Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\nA great game and a hard one to call. Cork have been one of the most consistent teams over the season, across all three competitions. They’re aggressive without the ball, they’re really dominant around midfield, and patient in possession. <\/p>\n
Expect a lot of slow plays, they won’t force it.They really like to work the ball methodically and try to get those two-point opportunities, mainly for [Steven] Sherlock. <\/p>\n
They know their gameplan and they stick to it.<\/p>\n
Mayo, on the other hand, showed exactly how capable they are in that second half against Meath. <\/p>\n
Once they get momentum, they’re one of the hardest teams to stop. Their forwards – with [Ryan] O’Donoghue, Kobe [McDonald], Tommy Conroy – are rejuvenated. They’re direct, they’ve got scoring power. <\/p>\n
So, this is a real clash of styles. Cork’s super kind of order and structure and Mayo’s chaos. <\/p>\n
I just feel like order might just win out this weekend – Cork.<\/p>\n
\n
It’s one of those games that carries an edge because of those battles in the 2000s. But Kerry won’t be taking anything for granted this weekend. <\/p>\n
The only realistic route to Tyrone upsetting Kerry is due to it being the latter’s third week in a row and that potentially impacting Kerry.<\/p>\n
But if you look at the panel that they have, it’s just so strong. I can’t see anything other than a dominant Kerry victory here. <\/p>\n
I expect Tyrone to slow the tempo and probably try to dominate possession like Donegal did in the league final.<\/p>\n
But I really just don’t see them getting within touching distance. They might contain them for a period of time, but I cannot see anything other than a Kerry win in this game.<\/p>\n
\n
Is this the game of the weekend? The stories of these two counties, the colour they’re going to bring on Sunday, the expectation they’re going to bring, the excitement. It’s a phenomenal game. I really can’t wait for it. <\/p>\n
It’s a really difficult game to call. On current form, there’s really little between them.<\/p>\n
Monaghan may be edging it. They’ve improved with every championship outing. They look a completely different side to what we saw throughout the course of the league when they had loads of injuries – so we could kind of put an asterisk beside that. <\/p>\n
They’ve got Stephen O’Hanlon flying, Conor McCarthy flying. [Rory] Beggan is just being Beggan. He’s so instrumental.<\/p>\n
Louth, on the other hand, have just built belief ever since that Leinster semi-final defeat in Portlaoise. <\/p>\n
They know what they can produce in Croke Park. They did it in the Leinster final last year. They did it against Dublin this year. <\/p>\n
They’ve beaten Armagh, many people’s favourites for the competition. It’s a really tricky one to call because both teams are coming in with good form. <\/p>\n
I’m going to tip Louth on this one. I just feel that their form line is a slight bit stronger.<\/p>\n
Even though all things point to Monaghan in this, I have a sneaky suspicion that Louth could cause an upset.<\/p>\n
\n
We’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again.<\/p>\n
If Con O’Callaghan is fit – those words have come out of our mouths so often – this is a clinker and so hard to call. I’d nearly call it in Dublin’s favour if he is fit. But it didn’t look great the way he went off the last day.<\/p>\n
Dublin will compete with or without him. That’s one thing about this team. They’ve still got enough quality in the ranks to be able to compete.<\/p>\n
But Galway have quietly gone about their business, haven’t they? They’ve avoided the spotlight, but they’ve continued to perform and to get better.<\/p>\n
Padraic Joyce is heading into the business end of the season for the first time in quite some time without injury problems, which have killed some of his previous campaigns. <\/p>\n
I think that could just be the difference .If there’s no Con, it’s Galway. If there is a Con, I would slightly tip it in Dublin’s favour.<\/p>\n
Before the weekend begins, I think it’s really important to acknowledge the very sad passing of Paul Clancy.<\/p>\n
My thoughts are with his family, his friends and everyone connected to Galway at this really, really difficult time.<\/p>\n
Paul Flynn was speaking on RT\u00c9 Radio 1’s Morning Ireland<\/p>\n
Watch The Saturday Game on catch-up on RT\u00c9 Player and The Sunday Game from 9.30pm on RT\u00c9 One and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on all matches on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app and listen to commentary on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n
Watch two All-Ireland Football Championship quarter-finals, Louth v Monaghan (1.45pm) and Galway v Dublin (4pm), on Sunday from 1.15pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app and listen to commentary on Sunday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s going to be a massive weekend ahead. Eight teams are going down to four. A lot of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-519311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}