Replying To peiledoir20: "How are we reading the club scene this year? 6 rounds played so far. Termon off to a flying start and won the Gaeltacht as well. Kilcar sinking fast. Second manager this season has walked from them and failed to field a reserve team in two games already. All not well in Towney."
Termon going well surely. Things seem to be well organised, nice new facilities out there too. Any word on Cian McMenamin's injury? Looked a bad enough one. A pity for the lad, not long back from his previous long spell on the sidelines. Jamie Grant is another who'll be missed.
I think the likes of Termon, Glenswilly & Four Masters will become serious contenders at senior level in the coming years. Population overspill from Letterkenny, coupled with good structures behind the scenes should lead to increased participation at underage. Harnessed correctly, these teams will threaten the traditional big teams like Eunans, GD and more recently NC.
Similar in Donegal town, Abbotts has gone from strength to strength in recent years, and Four Masters have really upped their game at underage. Might we see the likes of St Nauls, Naomh Bríd benefit from more people settling in their catchment areas?
It's a week later and I'm still feeling a high from the game. It's mad what a game of football can do for the morale of an entire county. We only have 12 in our long history so it'll never not be sweet.
More disappointing is that a full week later I'm still seeing and hearing talk about the melee. All I want to say is that I have spoken to countless Donegal and Armagh people in the last week and the overwhelming majority view is that while it was unsavoury scenes, these things happen and we'd rather talk about the match. One way or the other most of the pile ons I've seen and heard are from counties with no skin in the game. Like many on here, I had a great days craic with Armagh supporters in and around Clones. I was chatting away to a wee man from Lurgan the whole way through the game as we both express concerns around our heart rates in key moments! Invariably for me there has been a mutual respect between Donegal and Armagh supporters in any of the matches I've ever been to between our counties, and id encourage those reading this to take the mud slinging that you've seen online in the last week with a grain of salt. My view is that a win for an Ulster team is a win for us all. Fair play to the 30 thousand match going fans from both counties on Saturday which made it such an enjoyable day out for me with countless positive exchanges which are being ignored for the national focus on one negative one!
In terms of the game last Saturday I thought it was comfortably our best performance of the year. The main things id call out was that defensively the lads seemed much more tuned in, there was a notable uptick in how much the lads were scanning to see what was around them, and we often went with a sweeper to cover that big area that Down kept trying to exploit. Armagh still scored plenty against us but they are probably the only team in the country that can punch through us like that. Kerry could as well, but I think it would come at a greater cost to them and they'd leave themselves exposed the other way.
Other positives for me were that we seemed to catch Armagh on the hop by attacking with more urgency. We kicked a few balls in that have been missing all year, and this stretched Armagh because they had to ensure proper cover inside. This left more room about the arc for us to operate in. The other note here is that at the drop of a hat we would accelerate through (eg Langans goal chance which ended in a free for McBrearty). It seemed to me that Armagh had prepared for a slower game in the heat and struggled to adapt to us really going for it in the first half.
We also did a great job on Rafferty in the first half. Armaghs game is built on dominating kickouts going both ways, so if you can interfere with that you're going to have success. To his credit and Armagh as a whole they managed to find the solutions and from about the 30th minute onwards they didn't struggle again.
Armagh were always going to come back into it, I'm disappointed with having let two 6 point leads and a 7 point lead slip. Armagh looked to have a stronger bench on the day and I wonder to what extent we gassed ourselves early in that heat. All in all im not too concerned tho. I also feel that it was the kind of game where we went 6 points down we'd have come back. The two teams are absolutely inseperable and I don't expect that to change if they meet again in croker later in the year; with or without Rian O Neill
Replying To Lockjaw: "Termon going well surely. Things seem to be well organised, nice new facilities out there too. Any word on Cian McMenamin's injury? Looked a bad enough one. A pity for the lad, not long back from his previous long spell on the sidelines. Jamie Grant is another who'll be missed.
I think the likes of Termon, Glenswilly & Four Masters will become serious contenders at senior level in the coming years. Population overspill from Letterkenny, coupled with good structures behind the scenes should lead to increased participation at underage. Harnessed correctly, these teams will threaten the traditional big teams like Eunans, GD and more recently NC.
Similar in Donegal town, Abbotts has gone from strength to strength in recent years, and Four Masters have really upped their game at underage. Might we see the likes of St Nauls, Naomh Bríd benefit from more people settling in their catchment areas?"
Whatever about termon or glenswilly four masters are almost inevitable. What had they 6 players on the 20s, mccrea, monaghan, two carrs, mccahill and muldoon and then another carr on the minors with lenehan and think another panelist. Add that to few players that played 20s and some other fine club players. Four masters pretty much got to a mccrory cup final which is close to unheard off.
In fairness to nc they are always some county underage players gweedore have also been good on that front. Mccumhaills also have some decent underage teams but probably not enough needed to push it on to the next level. There is a potential dip on the way for eunans. There is a big gap in succces in say ciaran moore age group down to at least 17s. That's 6 years at least and maybe longer and far too long for a club in letterkenny. Mcmenamin looked really good against cavan and was a huge loss against tyrone. I've no idea how serious it was. Glenswilly have been doing good too at underage but will suffer when murphy moves on as a player.
Replying To papa_pump: "In terms of the game last Saturday I thought it was comfortably our best performance of the year. The main things id call out was that defensively the lads seemed much more tuned in, there was a notable uptick in how much the lads were scanning to see what was around them, and we often went with a sweeper to cover that big area that Down kept trying to exploit. Armagh still scored plenty against us but they are probably the only team in the country that can punch through us like that. Kerry could as well, but I think it would come at a greater cost to them and they'd leave themselves exposed the other way.
Other positives for me were that we seemed to catch Armagh on the hop by attacking with more urgency. We kicked a few balls in that have been missing all year, and this stretched Armagh because they had to ensure proper cover inside. This left more room about the arc for us to operate in. The other note here is that at the drop of a hat we would accelerate through (eg Langans goal chance which ended in a free for McBrearty). It seemed to me that Armagh had prepared for a slower game in the heat and struggled to adapt to us really going for it in the first half.
We also did a great job on Rafferty in the first half. Armaghs game is built on dominating kickouts going both ways, so if you can interfere with that you're going to have success. To his credit and Armagh as a whole they managed to find the solutions and from about the 30th minute onwards they didn't struggle again.
Armagh were always going to come back into it, I'm disappointed with having let two 6 point leads and a 7 point lead slip. Armagh looked to have a stronger bench on the day and I wonder to what extent we gassed ourselves early in that heat. All in all im not too concerned tho. I also feel that it was the kind of game where we went 6 points down we'd have come back. The two teams are absolutely inseperable and I don't expect that to change if they meet again in croker later in the year; with or without Rian O Neill"
That's a good post. One point that I thought watching it is that donegal did gas themselves a little. Even at the 30 mins mark players where struggling a bit. They play at such pace and intensity in the first 30 mins. Armagh were a little slower on the attack and benefited from that in not getting as tired. I think mcguinness probably wanted to nearly have them beat by the 30 minute mark. So basically hit them with everything and knock them out. They needed a goal to do that and didn't get it and armagh are a serious team and were not going to wilt.
And one that is apparent in a lot of matches is that donegal are struggling in the final quarter on the scoring front. I'd seriously consider keeping mcbrearty in reserve to the second half. It would be great to see Niall O'Donnell be able to push on fully as well. If donegal are to have a chance they need him and the likes of farrah on full throttle.
Hopefully there are no major injuries either and eoghan ban can get back.