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Donegal GAA thread

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Replying To peiledoir20:  "Definitely unfair to call him a free kick merchant but I feel he has been over hyped. His biggest haul came against New York a couple of years ago. He probably looks a bit better given the rest of the Mayo forwards fall so short. Roarty marshalled him well yesterday and even outscored him from play."
He doesn't score enough from play in big games but always has a big total in league and championship. Most of his scores are from Frees. No one hypes him apart from Mayo fans. If that is their marquee forward for the next while, they'll struggle to win a Connacht never mind an all Ireland.

eddieSize5Balls (Donegal) - Posts: 290 - 16/02/2026 19:04:23    2656877

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Replying To eddieSize5Balls:  "Mayo always have excuses when they lose even from our own fans. We should be beating Roscommon and Monaghan and if we do, with 10 points we lost certainly would be in a final. So a final definitely is on the horizon.
Armagh have been poor lately too and Galway would be a toss up.


Mulreaney was good but he's not going to displace Patton, let's be serious. Pattons kickouts are the best in the country.

The new young boys did it well. We should have a good u20 year it would seem.

I am still holding out some hope Paddy is coaxed back for championship."
Lol...you couldn't wait to retire him 2 years ago!!!

chancer (Donegal) - Posts: 37 - 16/02/2026 20:12:28    2656891

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Replying To Commodore:  "I'd need to see the stats from both for proper comparison on kick-outs, Mulreanny isn't bad at short or medium range, and he saved us from conceding a couple of goals in the 2nd half yesterday.

Patton has that long-range ability if the opposition do press up, but most teams counteract that now by pushing the keeper out to the 45 for kickouts. But its still a serious threat to have within our arsenal, as you never know when a team might leave that gap exposed."
Gavin Mulreany has been a credit to himself in this league campaign but respectively when Patton is back the number 1 spot will be his again. Military precision from kickouts is the single most important part of the new rules. I wouldn't go as far as Geezer to call it "piggery", but you have to give yourself every chance on the kickout under the new rules. Patton has a longer range and is more capable of picking a man. I think in this regard we have played to Mulreanys strengths in the last 3 games, but I also don't think it's coincidence that all 3 of our opponents copped on to us in the second half of each fixture.

This isn't a comment on Gavin or Sean, but I think it's something we got badly wrong in July against Kerry. We had two games of evidence whereby they hijacked Tyrone and Armagh's kickout, and we left High and Jason on the bench. I can see where management were coming from trying to keep something in reserve but it was too little too late. I'm also not so naive as to ignore the fact that Ryan and Ciaran were unfortunately lost far too early in the game (especially Ciaran T for fielding and twos), and I won't imply that the final was lost on one dimension rather than being a culmination of several things going against us. I do however think that Jim is taking a once bitten twice shy approach by loading up the middle with big men.

To support that, I think we end up going with the keeper most capable of servicing them and Gavin Mulreany is very unfortunate to have such a keeper as Sean Patton ahead of him. And we are very lucky to have such a capable deputy

papa_pump (Donegal) - Posts: 90 - 16/02/2026 21:48:41    2656914

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