For a wee moment there I thought we had dipped into the transfer market …
1 Like
Meh. I’d only take him on a free transfer, him being past 33.:
Yes definitely confirmed for the Saturday. We had hotel booked in Kilarney too but cancelled with no fee and re-booked in Tralee, Rooms running out fast though so get booking!
Agree with that. Probably a better atmosphere under the lights too so long as it’s not chucking it down.
1 Like
O’Byrne Cup fixtures here …
http://www.leinstergaa.ie/news/fixtures-released-for-2017-bord-na-móna-obyrne-cup.8327.html
Great to see the colleges still there. Burn out clearly no longer an issue.
Dublin squad on holiday when these fixtures are on. God knows who we’ll be fielding!!
With the players not due to head on holiday until early january, We’ll be starting back a bit later than normal. We usually have maybe 4-5 core players playing O Byrne cup for Dublin who won’t be this time
Might be a more testing start to the league than normal. Can’t complain about Cavan first but the game on feb 11th vs Tyrone might be diffcult as they have been training their holes off judging by comments from Cavanagh
Really looking forward to this. The Season tickets came in the post the other day and got me thinking about football again. I hope we get a couple of finds in this year’s league if not for this year’s championship then maybe more for next year. A bit like John Small. I would like us to try out another Goalie and midfielder for the early rounds. Maybe try different forward line permutations.
I don’t want to see Cluxton, Philly, Cooper, Ciano, Dermo, Flynner, MDMA, Bernard or Paddy till June. They’ve been on the road a long time now and could do with the league off imo.
With no league semi finals, I cant see us been in top 2 which is no harm.
Jaysus, Bernard needs games if anything! Flynn needs a break but needs a few league games too
How is keating a loss?
He’s not
1 Like
Not gonna happen. Jim Gavin likes to finish up the league, with as close to our optimum summer line up as possible. The days of established players taking the entire Spring off en masse & waltzing back into the starting jersey come June, are over. Long term injuries, club duties, rehabbing off season surgeries etc etc not withstanding.
1 Like
This year you won’t be correct on that. If we all out in the league the 3 in a row is over and Jim is aware of that. You won’t see some players till the championship
Agree with that totally.
Maybe, maybe not, but history shows there is a good chance that I will be correct again. (We have the same discussion here, every winter.)
Go back and look at the players featured in the last 4 league finals and semi finals we have been in. Then go and look at the last 4 sets of All Ireland semi finals and finals we have been in. There ain’t a whole lot of difference between the two, when you account for injured players, lads off on club duty etc etc. No reason to presume that Jim Gavin is going to deviate from that massively in 2017, when he hasn’t before.
2 Likes
I’d like to see Flynn giving a decent amount of game time in the middle of the park with Fento in the league as that’s where he will more than likely play come the Summer.
Well I know a few who are being given a long break . We are toast if we go for the league again in my opinion . We barely got over the line last year
The jaded nature of the final performances was concerning
Resting a few players is one thing. The post that I originally responded to, name checked nine regular starters taking a break until June. Going by the patterns of previous years, Jim Gavin is not going to rest that many regular starters for the league and, then just hand them their starting jerseys back, come the summer. That is not how he operates. The players know that, which is why so many of them are putting their hands up for selection so early in the year imo.
I agree that we looked very flat in the AI final. But we came out, all guns a blazin’ in the Kerry semi final, just 3 weeks before. So you can’t put the poor performance down to tiredness & nothing else imo.
1 Like