Tyrone game

[ballymanabroad]

Any reaction to the Offaly Tyrone game lads?

[Lone Shark]

I have to confess to not having made the trip. Venturing back home to do the cooking on the day that was in it was the extent of my travelling.

I'd be slow to rush to judgement, on a few grounds.

(1) Niall Mac not playing invariably leaves us very toothless up front. He's the only real proven goalscorer, likely to start, and certainly replacing him with Paschal is not giving us like with like.

(2) I'm all in favour of the two man inside line as long as the lads end up being given the space in which to operate. This requires early ball played in accurately - i.e. Quinn. Putting Mark Daly in for Quinn makes no sense, as Dayler just doesn't deliver the same quality of ball - no one in the county does.

Overall we took on one of the best teams in Ireland, when they're on top form, on their own patch, and only lost after kicking a woeful plethora of wides in the absence of two of our main attacking threats. I'm not hugely despondent , at least not yet.

But all this is speculation - after all I was only listening on the radio while watching Leix against Ourma on d'telly.

[Bord na Mona man]

I'm all in favour of the two man inside line as long as the lads end up being given the space in which to operate. This requires early ball played in accurately - i.e. Quinn. Putting Mark Daly in for Quinn makes no sense, as Dayler just doesn't deliver the same quality of ball - no one in the county does.

I'd disagree with your assessment of Daly. He was the obvious player to replace Quinn with.
He beats the competition in terms of vision and ball usage. If you don't replace Quinn with Daly, then who else could fulfil the playmaker role?

[Lone Shark]

It's exactly as I said - no-one does. We don't have an alternative.

I'm not knocking Mark Daly's contribution, but too many of his deliveries go very askew for him to play this role. As a mobile midfielder with both reasonable fielding and good vision he's not bad - I definitely think he has a role to play, but just not this role. I think in the absence of Quinn, and certainly against a team like Tyrone, the thing to do was to play three lads inside, or if you must do the playmaker thing for the sake of keeping the system goin, let either Paschal or Joe Quinn try it.

Or alternatively you draft someone in specifically for the role who wouldn't otherwise feature but might surprise you, or could be reinvented in the position, if only to give you an option for the summer in the case of Quinn being injured/unavailable. In this I'm thinking Shane Sullivan, Ciaran Kiely, John O'Neill or even Damien Hunt.

I'm as anti-Clara as the best of them ( ) but that wasn't meant as just a swipe at Daly. I think his distribution is good - for a big midfield player. It's just that for Quinn's role it needs to be a lot better than good, it needs to be immaculate. I'm not saying the four lads up above would be any better, but off the top of my head they would have had much better medium term potential.

[Percy Sledgehammer]

Sure doesn't Ciarán do that job anyway? Leave one of Daly or Grennan in there beside him and let McManus pound it into the lads from midfield. If Paschal's not able to win 50/50 ball against the likes of McGinley then he may give up.