I think the bottom line is any average forward would be very close to being top ever scorer in championship football if they had OāConnorās free and penalty taking responsibilities alone in that Mayo team.
OāConnorās scoring stats are what put him in that reckoning.
Take Jason Doherty as an example - heās a far superior player to OāConnor but nobody talks about him.
Heād be nothing without expensive horses from his godfather
Spot on. Heās underrated for me. Less talent than so many forwards playing in the same era yet has gotten way more out of himself. That has to be respected.
He never struck me as somebody who could make something out of nothing; a bit one dimensional and thrived off the hard work of others on the team. His lanky gait and the fact that he is a narky cunt is also not very appealing on the eye.
I wonder what his scoring stats are like in the league where all the big teams play the exact same big teams every year.
I wouldnāt say they are as prolific.
I donāt think you can really standover OāConnorās scoring stats. The amount of easy points he gets from tap over frees due to the way Mayo play where they drive at teams and run hard and draw these frees in the scoring area.
Most of his plaudits come from his scoring stats which should be looked at in context.
From play I think he is probably the weakest of the Mayo forward unit. Heās there because heās a reasonable free taker and has a good work ethic but he really really struggles to cause the kind of bother from open play youād want from a top forward. I gave the Doherty example earlier, to me they are similar type of players but Doherty offers his team an awful lot more from general player whereas OāConnor will trouble the scoreboard more due to his free taking responsibilities.
Doherty is a very unheralded player, a lot of the lazy analysis will look at the scoring and who did it but OāConnor more often gets the plaudits cos he hit 0-9. He could hit six of seven of those from frees inside 30 yards.
Can even see from here, the reason O Connor isnt rated and why people dismiss him so much has as much to do with the way he plays and his personality on the field as his playing ability. He acts like a cunt and people dont like him. Naturally, people dont rate players they dont like. His scoring stats tell a lot. Also as pointed out, talk of him scoring against Limerick or London or Sligo or whatever is much the same as Kerry hammering Waterford or Cork and Dublin hammering all of Leinster. Are thoese scoring stats dismissed from O Connors peers? Its not like anyone from those other counties at the top of the scoring list are as prolific in crunch time either.
He gets handy scores, but thats what he is there for, to finish off the scoring, whether that be palming a ball in the net, tapping over a handy point when in acres of space of a free from the 14, he gets the scores. He isnt there for his pace or dynamic running, he is there to score. And he does. I dont think he is a great free taker, he is slightly above average. He has a really weird technique on his frees the way he bobs his head down so much, so if he was a better freetaker, it would be the last thing to tick off for him. No reason he cant improve on that with age, being only 27, he has plenty of time left to increase his scoring stats.
As a player, he is one of the top ones around, but he acts like a gormless whinging cunt, so that gets his rating docked a lot by many.
I think the frees need to be taken off him, I donāt think heād be on the Freeās for any of the top counties at any stage over the past 5 or 6 years yet heās been doing that for Mayo the whole time, heās shown many times that he doesnāt fancy them under pressure, hard to believe thereās no options.
I think heās a top player, a great worker and extremely clever, his tackling from the front is the icing on the cake
yeah would agree with that. There is nothing better than having a lad put the ball on the ground and you know that he will just bang it over. Dean Rock isnt a great player, but you know what you get when he kicks his frees off the ground. When O Connor takes a free out of his hands, if there is any distance on it you wonder firstly will he reach the goal. Then the accuracy. A decent club free taker, not an elite county level free taker.
OāConnor has maintained impressive accuracy from 40 metres in, the fact heās missed a few big ones on or outside of that range is magnified by them happening in big games.
I think OāConnor is a good player, one of Mayoās best forwards. I thought he had a very good year last year - looked dangerous in each of the matches played. He has pointed some big scores - I recall a massive one against Dublin in the 2015 semi final first match I think. But he hasnāt had the consistency over his time as a top forward from play to be considered a great but in fairness I donāt think many suggest that - even in Mayo. He also does act the cunt on the pitch.
He is neither overrated or underrated for me.
He can finish but so can someone like Darren Coen.
Itās elsewhere that he falls down.
A fine footballer technically but has no pace at all . I think a lot of the rattyness might come from that .
Ah here
This is a classic example of the gilded reputation players get from winning championships, even if not fully deserved. Rock has had horrific games on the big stage where he has malfunctioned to a significant extent, more so than any instance of OāConnor who is slated for two high profile misses.
Rock was stink in the 2016 drawn final, he missed far more than he made. 2015 drawn semi and 2018 final were similar stories
That could well be, I dont recall Rock missing many frees. And with the GPS tracker thing and Lee Keegan free, that sticks out more than the misses for me. Either way, Iād far rather Dean Rock kick a free than Cillian O Connor.
Medals are never a reliable barometer of a player in a team sport.
I think the bould jimmy played inter county for mayo pal
That makes sense alright cos he has that air of misplaced arrogance about him. The pub blowhard lads always have some minor achievement years before that they feel makes them an authority.
This is a weird argument. A lad says Rock isnāt great but heād take him over CoC on frees. You talk a bit of nonsense about Rockās general play and argue Rock is overrated. A separate discussion.
If itās about who can take frees when the pressure is on then you need to look at instances where theyāve both had to take frees under pressure. Thankfully, for our purposes, we have a barometer. Pressure frees in the dying moments of and all Ireland final. Rock is your man. O Connor even got the one he scored wrong ffs sake.