Tremendous game of football, one we should've won far more comfortably. O'Loughlin, McHale, Howard were colossal. MacMonagle a tour de force marauding forward. Beirne, Hurley, Lydon, I can't wait for these lads to join the senior panel, some splendid forwards who love making and taking scores.

Rio was very good, McGreal was excellent, until that unfortunate injury. Diarmuid Duffy coming off the bench was a gamechanger, he took the game by the scruff of the neck at times.

Those Roscommon goals were far too easy, hopefully Gardiner and co. can mend that in the next week or so.

Not sure why the 5th one for them was disallowed, but the umpire never went near the green flag, so whatever it was, must've been very blatant.

O'Loughlin probably deerved MOTM but you could have easily given it to another 3 or 4 lads.

Kick on now lads.

I fear for our chances from here on. We don't have any tall player in thr FB line and our two wing backs are good going forward but dont cover back as effectively. I feel we need a "fielder" at FB or at least a negative marker. We dont need an attacking FB. Could O Loughlin convert to FB I wonder. He has the physique and fielding. Gilmore is good going forward. Anyway it was a joy to watch - unlike the Ulster final - and congrats for the entertainment. Best of luck from here on.

@Mayo1992
Was a clear square ball for the disallowed roscommon goal.
Fair play to the lads , they ground it out when the pressure came on .
In fairness Roscommon played their part in a great match but Always very enjoyable to be them at any grade , day , month or year !!

A great win tonight in a really exciting game. Yeah we did concede 4 and could have been 5 but I can’t believe the negativity here. We moaned and groaned last year because we played stale lateral football. This year we are playing super attacking football and there’s still moaning and groaning. We ran up fantastic scores in all our games and is it not a breath of fresh air to see brilliant fielding, fantastic scoring and helter skelter excitement. The new rules are excellent. Of course we should be worried about our defence but that can hopefully be sorted. And maybe, just maybe Roscommon forwards deserve a bit of credit and in fairness they knew where the net was last week v Sligo as well. Have we lost the capacity to enjoy a good result and a good game. No doubt if we win next Sunday people will moan about being in the Group of Death rather than enjoying our victory. And if we lose there will be calls for the managers head and criticisms of players and so on. Sport should be enjoyed. We have had enough sickening defeats to last us a life time so when we do win, and especially a title in such a good game enjoy it. Maigh Eo Abu.

An excellent game of football on a lovely evening for it too. A nice crowd from both sides but I have to admit the Rossies were the louder of the two groups (or they were where I was sitting anyway, opposite the old hay shed). We have a nice set of forwards who have pace, a willingness to take their man on and are accurate. They communicate well and make runs for each other too. But, truth be told, we missed three one-on-one goal efforts in the opening 13mins of the second half that, on another day, we will get punished for. Had we taken two of those we would have been home and hosed. Howard is a unit and caught a few brilliant fetches. McMonagle was solid but got caught a little high up the field for one of their goals in the 1st half, and left a little too much space behind him for the Rossie runner to get through. And it is that end of the pitch I'd worry most about. We were terribly open in our back 6 in the first half. While we tightened down the middle of our defense in the 2nd half we were still far too vulnerable to a big, high, lumpy ball coming into our full back line. It cost us in the 1st half with a goal, and only for an eagle-eyed umpire we could have got done at the end too. That needs addressing and quick.
The Rossies were a big tall team but in McGuinness at 15 they have a gem. A brilliant player. To be fair to them they did well to battle their way back into it and could have stolen it in the end. However, our full forward line know how to play those positions, they know how to time their runs and the ball into them is a nice low trajectory, bouncing ball, that they can all win. Some of our shooting was a joy to behold.
We were the better team throughout and had we been more clinical in front of goal we could have had an easier last 15 minutes. A big improvement on last years U20 campaign and everyone deserves credit for that. The future looks bright and regardless of any All Ireland win or not, there are 5 or 6 of these lads that have a real chance of making it through to the Senior panel in a year or two.

Roscommon must be fuming about the disallowed goal, most of these are given these days. Mayo may still have been able to bring it to extra time as it happened. We were decent going forward but very poor at the back. We should have tagged on a few more points in the second half instead of going for goals. Good point taking by Lydon and Duffy definitely helped with some penetrative runs when he came on in the second half.

@My Ball I was at the game and had a good view of that incident, not a square ball or any foul was made nor was any Mayo player was looking for it. A real lucky break and need to ask themselves how they went from 9 ahead in control to nearly losing in added tine against a rossies side playing their 4th in as many weeks?

Anyway Connacht won move on to the All Ireland series now and should beat Louth providing the lessons from tonight is learnt

Congrats. However it was not a square ball. Was not a free kick. It was a point effort from way out and no Ros player was in square when kicked. Would still say Mayo were stronger team but after huge effort to come back from 9 down, it’s tough to see poor decisions like that. Very good Mayo team and good luck going forward.

@MO23 and Dr Hyde.
I was at the match and thought it was obvious the Roscommon player was in the square but suppose depends on angles of view
Neither umpires signalled for a goal and ref immediately ran in as think he spotted the Rossie in the square too.
Fantastic achievement for these young men ..
We should be very proud of them and they will gain valuable experience in the All Ireland series.

@Dr Hyde, tough one to take for ye but in McGuinness ye have a gem.

Exciting to see some scoring forwards coming through especially. I genuinely would bring hurley and beirne into the senior panel for the group stages, they are as good as anything we have in the senior panel and at club level in mayo and God knows ROD needs help with the scoring burden he is carrying.

If you're good enough you're old enough, finbarr roarty played for donegal and eoin mcelholm played for Tyrone u20s, both are established senior players

Our best defender was Colm McHale. He looked to kick pass, he had two difficult handpass points and a difficult kick.
We need to move forward on and off field with the new rules and wfat they mean for us.
For me we're still obsessed with busy solo running attacking defenders.
To my eye test Darragh Staunton and Mathew Gordetsky from senior club football have way more physicality and defend first mindset than the type of defenders we are selecting.
Putting career wing backs in the full back line, can we stop with that please.
We had around 4-26 in the locker if the defence would majorly reduce it's solo running.

We had about 4-20 in the locker rather. 60 min game at this level makes it hard to get beyond 24/25 scores.

When do they meet Louth in the semi final and what venue will hold it

The kick passing from Cathal Keaveney at no.11 was a joy to watch. A great playmaker whose and incisive passing led to many scores. Well done to all.

Not trying to rush these lads through but is there a big mind change in when lads play senior. Cillian was just out of minor when he played senior intercounty, Paddy mcbrearty played the 2nd half of a senior game after playing for the minors in the game an hour earlier and there are plenty more examples of 18 or 19 year olds playing senior. I just wondered is it because seniors have got that bit more physical s n c wise or is there just a different look on it now. Btw i think our lads should be left concentrate on the rest of the u20s I'm just thinking in general.

McBrearty, Cillian, O'Connor of Donegal who all played at 18 all majorly disrupted by injury.
In the case of Donegal's O'Connor finished at county level.
I think you shouldn't play senior till final year u20 and even then a reduced training and playing load.

Really really excited about the future for Mayo football from this u20 campaign so far. There is so much talent in the team, and so much coming behind from last year's minors too. Also some talented players like Maheady, Clarke and Dara Hurley not even on the panel. Its great to scorers coming through.

Its easy to forget just how bad we have been at times in the past 10 years. In fact, there was a period where we went four years without beating Galway in minor, U20/21 and Senior - from May 2015 to July 2019.

This is only our 3rd U20/21 win in 16 years...times have not been great and actually the majority of the current Mayo panel have been on underage teams that went nowhere (save for the 2016 and 2018 U20s).

I know underage success doesn't always translate but to me, for the first time in a while there is a clear line of top talent coming through.

There's a quality tranche of attacking players from Ryan O'Donoghue age 27 down to current u17s.
Can we play smart and get longer careers out of our older players with reduced training load and using players as impact subs.
Less sprints and more bike, swimming and yoga.
This would mean the quality young players are helped by depth on the bench.
Look at the football Man Utd got out of Ryan Giggs up to near 40. He used simply keep trim and do yoga.

Has anyone seen what Louth are like ?

I saw them play Dublin, very strong and direct, from full forward line did most of the damage against Meath

Was trying to get a stand ticket for an OAP for Sunday but they have settled for the sideline as none available. Is there any breakdown how 10000 stand tickets are distributed.

@Robe green and red: It'll be on the 10th, 11th or 14th of May (you'd imagine most likely Wednesday the 14th given the Louth keeper might be involved in the Leinster Final panel on the 11th as sub keeper - with 2 of their other players having featured at Senior through the league, so small potential to be involved if injuries hit) in a neutral venue, TBC.

https://www.gaa.ie/article/gaa-master-fixtures-for-2025-published

@TsuDhoNim : Thanks for the info. Looking forward to a belter between both counties as it’s a real novelty affair meeting

Congratulations to team,management, coaches, on winning the u20 CF,,it was an exhibition of football from both teams ,the forward play the kick passing, the fielding at centre field, it was just a joy to watch, I hope and pray that these young players are looked after and brought up Senior level because there lay our future, and to the Senior Management and coaches, and team sit down take time out and watch that game before next Sunday,

I watched the Louth/ Meath leinster final on TG4 delayed coverage last night. I feel Meath lost through poor shooting from frees and play. It was a real joy to watch, each went for it full tilt, but I dont think Louth are unbeatable by any means. In my opinion they are limited and I think we will get to the final if we can tighten up in the FB line.

Super play for quite a lot of it. Coached to get the ball in as quickly as possible and the 3 inside lads all know where the posts are. Like others I agree the FB line is vulnerable and a stopper should be put in (either O' Loughlin who's shown himself to be a very good fielder or McGonagle). The Ros no. 15 scored 2 brilliant goals taking on two different defenders 1 v 1 in our FB line. He looks lightening fast but surely some future opponents would have players of serious pace also at CF; we also conceeded a 3rd goal to the same player due to lack of height (and he wasn't noticeably tall himself). Some great fielding on display too especially from our lads. We left a few goals out there some of which should have been points instead. I'd cut them some slack as they were extremely efficient in the previous game. Would have been robbery had the Rossies won even though they've some excellent players too. One thing I really liked was our work rate especially every time we got turned over. Again I'd think they were coached to go after it if you lose it as we had several immediate turnovers after losing ball.
Well done to the lads.

Semi finals dates and venues confirmed

Sunday 11th of May - O'Moore Park, 14:00 Kerry v Tyrone
Friday, 16th May Pearse Park 19:00 Mayo v Louth