Mayo's Andy Moran has been voted GAA.ie Footballer of the Week.
The veteran Mayo forward earned 8,605 votes on the GAA’s Official Twitter (@officialgaa), Facebook, and Instagram pages with colleague Keith Higgins second and Kerry's Kieran Donaghy third.
GAA.ie Footballer of the Week
****1: Andy Moran (Mayo) - 8,605 (54 per cent)
2: Keith Higgins (Mayo) - 3,896 (25 per cent)
3: Kieran Donaghy (Kerry) - 3,315 (21 per cent)
Andy Moran has been in sensational form this summer for Mayo and he saved his best performance yet for Sunday’s drawn All-Ireland SFC Semi-Final against Kerry.
He finished with a seriously impressive tally of 1-5 from play, but was a creator as much as finisher as time and again he won hard ball and set up another 1-3 of Mayo’s 2014 total.
The Ballaghaderreen man is now 33, but age isn’t much of a barrier to excellence when you have the sort of footballing brain that he does.
Keith Higgins produced another top-quality performance in a summer of them for Mayo on Sunday.
Playing in the half-back line, not only did he snuff out many dangerous situations, he also got Mayo on the front-foot with his ability to attack at pace from deep positions.
And when the game was in the melting pot and Kerry came looking for a point that would have sealed the win, he made a brilliant tackle that stripped Paul Geaney of possession before he could shoot.
Mayo were very worried about Kieran Donaghy going into Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final, so much so that they decided to reinvent Aidan O’Shea as a full-back and asked him to man-mark the Kerry full-forward.
It’s safe to say that was a gamble that didn’t pay off, because Donaghy was Kerry’s most influential player on the day.
He scored just a point himself but was involved in another 2-5 of Kerry’s 2-14 total as he won a huge amount of ball and used it very judiciously.
**Players of the Week are decided based on votes cast by followers of @officialgaa on Twitter, on the Official GAA Facebook Page and on the Official GAA Instagram page. **