Why Diarmuid O’Connor’s tactics are frustrating from a Mayo point of view

It's hard enough playing Dublin as it is.

In Saturday's League clash between two Championship heavyweights, Dublin overcame a wasteful Mayo side to stretch their unbeaten run against their bitter rivals. Admittedly, having produced tense, exciting and dramatic All-Ireland finals in the last two years, it wasn't the most absorbing encounter in Castlebar. Goals from Paul Mannion and Niall Scully in either half were enough to crush Mayo, with Jim Gavin's side ultimately running out winners by a four-point margin. At times, Mayo found it difficult to get up the pitch beyond Dublin's pressing, but when they did find that a break was on, Diarmuid O'Connor was guilty of going to ground rather easily. It was part of the discussion on Monday's edition of The GAA Hour football show.

"Another person who wins an awful lot of frees who I wanted to mention is Diarmuid O'Connor," host Colm Parkinson said. "He goes down unbelievably easy - it's incredible. A break might be on but you only need to get any kind of contact on him and he's down. It messes the break up, I don't understand why he's doing it, he's a big fella but spends an awful lot of time on the ground. I don't think he's getting the punishment that warrants that time on the ground."

https://twitter.com/officialgaa/status/967502695027367936 "He falls into the tackle," Conán Doherty added.

"The frustrating thing there from a Mayo point of view is that he's one of their good runners, and that's one of the few places they were getting a bit of joy, like when [Lee] Keegan went through and scored in the first half and it was class. Running through the middle, it's a difficult sweetspot to hit because you want to run at Dublin but you don't want to engage them because they're so big and they'll just take it off you."

Obviously, that last line is an important one because Dublin's power and aggression will shine through more often than not. Striking that balance between attacking them and leaving yourself vulnerable is what has proven incredibly elusive for so many sides in recent years.

"Dublin are great tacklers," Cian Ward said. "There were times when Mayo couldn't get past that initial press, and launching it forward is definitely a tactic teams should look at. It's very well-documented in soccer, the first press, with Liverpool being a good example. "Dublin, with the way they filter across, they're trying to show the opposition team a space to move into and it's over towards the sideline, using the sideline as an extra defender, and they're shepherding a team down the wing so they can bring cover players across and try to crowd them out. You have to switch the play and a kick pass is the best way of doing that.