The art of score getting.

[azoffaly]

I decided to start a new thread on this, because I feel that this topic is the singlemost important issue with this Offaly football squad.

As an ex-forward myself, it is a huge bug-bear for me. I simply cannot understand how inter county footballers can accumulate such a tally of wides as we have seen all year, not just in the 2 championship games thus far.

As Lone Shark says, we have racked up huge amounts of wides in almost every game this year. It is such a pity, as the effort and heart and sheer determination of this set of players means that we nearly always have enough attacks to win any game.

I also want to be clear that I am not trying to be hard on the players. Every one of them is a fine footballer, but I think from 8 to 15 we need to sort this obstacle out before we can really start pulling up trees in Leinster and beyond.

So what is the solution?

From my point of view it is twofold. It involves simulating game conditions in training, and also coaching, rather than simply training.

I'm not sure what the current county training set up is like, in terms of training session composition. I'd venture to suggest that at least 90% of the sessions involve physical work.

In my day, (old fogey alert) , we used play a game called backs and forwards. These sessions were as physical as a game in most cases, and got you used to kicking scores while under pressure. It also allowed the trainer to stop the game immediately if you took a wrong option, e.g. ballooning it wide with your wrong foot from about 40 yards, and explain gently that there were better options available, and look for them. This is the coaching aspect I mean.

A new trend was this drill of lining up single file, on the 65, handpassing into a man on the 40, taking the return off him and kicking over on the run. This was a nice drill for skill, but did not simulate real conditions at all. I have a feeling that this is what the current training involves. There is no comparison to trying to kick a point with a lad hanging off you. Drills are drills, and even if you have a 'defender' trying to put you off in a drill, he doesn't really care. It's a scoring drill, not a defending drill.

In the backs and forwards, the defender is also being rated. There's competitions. The midfielders kick in 10 balls, if the forwards fail to score 5 points or goals, the defenders win. Play this game 6 times, swapping players in and out as subs, and the winning team hits the showers, the losers do 3 laps as punishment.

Another aspect is that this game is played after all the training, so that both backs and forwards will be replicating late game conditions.

It's seems obvious, but so often the simple things work, and fine tuning score kicking is a simple thing. It's not rocket science.

Any other suggestions, Myself and BnMman will be looking into options before the start of next season after the obligatory sacrifice of another manager!

[the bare biffo]

All good stuff AZ, but I can't help but think that players are being instructed to shoot at every opportunity, on the basis that the more you shoot the more you will score. It's not working because shots are being taken from rediculous positions that no amount of practice will improve.

The point I'm trying to make is that it's a problem with decision taking rather than just technique.

[azoffaly]

Certainly agree re. the Decision making aspect of it, but it's all part of the whole package. You need to know when to shoot, and that when you do, you will score 9 times out of 10. Again, the backs and forwards, by replicating real match conditions allows for this decision making to be coached, as the trainer can stop the game immediately when someone tries a cloud burster from 60 yards out with 2 men free inside.

[Lone Shark]

Not having played at any decent level, I'm probably not qualified to talk here really, but that's never stopped me before....

There are a couple of things that spring to mind here.

(1) A huge part of taking scores is manufacturing easy ones. Unlike a lot of teams, or even ourselves previously, we don't seem to create frees. The question has to be are Niall and Jimmy too similar? The two lads share the same style in that for 20 year old corner forwards, they're not that fast - they just look to make room to shoot and have a go. Is there a case for a forward in the Roy Malone of the 90's mould, who took ball, ran at the defence and either got close enough to make the shot simple or else won a free? I understand Neville could do this, but I'd be loathe to take him out of the half forward line at the moment.

(2) None of our forwards seem tuned into the logic of punching the ball over the bar. The likes of Macs wild swing in the first half that went off the side of his boot was close enough to be fisted over the bar with ease. This is the ultimate high percentage shot, and with the exception of Slattery and occasionally Niall, it doesn't seem to be something that registers with us as an option.

(3) Not unusually for us, all six forwards plus one sub forward scored on Sunday. But the question is, is this a good thing? Most other sides have at least two forwards who's job is to link things up rather than shoot - all our forwards seem to fancy themselves as scorers. Would a hard working guy who refuses to shoot unless he's 30 yards out on his good foot be such a bad thing? Armagh's game is all about letting Stevie, Clarke and to a lesser extent McConville do the scoring - the rest might get 2 or 3 points between them. This way the shots are usually taken by the best forwards on the team rather than anyone. I'm not sure about this one myself though.

Beyond that I'm out of ideas.

[Ron]

LS - What about the Roy Malone of the noughties? I know he has plenty of critics too, but he can win the ball and hold on to it, he's physically fairly strong, he can run at backs and draw the foul, he's not inclined to go for crazy shots anymore because he knows he won't get them. Crucially he is a good passer of the ball. The only problem is that consistency is not a feature of his game and he probably wouldn't last a full championship pace game. I think the inclusion of someone like this would give a better mix in our forward division.

[Lone Shark]

As I've mentioned on this site before, I've great time for what Roy brings to a team. My point above was not to say that Roy 05 has nothing to contribute, just that Roy 97 had a lightning burst of pace which would often win frees by itself, and as a full forward, that's something we should be looking for. I think Roy 05 has other assets, but defenders would find it easier to stand him up and force him to play the ball.

He's a great man in a what we have we hold situation - like last sunday. I assume he was injured, because if not Kilmurray has a lot to answer for.

[the bare biffo]

From a distance, I am having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what Kilmurray is about or what his objectives are. He makes some very odd public statements. On Friday evening on RTE radio in a preview programme he said he had no blueprint for Offaly football, that he was just relying on individual players going out and being good enough to win the game. An that maybe after sunday he would have a blueprint. At the time I presumed it was just horseshit talk for the media, but looking at Sundays performance I think he was actually telling the truth. Then after the game he was quoted in one of the papers as saying that he would love to hear now what the experts views on Offaly football are, where does Offaly football go now. Who is he taking a swipe at ?
Under O'Kelly and Fahy, whatever other shortcomings there were, you could at least see a pattern to the way they were trying to play. At times the moved the ball with great speed to the corners with good movement from the front line and so opening up defences. Maybe the switch to the traditional 3 man full line is the reason, if it is then that change in itself is hard to understand.
One observation is that if ever you needed convincing of the difference between league football and championship it was provided on Sunday. In the league, despite losing games and hitting a lot of wides, Offaly did notch up very respectable scorelines. On Sunday on a good day with a wide open pitch a score of 1-08 is very poor.
Back to Kilmurray, he himself was never a big score getter and was guilty of a lot of wild shooting in his day. Maybe bring in someone like Brendan Lowry as front line coach would be worthwhile.

[Ron]

I think we are in agreement here, perhaps Kilmurray thought that John Reynolds would be the man to run at backs etc.
I think the problem is bigger than a few forwards, its our build-up before we attempt to score. We are inclined to crowd our own forwards by bringing the ball into our half forward line and trying to go around backs rather than through them. In the second half Laois decided to sit back and wait for the breakdown in play and ounter attack from there, it proved to be enough.
There needs to be more urgency about our forward play.

[True Red]

Roy injured his hamster while warming up on Sunday.Didnt pull it completely but the twinge he felt was enough to rule him out of contention.

[Bord na Mona man]

It looks to be a tiring style of play with the ball being carried towards the danger area. Maybe we paid the price for that in the last 10 minutes.
Leix didn't allow men to be drawn to the runner as much in the second half. They were content to fall back and blockade the 45 - happy to let Offaly start hitting shots from in front of their cover.
We didn't see enough ball being played over defender's heads and the width of the pitch being used.

Perhaps the lack of movement from the inside line is because they knew the long delivery wouldn't be arriving.
Pity we didn't have an aggressive ball winner on the inside line that would have allowed our playmakers to hit the corners and flanks with the early ball.
If Roy was injured, then it clearly hampered our ability to do this.
Hindsight is great I suppose.

[Hyper]

Roy was ready to come in on Sunday if summoned. He has been in great shape the last couple of weeks, scoring 1-4 for Rhode (with his overall contribution being first class) in some challenge game to scoring freely in training. Defo thought he should have been introduced before John Kenny.

[azoffaly]

I think we're over analysing here lads.

There's a few basic elements as an inside forward.

1) Make Space for yourself
2) Receive the ball.
3) Kick the ball over the black spot.

I think 1) needs work, especially from the inside line, but at the same time, it's not chronic.

2) Not really a problem, we had piles of the ball.

3) El problemo grande. I've already outlined my thoughts and suggestions on this matter.

Re. the running game from midfield and the 40s, there's nothing wrong with it, as long as the lads are fit enough. Fitness at this level is mental as well though, and I think the effect of all the wides, plus Laois coming back at them had drained them emotionally, which in turns makes you look unfit.

In my mind, however we played, we created at least 28 scoring chances, many of them good, and missed 19 of them. I think it's obvious enough where the main problem lies. All the rest is tuning.

As Doobane man says, these are all good players, and fit to kick pioints. No one is doubting that. They wouldn't be county forwards if they couldn't score. The problem is are the training sessions designed for, and competitive enough to replicate match conditions. I'm guessing not.

I'll go back to my original suggestion.

Backs and Forwards, Hard marking from the backs, Jimmy coughlan has to score this point to stop the 'forwards' losing and having to do 3 laps, 50 press ups whatever. Scott Brady is trying to pull the jersey off him. Jimmy kicks from an impossible angle and the forwards lose. Next training session, same situation. Except this time Jimmy lays it off to Niall Mc who has lost Froggy, because Jimmy remembers what happened last time. Niall taps it over, and the Backs grumble and curse their way through the forfeit.

I know it sounds facetious and glaringly obvious, but trust me, do that often enough, and the game situations will not be as foreign, and we will see a) better decision making, and b) more confident and controlled shots at goal.