Their record against teams from outside Connacht since 2016 is pretty dismal though - two wins in 12 games. To me, that is more of a mindset issue than anything else. Games against other counties just don’t seem as important for whatever reason.
Davy Burke's comments after the Roscommon-Dublin game were very telling: “The goal is to beat Mayo and nothing else.”
The Championship game in 2019 in Castlebar was the only time at any grade I was on a team that lost to Roscommon and I was absolutely sickened. As a Mayo player, it’s a game you have to win every single time.The drawn and replayed All-Ireland quarter-finals of 2017 were very enjoyable games to be part of for very different reasons.
The two of them will probably finish second and third in the group anyway and end up in the same place - a preliminary quarter-final. In last year’s Championship they won two from six games but the fact that they beat Mayo in the Connacht quarter-final means it would have been classified as a decent year.
O’Neill has missed large chunks of the year so far and hasn’t looked like the player of the last two years. I’m not fully sold on his positioning at midfield either; when playing Donegal over the years we were always delighted to see Michael Murphy play a deeper role. He was very little threat out there.
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