Offaly Senior Hurling Management 2012

[allstar2010]

Ollie Baker won 2 All Ireland medals as a player. He is a great choice.

please tell me your taking the p1ss. How in gods name in this day and age would it be a good choice??

[Plain of the Herbs]

Yes, BnM is taking the piss. Irony just doesn't come across as such on an internet forum.

Ollie Baker won 2 All Ireland medals as a player. He is a great choice.

please tell me your taking the p1ss. How in gods name in this day and age would it be a good choice??

[GreatDayForTheParish]

Pat Spillane has 8 All-Ireland medals. He'd be the right man for the job.

[Bord na Mona man]

Pat Spillane has 8 All-Ireland medals. He'd be the right man for the job.

Now ye have it lads!
Keep those great suggestions coming.

[GreatDayForTheParish]

Pat Spillane has 8 All-Ireland medals. He'd be the right man for the job.

Now ye have it lads!
Keep those great suggestions coming.

I mean think about it, whatever Ollie Baker would know with his 2 All-Ireland medals, Pat would have to know four times as much. Simple.

[KingLurk]

Lads, lads, ye're looking at this all wrong. Everyone knows you have to win one to lose one, so what we need is the fellow who's LOST most medals, easy.

And on a serious note I'm not so sure as some of ye that Paddy K would be a disaster.

[gaaalltheway]

its clear sum of ye people havent a clue about offaly hurlin or what a manager takes.... especially GreatDayForTheParish.... ur referring to paddy kirwan being a shite manager and all and how ya could be here all day talkin about how bad he is.. well let me inform ya of how 'bad' a manager he is... he trained the offaly minors to leinster final in 2000 and if i remember corectly while he was selector with the offaly hurlers last they were narrowly defeated by tipp and put it upto kilkenny as brian cody himself stated..!! he brought drumcullen up out of the intermediate so obviously they did more than ' pull hard' that wudnt win a county title so cleary u havent a notion what ur on about.!! also he trained castletown to laois titles and brought liam mellows of galway to a county semi for the first time in 16 years..!! not a bad CV if u ask me!! as for the offaly u21 job this year he wasnt alone in the management its not his fault that joe dooley wudnt allow him the players from the senior to train and you cant win when u dont ever get to train with a full panel..!! i know they hurled shite against dublin but like the hurlers wr bad it wasnt just the management if with a bad manager if the hurlers were good enough they wud have least scored more than they did clearly the hurlers at u21 level just werent capable of beatin a more physical dublin side as offaly are relatively small and light..!! joe dooleys' managerial CV isnt exactly hectic either mite i add and offaly hurln hasnt improved at all during his reign..!! so whoever u are ya mite wanna wake up and realise that paddy kirwan has more virtues than vices and you seriously cant comprehend that comment about training them onli to 'pull hard' u clearly havent a clue..!!

[Lone Shark]

With all due respect, if you want to make a case for the man, then you'd be well advised to put it together in a format people will read. A lot of people find elongated text speak with no formatting very difficult to handle. You can argue the rights and wrongs of that if you wish, but it is how it is. Now to rebut the substance:

(1) Paddy Kirwan has some success on his CV - the problem is that a lot of it is back from years ago, when hurling is a very different game to what it is now. For example, while he did enjoy some success in various roles such as the Offaly minors and with Castletown, it was ten years ago. Hurling has completely evolved, and teams from back then would be eaten alive in the modern game.

(2) You can't claim credit for the good and ignore the bad. If he's responsible for doing well with Mellowes, Castletown and the Offaly minors, he's responsible for the under 21s desperate performance this year. If Joe Dooley made life difficult, then it was Kirwan's responsibility to manage the situation. The hint is in the title - manager. It was hardly a secret that Joe Dooley was not going to be completely co-operative when it came to under-21 teams, he has considerable form in that regard.

(3) While no championship comes easy, Drumcullen are an entire hurling parish with enough players to field three teams and a rich tradition. No other intermediate club has anything like that infrastructure, and while he deserves credit for the success, it wasn't exactly a turn up for the books. They should have won, and they did.

(4) Measuring him by the yardstick of Joe Dooley is not what anyone wants to do. If you've spent any time on this board, you'll realise that the general feeling towards Joe's reign is that he was way out of his depth. Arguing that Kirwan is better or worse than him is pointless. The supporters in the county want a good manager, not a "less bad" one.

(5) Kirwan was a selector in 2007. We lost to Kilkenny by fourteen points after falling away badly in the second half - Cody paid us lip service certainly, but that's all it was. Yes they hurled well in Thurles, against a Tipp team that six days previously had emptied the tank in the third game of a classic trilogy against Limerick. We fell short, and then when we had a chance to save our season in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, we were given an unmerciful hammering on a day when management had installed so much belief in the players that several of them travelled to Cork win cars laden with booze so they could head away to Oxegen afterwards. This was also the year when we got relegated from division one after shipping a seventeen point hiding against Limerick in Nenagh. Again, if PK deserves the credit for the good, he has to take the blame for the bad.

(6) Drumcullen's hurling this year is a reflection of their manager, and while I didn't see enough of them to say definitively that they always went too far, the view that they substituted "timber" for hurling is widely held. Thus, it's hardly a surprise that a lack of belief in Kirwan's ability as a modern manager is also widely held.

[kingscounty]

the county board should have someone in this role long ago,ollie baker,paddy k,etc all a waste of time.laois were shite last year and they addressed the problem and got in teddy,granted he might do no better but at least they are giving themselves a chance.limerick lost o grady and john allen looks like he will take charge there,clare lost sparrow and fitz is man for the job there.cork got rid of walsh and jimmy b takes over, these are all men with good track records in management and that is what we need so badly.we dont want ex players,he won this or that as a player sure he will be a good manager it doenst work like that.its time the county board got sense and get the right man in and do it quick or we will be in for another year or defeats.

[townman]

i think a lot of lads are putting to much onto who's over a team the players have to play there part as well as having the talent
if cody was over laois this year would they win leinster would they sh.t or offaly and wexford for that matter.

Galway all the underage they have won they haven't won it since 1988 and mangers they have went through over the last few years
theres a lot of people will tell you from Galway that its as much the players fault as who's over them that they haven't hit the jackpot in hurling.

just saying at the county semil finals this year or most club games if you were a manger over offaly there wasn't a whole lot to catch your eye was there
beside the few that have been playing well with the county over the last few years and thats it.

so let it be paddy K or ollie Baker, Ken Hogan or Cody himself the question would be what has he got to work with.

[puzzled]

so let it be paddy K or ollie Baker, Ken Hogan or Cody himself the question would be what has he got to work with.

townman have you softened to Paddy Kirwan? Perhaps the inclusion of Brian Whelehan on his ticket has changed your mind?

[townman]

so let it be paddy K or ollie Baker, Ken Hogan or Cody himself the question would be what has he got to work with.

townman have you softened to Paddy Kirwan? Perhaps the inclusion of Brian Whelehan on his ticket has changed your mind?

No not gone soft on having paddy kirwin and who says we would be any better with Sid with them great players don't make great mangers as we have
seen in the past plus Sid was over Camross the last two years and won nothing.

cody gets all the praise in kilkenny but a lot of people will tell you Mick Dempsey of ST.Joephs of laois ex county footballer and mother hails from Kilcormac
plays a big part in the kilkenny set up for the last 7 years and cody takes alot on board what he has to say on the first 15 in game's.

i don't care who gets the job i only hope they give it to someone that has done something or train a team to win something in the game and is up to
train a team to a level they have to be at to play at todays level at intercounty.

[bracknaghboy]

it was ten years ago. Hurling has completely evolved, and teams from back then would be eaten alive in the modern game.

This I think is a dangerous statement. True the modern hurling game is based around catching high ball and also trying to gain pocession into the hand at all cost. The idea of a lad pulling on the ball in the air today seems absurd. As for ground hurling.....forget about it. It doesn't mean that hurling is always going to be this way. The game has evolved, is evolving and will evolve in the future. I think a manager that is thinking a little outside the modern box would make some strides with the right team (its hard to know who this manager might be). Most teams are looking at Kilkenny and Tipp for ideas but perhaps a team to make the break through will do things a little differently.
Look at football. 13 men behind the ball is what the modern game is evolving into but already teams are looking at ways to unlock this and go for different approaches. In a few years time the notion of a team basing their entire game around the handpass will probably be absurd. Just because someone had success with teams 10 or 20 years ago when the game was different doesn't automatically exclude them from having a chance of success today. We need to be a bit more open minded on these things.
Tommy Lyons let the footballers run loose in 97 and we won a Leinster. A year earlier the notion of our footballers playing with the kind of flair that would have the country talking about us was laughable.

[puzzled]

No more rumours lads its official Ollie Baker has the job!

[alltheway]

As it turned out Ollie Baker did get the job, so the confidence around Kirwan's appointment must have been over zealous from who I heard it from.
Anyhow, looks like we have Ollie and it will be interesting as to who is appointed to his backroom staff.

http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/championshi ... ffaly.html

Also Townman, it's well noted Mick Dempsey's role with the KK hurlers, takes all the coaching sessions and alot of physical work.
Brian Cody openly praises him and notes him in his autobiography as 'team trainer and selector'. So it just proves that having a good manager
overseeing it all and making the final calls, the importance of a well balanced, well run backroom team is essential. On a sidenote, his mother is actually from
Drumcullen (nee Spain). He would be a nephew of Mick Spain.