Harsh Reality.

[the Untouchable]

When Kilmurray resigned as Offaly Manager last year it was greeted with such delighted it looked like we were going to have to make it a public holiday!!! Finally the person who had ensured this Offaly team hadn’t won an All Ireland in the last 2 years was gone & now for all Offaly supporters it was a case of sit back & relax & let the good times roll…Leinster & All Ireland glory was surely only around the corner!!!

If this years league campaign has thought us anything…its that Kilmurray wasn’t the problem, nor for that matter is Pat Roe, which I’ve already seen people criticising!!! The problem with the current Offaly team is the players, it always has been & unless there’s a radical clear out then it always will be!!! Putting it plainly…their just not good enough, the worst thing that they did was reaching a Leinster final last year because it made them out to be an awful lot better than they were & it also gave Offaly supporters the notion that these lads were ready to mix it with the big boys, 6 months later we're in Division 4 & now in the Tommy Murphy cup!!!

The reality is a Manager can only really do so much. I listened to an interview Pat Roe did with Midlands Radio 3 after losing to Leitrim & he said how they had worked on how Leitrim were going to play, who their danger men were going to be & how Offaly were to use the ball when they had it…then finished by saying, the players obviously didn’t bother listening!!!

I know that a lot of people adore these lads, so I’m not just going out of my way to provoke people here when I say the current Offaly panel is easily the worst that we’ve had in nearly a decade. Most of these lads are average club footballers, who don’t have what it takes to step up to the required standard. For alot of these guys, their sole reason for been in with the senior panel to begin with is purely for their own ego’s, the idea that they’ll get recognised when their out. That might seem a bit harsh, but its probably not far wrong.

Anyone who wants to tell me about all the training that these lads do & the “sacrifices” that they make to play for their county….Don’t bother!!! A county player is no fitter than any club player come their Championship!!! The only difference is the Club player gets to train for 9 months of the year for a championship game that will be held anytime between the 2nd week of May & the end of August.

Here is why this Offaly panel is the worst we’ve ever had in a decade:

Firstly when you look at this current crop of Offaly players, there isn’t 1 of them other than Niall McNamee who’d even have a chance of making the starting 15 for any of the big 8 teams in Ireland…it’s the same if you were to think about how many off the current panel would make the 97 team…I don’t think on current form Mac or Paudge would be guaranteed their place like they were in 97, Paudge still can’t judge a high ball & Mac has gone back a huge amount this year…maybe his appetite for the game has dwindled a bit or maybe he’s carrying an injury but either way these 2 lads seem to be holding down their place based purely on their reputations!!!

We have absolutely no players with any kind of physical strength. How can you try to compete with the big teams like Dublin, Mayo, Tyrone, Armagh, Kerry etc when of your starting 15…10 of them would be barely 5ft 10 & no heavier than 11 or 12 stone?? For gods sake did no one ever hear of a weights program for these lads?? The Leinster final last year should have opened a few eyes because Dublin completely bet each & every Offaly player on the field for physical strength & at the end of the day its been a major problem for them again this year because its pretty much the exact same panel as last year. The other side of this is that the few lads that we do actually have with a bit of size & weight to throw around…don’t, God what I wouldn't give for a Sean Grennan or a Tom Coffey in this Offaly team.

We also have no leaders, no one to win a ball they shouldn’t have ever won, no one to put their body on the line & no one to lift the team when things are going against them. For years Mac seemed to be something of a 1 man band for Offaly but now he’s looking round for a bit of a hand & there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of lads stepping up to the plate. It’ll be interesting to see if Pat Roe can locate a few leaders before the Championship because we definitely didn’t have any in the league.

Sadly the philosophy in Offaly GAA circles has been to worship our players when they win, criticise the Manager when we lose, so this year it would make a nice change if the players were held accountable for some of these defeats, but I know change is slow in the GAA so no doubt when Dublin put us out of the championship, there’ll be a witch hunt launched after Pat Roe…for god knows & see’s our players can’t be to blame.

Slan!!!

[turk]

Untouchable - I enjoy reading your views every year and I agree with some and not all. I didn't expect there would be an instant improvement when Kilmurray left but I would wait to judge this tenure of Roe when the Leinster campaign is over.

One straight question for you - the players on the panel in your view aren't good enough - are there any players in the county that are good enough and are being overlooked and if so why?

[the bare biffo]

Like Turk, I enjoyed the contributions of Untouchable in the past, but I would have problems with this peice. Like all good sensationalism it exaggerates at both ends of the scale. There are always eejits but I don't believe too many rated this team as highly as you claim they did. But neither do I believe they are as bad as you paint them. As the saying goes, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

The only point in particular I would pick on is the claim that Pat Roe thought he had prepared the team well for the Leitrim game. I was in Cloone, and there was no evidence of either physical or tactical preparation in that performance. Of course players take their share of blame but the poor workman blaming his tools is a well known phenomenon.

Given what was at stake, the team was badly prepared for this league and is certainly not a division 4 standard bunch of players. Maybe that was a result of circumstances, new unfamiliar manager or whatever.

That said there are a few points made that I would agree with., but ultimate judgement will have to wait until June.

[Lone Shark]

Sorry Untouchable, I ain't buying it.


Do I think there is an All Ireland in this team? Unequivocally no. Do I think they are a worse team than the Westmeath side that won a Leinster three years ago - no either.

I will agree here that a lot of people tend to believe that divine right will carry us so far. Certainly I was looking nervously at the division four trap all year and it wasn't until we lost to Monaghan that anyone else on this board expressed it as a possibility. There was even a reference to winning the under 21 and finishing in division three as some sort of "win some, lose some" result, when in actual fact it would have been two big wins.

That said, we are not that bad. Don't get me wrong, there are problems. The complete lack of anything that's even an imitation of a midfield, the lack of any aggression amongst a lot of our backs, the free taking. However not since Paul O'Kelly have I seen an Offaly manager who understood our limitations, gave guys a chance but at the same time made a few changes when things weren't working out. It's the lack of changes when things are clearly not working that's heartbreaking as a supporter. If a change is made and that doesn't work either, well then fair enough - that's when you acknowledge superior skill and sleep easy.

A lot of us here sat in the stand for the Roscommon game and looked on as Ger Heneghan gave Nigel Grennan the runaround, as Niall McNamee put two frees from short range wide, as Shane Sullivan floundered at centre back, as Shaq O'Neill lorded the middle without any of our boys laying a hand on him.

We all saw these things happening, and down below us Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Now if Pat Roe didn't notice that these things were happening, he's blind. You might think it's okay to throw your hands up in the air and say that Roscommon are just better than us, but I don't. There were dozens of things that could have been tried - but just to give the obvious example, if Shane Sullivan hadn't been on the field to give away that third goal, or if we had an actual free taker (we all know Niall is not the answer for taking frees) that's a five point swing. We lost by four.

Now we still wouldn't be all Ireland contenders if that happened, we'd still be about five or six players short of being a decent team, but we wouldn't be in division four and we wouldn't be consigned to the public humiliation of a proud county that is entry into the God forsaken Tommy Murphy Cup. And I don't think that's too much to ask.

As for your assertion that we have one player who would get onto a top 8 team, well that's just wrong - no offence. Let's take Armagh for example - no longer top 3 but definitely top 8, and base it on their championship side of 2006.

Would they take Karol Slattery over Paul Duffy? Would they take James Keane over Enda McNulty? Would they take Neville Coughlan over Malachy Mackin? Would they take Ciarán Mac over Martin O'Rourke? Damn right they would, in every case and without equivocation. That's before you count Niall, or before you look at the current form of someone like Paul McConway, or possibly taking Alan McNamee as a better midfield partner for PAul McGrane than an ageing McGeeney, or before you count the returning Conor Evans who if he gets back to form is one of the best full back line players in the province.

This is not me saying we're fantastic - this is me saying we have some good players, and it would be nice to see our manager make the best of them. If as you say we get knocked out by Dublin, there may or may not be a witch-hunt - however if we get knocked out by Dublin after Alan Brogan scores 1-6 having been marked by the same man for 50 minutes, or if we get knocked out because Niall Mc misses three frees from the right hand side of the pitch while Jimmy Coughlan hangs around in the other corner, or if we get knocked out because Scott Brady is left for the guts of an hour trying to track Ciarán Whelan breaking from midfield, all things that are eminently plausible, then there will be a witch-hunt and rightly so.

A manager is there to manage - not get a free pass in to watch the game. I pointed out in the other thread how many games have been won by early and judicious switching (for some reason hurling managers tend to react so much better), but I've yet to see a match that was won by leaving a player on a guy who's eating him alive, or leaving a guy who's clearly out of form to work away in arguably the most pivotal position on a football pitch.

Let me put it another way - do you think Seán Boylan, or John O'Mahony, or Billy Morgan, any of the proven blue chip managers in Ireland, would have stood by and left it as late as Roe did before making any kind of change?

[borderfox]

would armagh take any of them,no way,with the obvious exception of mcnamee. slatts got destroyed v roscommon main job of a defender is to defend then attack. There`s only so much you can blame managers for, were not up to it physically,but we do have the skill.The same can be said about the hurling.

[The Rover]

While I agree with you LS that with some positional changes we possibly could have taken the points agaist Rocommon on Sunday, the fact is that we got relegated to Divison 4 over the course of a full league campaign. If you look back at previous posts on this board one of our biggest gripes with management was that there was too much change in the starting 15 between each game.

Presumably that was because managment saw weaknesses in each game which needed to be rectified. By the time we met Roscommon we had eliminate all the weaknesses that had emerged in the previous games and started with our best 15. As if this wasn't positive enough, Roscommon lost two of their starting 15 through injury in the first half. Yet it is Offaly who would have had to change yet again in the middle of the game to have a chance of avoiding relegation. It seems a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul and comes back to Untouchable's point that we currently don't have enough talent in the squad to be competing with the big boys.

That said we still have to make the best of what we have, which as far as skill and ability to play football goes is a team that can match most in the country. However as Untouchabe points out most of these players are under 5 foot 10 and 12 stone which often means that they don't get the ball in the first instance to allow them demonstarte their ability.

Leadership in the team as referred to by Untouchable is something that would help. I counted at least four occasions in the second half during a phase when the game was there to be had and Offaly had been awaded a free, that an Offaly player tried to take take the ball off a Roscommon player for a quick free. The Roscommon player held on and the Offaly player was immediately surrounded by 3 or 4 Rossies and once one of the big midfielders arrived in the fray the Offaly player was forced to retreat. A couple of seconds later the Rossie threw the ball to the Offaly man. How humiliating!! It reminded me of the the end of the first half of the Leinster Final last year when Tommo Deehan and Niall Mac squared up to the Dublin defence only to have to make a run for the dressing rooms 30 seconds later. This doesn't instill confidence and heads drop very fast. It's up to tem management to solve this one.

Given our problem at midfield we also need to reconsider our whole approach to the game. Last year in the playoff against Laois we got hammered at midfield. On Sunday Roscommon hammered us there. We had great kickouts, all landing well inside the Roscommon half but unfortunately straight into the hands of the Roscommon midfield. We need to look at the short kick out. This is in itself a risk but if we are going to lose at midfield anyway then it's worth the gamble. As already said we have players with footballing abilty to match the best in the country so if we can just win the ball things might just start to improve.

Finally, even though Roscommon put up a huge score on Sunday we have to be careful about blaming the backs too much. A big part of the problem was the Roscommong centerfield coming throuh unmarked and creating an 8 against 6 situation. The backs were then forced to tackle the midfield man leaving their own man free and then looking a bit silly when the score came. Even if our midfielders can't win the ball they at least need to mark their opposing number closely an avoid this 8 to 6 confrontation.

[Lone Shark]

While I agree with you LS that with some positional changes we possibly could have taken the points agaist Roscommon on Sunday, the fact is that we got relegated to Divison 4 over the course of a full league campaign. If you look back at previous posts on this board one of our biggest gripes with management was that there was too much change in the starting 15 between each game.

Presumably that was because management saw weaknesses in each game which needed to be rectified. By the time we met Roscommon we had eliminate all the weaknesses that had emerged in the previous games and started with our best 15. As if this wasn't positive enough, Roscommon lost two of their starting 15 through injury in the first half.

My point was not that Pat Roe is to be criticised on the strength of not making any changes against Roscommon as a point in isolation. My point is that Pat Roe has proven himself to be very willing to make changes before a match, which is one thing, but that he has also proven himself to be very slow to adjusting to how a game unfolds the whole way through the league, a reticience that has cost us points, cost us promotion and cost us a shot at the backdoor if we fail to reach the Leinster final. When a panel of selectors sit down to pick a team before a game they are working with a lot less info than Roe is at half time when he has seen his opponents in action, and seen which of his own players are on/off form.

I don't want people mistaking this for me saying Pat Roe should be all knowing and get it right every time. He is a new manager and of course there will be a learning curve. In some cases he has hit on things that would never have occurred to me, the best example being James Keane as a corner back - it worked very well. Managers will try things when getting to know their team, and some will work and some won't. I don't think there was actually that much griping over the fact that he changed his team so much, merely surprise and the concern that perhaps players weren't getting a chance to bed themselves in anywhere.

That doesn't change the fact that the league is important now in a way that it used not to be. League games are worth winning, and not attempting to take basic remedial action to adapt to opponents causing us problems in certain areas is downright foolish/lazy.

For the record we didn't start with our full team against Ros either (Keane/McConway) nor did they lose two starters through injury. They lost their starting centre back, and his replacement - neither of which will start in the summer if David Casey is available and fit.

It seems a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul and comes back to Untouchable's point that we currently don't have enough talent in the squad to be competing with the big boys.

This is the kind of hyperbole that's clouding the debate, and it was the same in the Kilmurray issue. Nobody is saying that we should be in the top five teams in Ireland, there is universal acceptance that we do not have those players. Three years ago Roscommon came to Tullamore with a team that had reached the AI quarter final the previous summer and we beat them off the park. Now three years later they've lost most of those stars, we've lost very few, and they're beating us in our home ground. We've also drawn with Longford, lost to Leitrim and nearly lost to Clare but for Niall pulling a one man hero show.

Ditto with Kilmurray. Nobody said Kilmurray was incompetent because we lost to Kerry and Tyrone, or because the Dubs beat us in the Leinster final. He was subject to criticism because we lost to Carlow, went 55 minutes in Parnell Park before scoring and threw away a six point half time lead against Laois due to inertia.

With the players we have, we're entitled to better than this. Not necessarily beating Kerry, Tyrone and Mayo with regularity, but better than this.

Leadership in the team as referred to by Untouchable is something that would help. I counted at least four occasions in the second half during a phase when the game was there to be had and Offaly had been awaded a free, that an Offaly player tried to take take the ball off a Roscommon player for a quick free. The Roscommon player held on and the Offaly player was immediately surrounded by 3 or 4 Rossies and once one of the big midfielders arrived in the fray the Offaly player was forced to retreat. A couple of seconds later the Rossie threw the ball to the Offaly man. How humiliating!! It reminded me of the the end of the first half of the Leinster Final last year when Tommo Deehan and Niall Mac squared up to the Dublin defence only to have to make a run for the dressing rooms 30 seconds later. This doesn't instill confidence and heads drop very fast. It's up to tem management to solve this one.

Given our problem at midfield we also need to reconsider our whole approach to the game. Last year in the playoff against Laois we got hammered at midfield. On Sunday Roscommon hammered us there. We had great kickouts, all landing well inside the Roscommon half but unfortunately straight into the hands of the Roscommon midfield. We need to look at the short kick out. This is in itself a risk but if we are going to lose at midfield anyway then it's worth the gamble. As already said we have players with footballing abilty to match the best in the country so if we can just win the ball things might just start to improve.

Finally, even though Roscommon put up a huge score on Sunday we have to be careful about blaming the backs too much. A big part of the problem was the Roscommong centerfield coming throuh unmarked and creating an 8 against 6 situation. The backs were then forced to tackle the midfield man leaving their own man free and then looking a bit silly when the score came. Even if our midfielders can't win the ball they at least need to mark their opposing number closely an avoid this 8 to 6 confrontation.

These are all legitimate problems and points well made. The quick frees is a close call in that in another situation we would have been doing the right thing. This only became a problem because Collins was helping out Ros by not punishing this carry on - I don't remember a single free being brought forward. However yes, it was down to both senior players and management to point this out and suggest how to deal with it.

Midfield we know all about, and all that I could suggest is to keep trying different things to see if they work. Scott Brady spoiling worked in the first half, but it wasn't in the second, so that was the time to try something else. That said, I'd say as supporters that's our lot at midfield for the next five years at least. However the point about Ros midfielders advancing is a fair one - exacerbated as we said earlier that Karol Slattery had the worst game I've seen him play in a long time, Cregg was always in space to take on the ball after Karol was looking to push up. Surely though this is where our sideline boys had the responsibility to act once again? Kieran Hogan might have steadied the ship and done a lot more defensive covering.

The leadership is another thing, but much like the midfield issue, we just don't have that type of player. Keane is probably our captain in waiting, but right now there just isn't anyone there. This is another area where I would be reluctant to blame management too severely.



To go back to the original post on the thread

The problem with the current Offaly team is the players, it always has been & unless there’s a radical clear out then it always will be!!!

While acknowledging our current difficulties around the diamond area, and with leadership and free taking duties, who are these players that you would draft in to make all the difference? Off the top of my head the two players I would like to have in the squad that aren't there are Sean Casey and Rory Guinan, but I certainly wouldn't see those two as the cure for all our ills. Who else are you suggesting?

[the Untouchable]

Here's a few players that I would have liked to have seen on the Football panel this year,

Derek Molloy, Brian Monaghan, Leonard Mooney, Shane Guinan (Shamrocks)

Kieran O Meara & James Flattery (Clara)

David Bannon (Rhode)

Eddie Lowry, Dirmuid Carroll & Gerry O'Malley (Ferbane)

James Carroll & David Egan (St. Brigids)

Micky Flynn (Tullamore)

Niall Kelly (Doon)

Niall Price (Shannonbridge)

Cillian Farrell (Edenderry)

Declan Kelly & Richard Fox (Pullagh)

Barry Slattery (Gracefield)

Granted Niall Price & Cillian Farrell might not deserve call up's based on their performances last year but they are still class footballers.

Slan!!!

[Bord na Mona man]

I don't want to name names, but a lot of those lads have pulled on Offaly senior jersies in the past and didn't look up to the standard.
Perhaps they might have improved since then with experience, but my guess is, not by a significant amount.

While most of them wouldn't do any harm being on the Offaly panel, I don't think very many of them would threaten to break into the starting 15.
In the long run, keeping players in their mid to late 20s on a county panel for years i.e. "serial panellists" and giving them the odd run in the league knowing they won't get near the championship team is not good practice.

[Heshs Umpire]

Does Barry Slattery play at all now? Definitely didn't in '06 anyway

[Lone Shark]

I'd be inclined to agree with BnaM man here, you've a lot of guys there that would just get burned at county level. Going through it, Derek Molloy is a different case because he appears to be putting hurling first which is fair enough. Leonard Mooney and David Egan were two guys I would have given a little bit more time to - last year I did mention how Leonard Mooney seemed to be cut after the first time he really looked to be at home at county level, and James Carroll is certainly one that I would have tried as a midfield option.

After that you have a mix of guys who really haven't even stood out at club level, never mind stepped up to county, and several guys who would be fight to retire by the time they'd be acclimatised to inter county football.


Overall it's fair to say that I don't think any supporter would be able to look at a county panel and not want to add one or two players to the list,
but in Offaly in recent years the shallow playing pool means that by and large I'd say we're working with the best footballers in the county by and large. How we're using them seems to be a source of disagreement though.

[Skippy]

Seen Jimmy Grennan playing for Ferbane least week, if only the man was a few younger, some man to field a ball!

[The Magpie]

Untouchable, I found myself agreeing with a lot of your original post, but you've just lost a fair amount of credibility by listing off some of those names. Like BNM, I don't want to name individuals here (it's not fair to snipe at someone under a pseudonym), but some of these guys wouldn't make an Offaly Junior team.

As for the current crop of players, regardless of the argument as to how good they are, I think they are the best that the County has to offer. We all watch enough club football to know that any hope of hidden gems or sleepers is slim.

One more thing (LS) I think it's naive to think or suggest that but for two events in the Offaly - Roscommon game, we would have won by a point:

if Shane Sullivan hadn't been on the field to give away that third goal, or if we had an actual free taker (we all know Niall is not the answer for taking frees) that's a five point swing. We lost by four.

Football is not this scientific and certainly not this predictable.

[Lone Shark]

One more thing (LS) I think it's naive to think or suggest that but for two events in the Offaly - Roscommon game, we would have won by a point:

if Shane Sullivan hadn't been on the field to give away that third goal, or if we had an actual free taker (we all know Niall is not the answer for taking frees) that's a five point swing. We lost by four.

Football is not this scientific and certainly not this predictable.

I'm not saying it was that simple, merely that these are two of the most basic things that every Offaly supporter was tearing his/her hair out over for that game, and that were the most unforgiveable from the managers point of view. I'll put it to you another way - my gut feeling is that if we hadn't conceded that goal, and had scored those two frees, we probably wouldn't have won by one - we'd have won by more I'd say.

The point is they certainly didn't help.

[peter]

Players is not the problem, plenty of top class players. Problem is commitment and fitness training. How many of the offaly team would you regard as elite athletes that are in there physical prime? Really pisses me off seeing these lads red in the face and being pushed around the pitch and then crying at gpa meeting about how much training they do. With the exception of 3 or 4 at best i would regard fitness, strenght and agility a big problem, Who is in charge of overseeing training programmes in offaly? what are there credentials?
Know alot is expected of these players and people say they already train plenty are prob regard these lads as fit, but in reality they may be fit compared to average club player but put them next to an elite athlete in any sport and you will be shocked with the difference