of those games defies any real sporting logic.
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As does their failure to win any of the seven All-Irelands theyâve played in since 2012.
Iâm a big believer that games are won and lost before theyâre played.
You can be as meticulous as you want and break any defeat into its constituent parts. But, really, if your team underperforms repeatedly in finals, itâs probably something that canât be expressed in possession stats or conversion rates.
On the biggest days with the loudest noise, you need the strongest identity.
Otherwise, you play the occasion. You become afraid to make mistakes for fear of being vilified. You play to the crowd. Youâre a hostage to the environment. You believe what supporters say and the media writes about you.
When a manager doesnât recognise this, they go after the technical and the tactical side of a performance, looking for improvement.
They get caught up in the specific details because they canât identify that they all come from the same place.
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Every Mayo team I ever played was physically strong. They were technically sound and, tactically, were at least a match for us.
But were they as singularly focused?
Last year, at full-time in the All-Ireland semi-final, one of their players came on the pitch and grabbed me to get involved in a row that not only had nothing to do with him, it had nothing to do with me.
Now I donât know what the motivation is there, but I suspect it had something to do with settling old scores and with a bit of posturing thrown in.
Which is fine. But to me, that comes from ego.
There was no other point in getting involved. No benefit to it other than keeping up appearances.
Truth is, there were always certain Mayo players that were easy to wind up.
You could take them out of their stride because they were more concerned with being seen to be standing up to you than sticking to what they were supposed to be doing.
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That was my read on them anyway. And we got plenty of exposure to one another.
As rivalries go, it was intense.
Sometimes things went too far. Allâs fair in love and war and all that but some of the worst things ever said to me on a pitch came in those matches. One in particular.
But you cool off a bit when you stop playing.
Tom Parsons summed it up well on Michael Darragh Macauleyâs Laochra Gael episode recently when he talked about how they hated each other on the pitch but it melted away when they retired.
Itâs funny. Iâve been asked to give talks about addiction in every county in Ireland several times over but the only place Iâve never been invited to is Mayo!
Thatâs OK, though. Time heals all wounds. Or most of them anyway. Mayoâs fans are amazing an
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Never a good pitch on a dry day to say the least
Okunbor picked up a nasty injury recently didnât he? Yeah Iâd agree that Moynihan is decent enough and heâs still quite young too. Not overly sold on Burns. Could be a Barry John Keane type figure for Kerry.
Burns isnât up to it at this stage IMO. Iâm surprised they havenât given Paul O Shea more of a run, heâs a good prospect
Iâd say only about 3 or 4 Kerry players would make the Dublin team if everyone was fit and available.
Heâs hooked a few lads here with it on another thread alreadyâŚheâs an awful scoundrel âŚ
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Armagh mixing the sublime with the ridiculous here
2 balls on the pitch a lot here
Armagh have fizzled out earlier than usual this year
I donât wish to appear an absolute cynic but I have serious reservations about those two Spillane chaps cutting it at senior level. Granted they were both fine minors and the breeding line is strong but they just donât seem to be up to it. Iâve seen Killian net a crucial goal on a big day butâŚâŚ
Game on Ger
Lol out of absolutly nothing