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Donegal GAA thread

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Replying To jacktheboy:  "A Manager who played Murphy as a sweeper , and thus allowed his opposite number the fullback score three points and get player of the week, well enough said . what might have been if Murphy had stayed at Full Forward for whole match, me thinks Donegal Ulster Champs."
As a first time supporter on the Donegal forum, have to say the style of football 'played' is nothing short of awful to watch. The killing part is the talent is there and if the team wasn't so misdirected by management they'd definitely be Ulster champions now. Why in the name of God is Michael Murphy deployed as nothing other than a link man in midfield? I could handpass as good as him! Put him on the edge of the square for God's sake

Shocs07 (Limerick) - Posts: 374 - 31/05/2022 21:18:46    2421484

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-If you had of said that Donegal would concede 1-12 in normal time and would win 60% of the kick outs you would have probably taken it. Donegal to score more than 1-13 to win? Donegal had 32 shots and scored 15 times. The conversion rate is just not good enough. Realistically despite all the other mistakes made is that not the single biggest factor in not winning? Some players lacked discipline in going for the shots that were not on and in fairness plenty of it was due to derry defence. Donegal needed one more point in normal time and we would have won. They were on about Hugh McFadden on the DL debate. That shot was a 100% he just took a split second too long to shoot. The Patrick mcbrearty one and the end of Et was not on.

- some people are mentioning Rory kavanagh. He did real well with at eunans so far and no doubt had big plans ahead for them. Though I wonder do folks watch Donegal club football. The eunans Ulster quarter final Vs glen was a final score of 8 points to 1-4 to glen and was played in same cautious safety first way most of high end Donegal club football is played. Tactics wise does anyone really think he would have set the team up much different to what it was on Sunday. On the DL debate he was mentioning the defence not being as tight as it needs to be rather than not scoring enough!!

-Donegal got one of the only turnovers in the second half. Murphy kicked it up to shane o'donnell and the kick pass was on straight away to mcbrearty. He took too much out of it and ultimately ball was turned over. Shane o'donnell is a very talented footballer who is well able to kick pass but realistically that's been taken out of him at club level first and then county. That has to be coached back in again to kick it in.

- some folks want to sack Bonner or him to resign now. Donegals are one match from a quarter final. At least give them a chance to then and give the team some semblance of support. I'm very disappointed for the players and management about not getting over the line but that's not a reason to give the rest of the championship a right rattle. And maybe do freshen it up and take some of the constraints off.

Ulsterchamps_32 (Donegal) - Posts: 943 - 31/05/2022 21:30:44    2421489

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How long of a term was Bonner given the last time? After he was given the job again I came on here to say I was surprised - the general response to me was there was no-one else in the county with the CV that was interested. Has that changed since?

Cbar (Mayo) - Posts: 377 - 01/06/2022 09:22:39    2421498

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Some interesting quotes from Darragh O'Sé...

"It's Donegal that I would be more disgusted with. When you're the more experienced team, the onus is on you to take responsibility"

"Yes, there's always going to be a bit of standing across the battlefield staring each other down. But eventually, the team that wins is generally the one that goes for it when it matters."

"Donegal weren't brave enough. That's the long and short of it."

"at some point, you have to move away from not losing and focus on winning."

He goes on to refer to Mayo. Despite many people throughout Ireland ridiculing Mayo over the years for never getting the job done, at least they'll have a bloody good go at it. They don't die wondering.

Are Mayo miles ahead of us when it comes to talent? I would suggest not. But they play with courage and conviction. I think a lot of coaches up here get caught up with "the process" and trying to be too cute containing the opposition. Instead of empowering the players to go out and trust their skills to attack and get the job done. I know I would be far more at peace with Donegal going out and letting our natural talent shine than what we witnessed last Sunday.

Lockjaw (Donegal) - Posts: 10033 - 01/06/2022 10:13:46    2421504

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Chrissy McKaigue in today's Irish News, I've quoted here what he says about Donegal:

"Donegal have a reputation over the last number of years of being fantastic defensively but they don't get the credit for how well tuned-in tactically they are," he said.

"Their attacks are premeditated and very well structured and you get the feeling that everything they do, they know exactly who they want to shoot and how they want to orchestrate the shot.

"You look at the number of scores they've got in Division One over the last two or three years and they've averaged 17-18 points. That's not talked about much in the media."

---

Now McKaigue is praising us here but to be honest this just cements what everyone with concerns about the style of play have been saying. If everything is premeditated and structured and orchestrated, what happens when the play breaks in a way that was not "part of the plan". I think it's fine to work on forward play, to have structures and a pattern of how you want to engineer the space etc., but clearly on the big days when the game is in the melting pot, this method is only taking us so far? There has to be room for a player to spot the opportunity and try something a bit different.

And if it is the case that we are so engineered in our attacks to get the people we want on the end of the shots, how can our conversion rate be so poor? It's not just on Sunday, in that Cahair O'Kane piece I mentioned earlier in the thread, it was actually a preview of the Ulster final where he said that we have very bad conversion rates and if it happened again against Derry we would lose.

That's not even getting to the valid points about the club game and forwards having that bit of individualism coached out of them.

Lots of questions to be asked about our attack in all honesty.

JoeSoap (Donegal) - Posts: 1432 - 01/06/2022 10:16:28    2421509

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Replying To Cbar:  "How long of a term was Bonner given the last time? After he was given the job again I came on here to say I was surprised - the general response to me was there was no-one else in the county with the CV that was interested. Has that changed since?"
Cbar simple ans is no.

Tyrion (Donegal) - Posts: 172 - 01/06/2022 10:23:18    2421513

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Replying To Ulsterchamps_32:  "-If you had of said that Donegal would concede 1-12 in normal time and would win 60% of the kick outs you would have probably taken it. Donegal to score more than 1-13 to win? Donegal had 32 shots and scored 15 times. The conversion rate is just not good enough. Realistically despite all the other mistakes made is that not the single biggest factor in not winning? Some players lacked discipline in going for the shots that were not on and in fairness plenty of it was due to derry defence. Donegal needed one more point in normal time and we would have won. They were on about Hugh McFadden on the DL debate. That shot was a 100% he just took a split second too long to shoot. The Patrick mcbrearty one and the end of Et was not on.

- some people are mentioning Rory kavanagh. He did real well with at eunans so far and no doubt had big plans ahead for them. Though I wonder do folks watch Donegal club football. The eunans Ulster quarter final Vs glen was a final score of 8 points to 1-4 to glen and was played in same cautious safety first way most of high end Donegal club football is played. Tactics wise does anyone really think he would have set the team up much different to what it was on Sunday. On the DL debate he was mentioning the defence not being as tight as it needs to be rather than not scoring enough!!

-Donegal got one of the only turnovers in the second half. Murphy kicked it up to shane o'donnell and the kick pass was on straight away to mcbrearty. He took too much out of it and ultimately ball was turned over. Shane o'donnell is a very talented footballer who is well able to kick pass but realistically that's been taken out of him at club level first and then county. That has to be coached back in again to kick it in.

- some folks want to sack Bonner or him to resign now. Donegals are one match from a quarter final. At least give them a chance to then and give the team some semblance of support. I'm very disappointed for the players and management about not getting over the line but that's not a reason to give the rest of the championship a right rattle. And maybe do freshen it up and take some of the constraints off."
You are correct. People talking about getting rid of a manager mid-season is rubbish, this isn't the premier league in England where managers are sacked for losing a couple games. I saw a few of Eunans games last year and they were as defensive as anyone, they looked good in the county final which is probably the only Eunans game some people on here saw last year because it was on TV. Anyone who thinks a new manager could come in and take over a county team today and have them prepared for a game in 2 weeks with a whole new style of play is either deluded or knows little about what is involved. Bonner is here for the rest of this season. I think mirroring Derry's setup was the correct thing to do on Sunday , but the management made a few mistakes tactically during the game like not moving Murphy up the field to get Rodgers further back and the use of only 3 subs in the 70 minutes. Then at the start of extra time, not making a couple more changes to freshen the team up. I think the weakness in this management team is the inability to react to what's happening in the game and make changes tactically as required to correct problems, like Derry did by switching Mogan's marker at half time. Donegal seemed to stick rigidly to the plan when a couple of tweaks base on how the game was going might have made the difference.

greenfan (Donegal) - Posts: 743 - 01/06/2022 11:03:37    2421527

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Replying To JoeSoap:  "Chrissy McKaigue in today's Irish News, I've quoted here what he says about Donegal:

"Donegal have a reputation over the last number of years of being fantastic defensively but they don't get the credit for how well tuned-in tactically they are," he said.

"Their attacks are premeditated and very well structured and you get the feeling that everything they do, they know exactly who they want to shoot and how they want to orchestrate the shot.

"You look at the number of scores they've got in Division One over the last two or three years and they've averaged 17-18 points. That's not talked about much in the media."

---

Now McKaigue is praising us here but to be honest this just cements what everyone with concerns about the style of play have been saying. If everything is premeditated and structured and orchestrated, what happens when the play breaks in a way that was not "part of the plan". I think it's fine to work on forward play, to have structures and a pattern of how you want to engineer the space etc., but clearly on the big days when the game is in the melting pot, this method is only taking us so far? There has to be room for a player to spot the opportunity and try something a bit different.

And if it is the case that we are so engineered in our attacks to get the people we want on the end of the shots, how can our conversion rate be so poor? It's not just on Sunday, in that Cahair O'Kane piece I mentioned earlier in the thread, it was actually a preview of the Ulster final where he said that we have very bad conversion rates and if it happened again against Derry we would lose.

That's not even getting to the valid points about the club game and forwards having that bit of individualism coached out of them.

Lots of questions to be asked about our attack in all honesty."
I'd agree with you there. All this "trust the process" craic works to a certain extent but if you're a team that has designs on winning titles some chutzpah is needed on occasion as well.

I tortured myself by rewatching highlights of the Ulster final from 2016 there last night. A quite similar match in that it was very cagey and Cathal McCarron forced Murphy to defend on a number of occasions.

Another notable aspect of that game was we trusted ourselves to kick points from distance. Ryan McHugh & Odhran MacNiallais in particular landed a few beauts. Now Odhran's county days are over and there's no point rehashing that. But I would put Ciaran Thompson in a similar bracket with his ability to find the range from distance.

I go back to my point earlier in the thread about offering up something creative in an attacking sense. The dogs on the street knew that McKaigue would pick up McBrearty and put him in his pocket. Would it have been so outlandish to bench Paddy for Thompson? Play Murphy and Brennan inside, Thommo out the field and force Gallagher into a rethink?

Spring a ******* off Paddy from the bench with a point to prove in the second half?

I know it's easy to be wise after the event but I'm just reiterating my complete frustration that we were so easy to predict.

Lockjaw (Donegal) - Posts: 10033 - 01/06/2022 11:16:55    2421535

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Chrissy Mc kaigue saying today that Donegal were tactically brilliant. That doesn't come by chance. Shows the planning and hard work that goes into it. This will not sit well with most of yous coming from one of the top players. When your playing in these games you know and see more of what the opposition are really about than you would by some of yous sitting in a pub with a bellyful of beer or watching at home on tv. Not really interested in anybody responding to my posts I didn't make up that post it came from Chrissy Mc kaigue.. hope yous are set for our next game this will show the real supporters.. as for Rory kavanagh he lasted one year at u 16 level so I can't see him being interested with a young family and from being at the maghera st eunans game and how negative they played I don't think it would be a good fix.

rorysboys (Donegal) - Posts: 2667 - 01/06/2022 13:02:11    2421556

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Replying To Tirchonaill1:  "A question has to be answered by Bonner, was it Murphy's own decision to play out round the middle or was he instructed to play there?
if he was told to stay inside but came out himself then that's obviously wrong. (ignoring the manager)
if he was instructed to play out the field then that's also the wrong decision again by Bonner,
so either way you look at it that's the managers fault,
either he is playing Murphy in the wrong position or he is too weak and Murphy just does whatever he wants,
I wish Tom Comack had asked Declan Bonner in the Highland Radio interview after the match why was Bonner playing where he was, that question has to be answered by him.
Was Murphy doing what he was told or was he doing what he wanted?
No waffle just straight question straight answer."
This is the real question that needs answering, if its the case that Murphy makes these decisions then he has to ship some blame as well as Bonner. We looked like we lacked belief in what we were trying to employ out there on Sunday and that tells me that the players do not have faith in the systems of play. Slowness of movement leads to lateral play which kills any momentum you build and that was telling after we went two up in the second half.
I went to a few games this year and its the same pattern for most, we cant put 70mins of football together anymore. Declan has been a great servant to Donegal but he wont help himself by staying on after this year as he has lost the support of most within the county and he will know this himself.
If it is the case that Murphy does dictate his own game plan then it does not bode well for whoever comes in next. They will have to be a strong personality but you feel that a serious look needs to be taken at the style of football we have employed these past few years. Our flair has evaporated and its so methodical with too much emphasis on retaining the ball and that has been evident in our club scene as well with a few past county finals being dismal viewing affairs.
We can marry both styles again, introducing the foot pass to break the lines quicker and see how our attacking play develops but again we have to look at this in the wider context. Clubs have got to trust the players and coaching must prioritize the skills rather than concentrating on handling and running off the shoulder so much.
This is fixable but a few things will need to change before we can be anyway realistically be considered as contenders but if we do not learn from our shortcomings and continue to plough on as we are, then I am afraid we will be classed as eternal pretenders.

Tumbleweed83 (Donegal) - Posts: 1 - 01/06/2022 13:07:56    2421558

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Replying To sourmilk93:  "Rochford has offered nothing"
I've questioned Rochford myself. However, what do we expect of him? He's coaching & training the players but is it his final say on how we set up? I don't know.

What I will say is that you wouldn't of had this craic of over and back the pitch, slowing the game way down when he was no.1 at Mayo. Same possibly could be said with the club team he managed though I didn't watch them so can't say. But before he came to Donegal, he never came across as an overly defensive manager.

I could be just sputting nonsense here but for some reason I am still curious to see what Rochford could do if he fully took charge of players he worked with for a few years now. Might be nothing, yet could be something.

fielder (Donegal) - Posts: 137 - 01/06/2022 13:15:09    2421561

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Replying To Lockjaw:  "I'd agree with you there. All this "trust the process" craic works to a certain extent but if you're a team that has designs on winning titles some chutzpah is needed on occasion as well.

I tortured myself by rewatching highlights of the Ulster final from 2016 there last night. A quite similar match in that it was very cagey and Cathal McCarron forced Murphy to defend on a number of occasions.

Another notable aspect of that game was we trusted ourselves to kick points from distance. Ryan McHugh & Odhran MacNiallais in particular landed a few beauts. Now Odhran's county days are over and there's no point rehashing that. But I would put Ciaran Thompson in a similar bracket with his ability to find the range from distance.

I go back to my point earlier in the thread about offering up something creative in an attacking sense. The dogs on the street knew that McKaigue would pick up McBrearty and put him in his pocket. Would it have been so outlandish to bench Paddy for Thompson? Play Murphy and Brennan inside, Thommo out the field and force Gallagher into a rethink?

Spring a ******* off Paddy from the bench with a point to prove in the second half?

I know it's easy to be wise after the event but I'm just reiterating my complete frustration that we were so easy to predict."
Like yourself I recorded both the BBC and the RTE coverage and have been watching bits and pieces.The puzzling thing about Donegal's approach was that it was like that of a complete underdog coming up against a real top dog,safety first taking no chances in case a superior team would destroy you.Adopting this approach was always going to make it a 50/50 game.In saying that it nearly worked but if our players are as good as a lot of people think we should be imposing ourselves on the opposition.That is obviously the fault of management but I am sure at the same time they were not expecting the players to be so passive and lacking in aggression.
Derry made it much more difficult for us to score than we did for them.
The high press we were expecting was half hearterd .
We have a big problem with packed defences and they were probably warned not to take the ball into contact which is understandable because we are very easily turned over in contact which is down to poor ball control skills.I don't see top teams get turned over as easily.
Another big problem is the lack of movement inside which contributes to this playing around the edges.When players look up there is nothing on .
What we normally do well wasn't there on Sunday either and that is supporting the man on the ball.
I think 99% of people think Murphy should be in the attacking half of the field not only because of the damage he could do but also because he is terrible at defending.
Mc Menamin was taken out of it preventing him from tackling the Derry goalscorer(free out).It was also very poor defending from McFF in the lead up to that goal.
I also thought McMenamin was fouled when he didn't deal with that short kickout.There was a push on the back.
forgive the rambling but things are just coming in to my head

gunman (Donegal) - Posts: 1196 - 01/06/2022 13:17:18    2421562

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Replying To fielder:  "I've questioned Rochford myself. However, what do we expect of him? He's coaching & training the players but is it his final say on how we set up? I don't know.

What I will say is that you wouldn't of had this craic of over and back the pitch, slowing the game way down when he was no.1 at Mayo. Same possibly could be said with the club team he managed though I didn't watch them so can't say. But before he came to Donegal, he never came across as an overly defensive manager.

I could be just sputting nonsense here but for some reason I am still curious to see what Rochford could do if he fully took charge of players he worked with for a few years now. Might be nothing, yet could be something."
Fielder I actually believe we were playing a more expansive game before Rochford arrived.

Tyrion (Donegal) - Posts: 172 - 01/06/2022 13:29:12    2421565

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Didn't mention this since Sunday but the big turning point on Sunday was when the ref got in the way of a Donegal attack towards the end of the game. Instead of hopping the ball when Derry win possession he allowed play to carry on which resulted in a Derry score.. probably be too handy to mention this . Rule states it's a hop ball offence but sure we'll blame bonner for it. He should have trained them to keep the ball away from the ref..big boo boo from bonner. He should be sacked immediately

rorysboys (Donegal) - Posts: 2667 - 01/06/2022 13:29:16    2421566

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Replying To rorysboys:  "Didn't mention this since Sunday but the big turning point on Sunday was when the ref got in the way of a Donegal attack towards the end of the game. Instead of hopping the ball when Derry win possession he allowed play to carry on which resulted in a Derry score.. probably be too handy to mention this . Rule states it's a hop ball offence but sure we'll blame bonner for it. He should have trained them to keep the ball away from the ref..big boo boo from bonner. He should be sacked immediately"
Derry didn't score from that turnover. It was our last meaningful attack so he definitely got in the way of us engineering a score, it was in the 69th minute that he got in the way.

JoeSoap (Donegal) - Posts: 1432 - 01/06/2022 14:00:33    2421577

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Replying To fielder:  "I've questioned Rochford myself. However, what do we expect of him? He's coaching & training the players but is it his final say on how we set up? I don't know.

What I will say is that you wouldn't of had this craic of over and back the pitch, slowing the game way down when he was no.1 at Mayo. Same possibly could be said with the club team he managed though I didn't watch them so can't say. But before he came to Donegal, he never came across as an overly defensive manager.

I could be just sputting nonsense here but for some reason I am still curious to see what Rochford could do if he fully took charge of players he worked with for a few years now. Might be nothing, yet could be something."
I don't think Rochford would do anything different if he was in charge. If he didn't believe in how the team was set up , why would he hang around and be part of it . He's not travelling the whole way from Mayo a few days a week to just train the team.

greenfan (Donegal) - Posts: 743 - 01/06/2022 14:34:21    2421586

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I still feel hungover with the game at the weekend. It's not the defeat so much but just the manner we played. Hard to now have much confidence going into the qualifiers, I couldn't see us survive a difficult draw, the confidence levels of the players must be on the floor. I really hope we can lift ourselves and win our qualifier, we would be in the quarter finals then.

I wasn't expecting a lot from Donegal this year given our system of play, slow lateral build up, all hand passing and no direct foot passing to the inside forwards, all very predictable, but did think we had a chance of winning Ulster. In the previous 2 years we had a lot of excuses - taking Cavan for granted with one eye on Dublin, injuries, Michael Murphy getting sent off against Tyrone. In truth we haven't been good enough, which I believe is down to our system of play. I think we have a good squad of players.

One last thing is that structurally the team seem to be all over the place. I know in the modern game the full back can end up on the end of score but we had our full forward playing full back and full backs playing full forward. If MM isn't to play full forward, then surely we should be trying to develop someone for that role, a focal point for our attack. Jamie Brennan and Paddy McBrearty are starved off the ball, it must be torture for them. People accusing them of making no runs when none of the outfield players even looks up for a pass inside. It's run with the ball and if that doesn't work, run more with the ball.

Green_Gold (Donegal) - Posts: 1932 - 01/06/2022 14:54:27    2421594

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Replying To rorysboys:  "Didn't mention this since Sunday but the big turning point on Sunday was when the ref got in the way of a Donegal attack towards the end of the game. Instead of hopping the ball when Derry win possession he allowed play to carry on which resulted in a Derry score.. probably be too handy to mention this . Rule states it's a hop ball offence but sure we'll blame bonner for it. He should have trained them to keep the ball away from the ref..big boo boo from bonner. He should be sacked immediately"
What a load rubbish coming from you once again. Things happen in a game, and well managed and mentally strong teams deal with these things and move on and win the game. No excuses.
The fact is this team has lost several games where we needed to be mentally strong and overcome whatever obstacles thats in front of them.
When your management is weak, your team will be weak.
The management haven't the balls to drop or take off certain players, and what message does that send out to the players on the bench that are putting as much effort in. You really are showing yourself up now, the 15 year old that has very little knowledge of Donegal football.
Bonner is here this season, but unless he wons the all Ireland, he should step away at end of season.
Our county board then needs to step up and actually make a proper effort to find a top quality manager. And advertise the job properly unlike last year.

The keeper (Donegal) - Posts: 723 - 01/06/2022 15:03:04    2421595

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Replying To rorysboys:  "Do you think so. Your moaning here this long while. Time to move on. There's a big game coming up. When Rory was manager I was accused of being a friend of his. . I know my football I don't like people with a vendetta. Life's too short lad. You r probably a gweedore man."
You know your football? Pity you wouldn't show that here. All you do it run people down and call them names and throw an odd LOL in there.

You quoted Chrissy McKaigue earlier. Have yet to see you give your own opinion.

Maybe you'll manage Na Rossa some day.

peiledoir20 (Donegal) - Posts: 1354 - 01/06/2022 15:09:38    2421598

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Replying To JoeSoap:  "Derry didn't score from that turnover. It was our last meaningful attack so he definitely got in the way of us engineering a score, it was in the 69th minute that he got in the way."
My mistake if that's the case. But with the game finishing level it was a decision that completely went un noticed . It's not surprising but .

rorysboys (Donegal) - Posts: 2667 - 01/06/2022 15:10:03    2421599

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