Ryan O'Donoghue

You kept your distance.

Yeah, I can imagine Ryan O'Donoghue with the rosary beads out in the back of the house in a couple of decades, maybe just to make sure.

That's good stuff.

But that again, I suppose it is.

Could you outline maybe what was said there?

Yeah, and Ryan O'Donoghue, my teammate from Mayo, drove up, you know, a nine-hour round trip from Belmont and just gave his lived experience, you know.

Only in July you've seen Mayo winning the All-Ireland and Ryan really at the centre of that, you know, playing in front of 82,000 people.

But at the same time, just giving his own personal experience of driving all around the country, the loss of opportunities work-wise, being a student, picking up bills, the example of being a student, playing for Mayo and not being able to have a part-time job, you know, because...

Colby MacDonald just got a little touch.

Leaving it on to Ryan O'Donoghue.

Bearing down a goal.

Sending a shot.

You're just trying to lead by example and hoping that your performances and training on the pitch are showing that, right, people can see what I'm up to on social media and they're like right he's obviously like looking after himself and taking care of himself and like I think performances this year were at a level where the people would be like right there's how you like if they join the dots they can kind of see what happens but yeah I don't know what happens haven't started calling people out just yet like but I think at that point

But that's interesting because I just wonder, we were talking about the gaps between the teams and something that Ryan O'Donoghue said after the All-Ireland Final about in a meeting in the middle of the season and that was Jordan Flinders, one of the half forwards.

What are

the half

It's still probably going to take another couple of years for teams to really extend the defence.

I would have liked to... you know and you'll have more of the stats than me but you know the goal chances i think from a basketball point of view with the two pointers the two points i'd make is you know with the three-point line in our sport is one you you know the concept of running a shooter off the line you know and we've we've we've two or three on each team in in your super league and it's like anything but a three-pointer so i think you know um If Ryan O'Donoghue gets it or Kearney gets it for Mayo, if Kerry were playing a seven-game series like in basketball, if they were able to play the All-Ireland final again the following week of game two, what would the adjustments be? And will teams, I suppose, extend and run shooters off the line and bring them inside and tilt their arc? I think the basketball comparison is interesting in that 90% of our assisted threes would come from the corners.

So even though both games are played on a rectangle because of the circular rim, you know, we like to shoot from the corners.

And I know as a coach, our team is really penetrating the defense because, you know, all the highest points per possession in basketball are attacking the basket.

And that's all the, to my mind, they're all the easy takeaways.

That's the stuff that Mayo do and they do it well, but it's kind of easy stuff.

But the hard part is, yeah fair enough you want to shoot more but are you going to go and log the amount of hours in training that Jack Carney logged shooting before he went and actually he earned the right to take that shot and that's how he goes and kicks 11 two-pointers or are you going to work like Ryan O'Donoghue if that kick doesn't come off to make sure that we get that ball back like that's the easy part is the initial thing that we all want to do the hard part is how you make up for that I don't know if you heard anyone was interviewed there recently by local journalists in mayo and somebody asked him keen mikhail had said it and macho iran had said before they went on i think that anyone should say them was have fun and he was he kind of took a not he didn't go much to the question but he was very quick to clarify when i say have fun now i don't mean go in there and be loose and do what you want and do anything his version of fun was go in and enjoy the hunt enjoy enjoy the fight go after it Anyway, the reason this is all in my head is because if you looked at me off the numbers that I would have, for example, in the Sam McGuire series, they were actually elite at nothing in an attacking sense.

They weren't the best goal shots per game or points per shot or two-point shooters even, actually louder, better two-point shooters than they were.

I just thought, yeah, you're right, Darragh Byrne's goal, because it was everything about...

It was the jinking and the evasive run by Ryan O'Donoghue, and, ah, it just was...

And the, you're right, the confidence of youth, the composure of youth, and Peter Canavan did it.

The Gooch did it.

... and the management team and, yeah.

And it's, it's, it's, it's, um, yeah, and again, as we, and look it, I, I, I'm not, a- and it is the important, if you, if you remember Ryan O'Donoghue bringing the cup home to Belmullet-

Mm

... and putting it on the lap of his grandfather-