Mayo haven't been on dis ting since 1951: ILF welcomes all comers to Cluiche Cheannais na hÉireann 2013

Kept meaning to go down to that rough-as-fuck pub just up the road from me that shows GAA every Sunday, however the Premier League's starting up again so I suppose it'll be fucking Arsenal from now on.

wtf happened the rossies? i was in work yesterday so i missed it. mayo are going to give kerry a game aren't they? just don't bother turning up until the semi-finals.

tyrone could trouble dublin too if we're as wasteful as we were on saturday.

Think we'll get battered but hey this could be the year seeing as no hype

last year was p similar to this though i guess - same stumbling route through. they must be a bit tired tho. is the kerry game this weekend?

Fortnight. And I in Milton keynes

i'll be in nyc. not paying 20 dollars to watch gaa at 10am, even the dubs.

aidan o'shea playing at full-back! i don't care that they're 1-1 to zero up - that is fucking madness.

As I said, I'm only getting scores relayed to me.

What dyou care for Aidan o Shea anyway!

true enough but if he's actually supposed to be a key player then you can't move him to full-back. donaghy isn't even kerry's best forward.

this game is fucking nuts

knife-edge doesn't even describe this.

what a match, fucking hell. thus ends my liveblog.

mayo love the drama!

German gone what's happenwd

mayo equalised in injury-time. huge back and forth game, mayo were three up a few times, kerry two or three up at times. kerry missed a (long) free at the death.

so a replay.

Ffs

Spurs and mayo. Maybe I'm the problem

definitely should have won today but in the final minutes were lucky to draw

A synopsis that rings through the ages tbf

These are the hard times lads

I think this is the year tbh

well that was easy

do you actually think it's the year?

Jesus it's a different game pitchside. Space just disappears.

Yeah. I think this is it. The journey has been so different to the usual and the focus and variety is there.

The experience finally seems to be worth more than just lending an air of doom.

wasn't it a kind of similar year to last year? like gradual improvement after early poor performances? i think kerry are actually shite so i'd be more worried from your pov. should have cunted them thusly the first day.

guess tomorrow's game is a factor, i have no idea what level tyrone are at yet, such is the nature of it. tbh tho it is hard to win 3 in a row, to not lose a game for 3 years. can't go on forever for the dubs, good and all as they look.

Other years it would've been about not having beaten Kerry at croker in two decades.

This time it was how to take them tactically, how to effect our own game to meet the Roscommon performance, no drama talk, no air of tragedy for the press. Business at the business end, like Dubs and Kerry assume as a matter of course.

XP I've only seen bits of Tyrone but people who know are telling me they are like hungry animals. Be a test I'd suspect.

yeah i am fairly concerned about it - it's a pity there aren't more good teams, or even seeding, the whole thing is so badly weighted, easy games and then this huge leap into the unknown.

that's a good point about mayo tbf, there hasn't been the same level of cringey hoping, certainly not for the second game, the first there was a bit. but you know in the lead-up to the final all that entitled shite will be back, even if it's driven by the media it still seems to infect the team. the last day the game was there to be won and they just would not take it. in the end kerry had a free on halfway which they panicked over and kicked to themselves, leading to a mayo equaliser. maybe that's behind them now but i dunno.

on the free i mean barry john keane, i think, literally kicked it up in the air short and ended up having to touch it next himself, resulting in a mayo free

As I said, the route this time may be the only difference. Could be that with it all cleared away the next three weeks could see a reversion, worth watching for.

Rochford has repurposed the whole team tho, each player a component, no stars, and the squad can play a few styles. Tricky decision going right, and real confidence you can draw from when things falter, not the brittle kidstuff we bit our lips for in other years.

I'm confident.

God help us

lol

I'd love to watch this tomorrow but what are the chances when Liverpool are playing Arsenal at the same time?

You in London? Bound to be places.

well.

the first half was fucking unreal - the second half frustrated me a bit, but still, an incredibly easy win.

I wasn't even listening after the second minute.

See ye.

Will be on road for this I think

Feel confident that it will be a game, but with this dub team there's no guarantees tbh

Soft goal to concede there

Mayo have been passing badly but defending well.

Dublin will pulverise us in the second if we're that sloppy

Couple of phantom free kicks given to Dub imo

Dublin can't get their game going at all but theres still only 1 pt in it. That last Dublin free was odd alright. Def yellow card moments before it too

Vaughan ffs that's outrageous

Great goal but Dublin bench will be worth a lot at 14 Vs 14

No arguments. Vaughan owes the county nothing but he'll carry the blame for that.

otm

Mayo should have got a penalty tho

Impossible to call those. I mean there's no foul but what a ref calls and I don't feel he favoured either team

disagree about the phantom frees - on at least two occasions first half a mayo player practically sat on a dublin forward and nothing happened. the injury time can fuck off too, utterly ludicrous shit playing about 3/4 minutes desperate for an equaliser.

one of the more satisfying dublin wins but again we played poorly in a final - it was extremely impressive we they won the ball in midfield when it mattered, having not done so all day. i can only imagine how horrible it is and i feel sorry for mayo as a team and for the supporters but i honestly can't stick the hatred and resentment that comes dublin's way. kilkenny destroyed everyone for years in hurling and all we got was mythology about cody as ferguson and worship of a great side - only a few specialist journalists or the sunday game pundits will actually give dublin respect or even bother to talk tactics instead of shiting on with sexual fantasies about a team causing "panic in the dublin ranks" or "chaos from the kickout" etc, wetting themselves over the prospect of a loss.

even in the preamble the entire week was all mayo-centric coverage and not a word mentioned about the fact that dublin are on the edge of becoming one of the great sides. i know it's hard and not irish to actually praise a victor, but still - it's not like dublin fans were sitting back thinking "here we go another meaningless win" - i have little experience of supporting a successful team but today was no lesser a day for us even with two previous years' victories.

in fact, weirdly, today felt the biggest deal since we broke our duck in 2011.

I've not seen the Dublin hate tbh. All acknowledge this as the best squad in football history and damn near if not the best team.

If you don't see it said enough I'd reckon it's because it's so apparent as to be as boring as analysing idk mansell or Schumacher when their dominance was killing F1. That attention will at some stage start to move to how and when and by whom the incumbent will be beaten is, I think, inevitable.

Kilkenny and hurling is different. Hurling is prettier for a start, and Kilkenny never won it with anything so mundane as tactics or dark arts, and that's not a criticism of the talent the dubs have (and have needed) for both, they are requirements for a modern football team in a way that they're not for hurling.

No multi champion team will go long staying popular in football, that's as plain a fact as there is.

I still think the dubs are borne very fondly by the rest of the country and fully acknowledged as the best by a shot across every department, so idk if they feel hard done by in coverage it's not how it seems from outside.

Injury time was nonsense. Don't think, again, that the ref played a big impact in the game. Bench and knowhow won it, and that was as good as I think I hoped for.

I feel it a serious shortcoming of ilx proper btw that I won't be treated as the victim of appalling tragedy for the next month, my rawness and shorttemperedness won't be written off with the understanding deserved and if they even notice that I'm only half human every mid-September thru October it will be dismissed as gnomic deems or some shit.

Grief. Twas all in grief and twas ever grief. Think of me when the leaves turn and I cupless and drunk with the want of the bit of glory. And wonder that I can smile at all, not that it seems to come with an edge

yeah agree the ref was generally fine but that injury time was to the point of outrageous. my perspective may be skewed from being in britain, but eg, both second captains and off the ball have had ex-mayo players as pundits this week and generally all year, they have had no ex-dublin players. i wouldn't even mind if it didn't come down to "who do you think will win"/"well i suppose i'll be kilt if i don't say mayo" - like seriously, and these are the good sport shows, and that passes for punditry.

there's a tone to articles i read all week and it really is these ludicrous fantasies of dublin imploding, it's all just so gleeful and before the fact. on the hurling thing, i accept it's different but it's still a wild double standard. jim gavin in particular is basically ignored. the beauty of dublin is the tactics, the movement etc. there wasn't loads of that today but there was enough, they've kept the flame alive, along with mayo and kerry, and prob kept football in some kind of decent state.

i mean i dunno if watching a game is different in ireland but in london, for years, everywhere you watch you just have people from any/every county rabidly supporting whoever dublin play against, complaining about refereeing decisions, saying "it's hard to beat 16 men", "they're cheating" etc etc, i get it, people hate capital cities - but i do think it seeps beyond just pub behaviour and generally into the talk of the game, apart from like, live on tv or pat spillane/joe brolly/oisin mcconville who all love the current team.

it's worse in the preamble though - it's like the desperation for dublin to lose becomes this wild hype and fantasy, as i already alluded to. anyway i shouldn't be moaning, it was an unbelievably entertaining game, nothing beats gaa at that level. the tension was insane, i genuinely felt faint after the game and had to go get some air.

i hope mayo win one but for whatever reason i really, really hope it isn't against us.

xpost haha - i ended up watching the match in a really bad irish pub in central london as i was buying suits for my brother's wedding with my two brothers - was great to have us all together for it but the pub was full mayo - i was polite initially but after a few beers and the utterly demented tension of it all i was roaring at the telly as much as everyone else. afterwards the mayo supporters looked utterly fucking distraught - sometimes people do that thing, even when watching on telly, of shaking hands or commiserating - i couldn't bring myself to do so, it would have implied i understood or thought i wasn't being patronising or something, there was nothing to say.