Not another new manager

A forum to air your views on Offaly GAA matters and beyond.
Post Reply
User avatar
doobane man
County player
Posts: 101
Joined: Sun Apr 17, 2005 9:38 am
Location: west offaly

Not another new manager

Post by doobane man »

OK - they haven't crowned themselves in glory.
But
Offaly has retained Div. 1 status.
Offaly led Laois until injury time on Sunday.
Offaly has regained a physical approach to Gaelic Football this year that is to be respected.
Conor Evans is blooming at full-back; there are meny followers who wouldn't let him into O'Connor- never mind Croke- Park
I don't recall Kilmurry kicking any wide on Sunday and this tendency is not new this year; 14 and 15 wides against Westmeath and Wexford last year.
To say that we were probably the best of the four teams on show and not to give any credit to management is grossly unfair.
Anyone attending club games over the past 3/4 years would have grave difficulty in discerning 25-30 players whose ability would identify them as key county men.
Yes, by all means spend a few bob on bringing in a tactician (a Colm O'Rourke....) to embellish the management team.
This is not the first management team to make mistakes but let's not set the "Out with the manager!" brigade in motion again. They've already done enough damage to our hurling and football teams over the past 15 years!

User avatar
Lone Shark
All Star
Posts: 5377
Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2004 5:21 pm
Club: Ferbane
Location: Roscommon
Contact:

Kilmurray

Post by Lone Shark »

I agree and I don't. A certain amount of mistakes is inevitable, in particular with any manager who has not managed at the top level before. Offaly have had a tradition of taking a chance on unproven managers rather than either taking (a) journeymen or (b) big name and, ahem, costly options. This is a policy that to be honest I very much agree with. So I understand that we have to give a little leeway.

Regarding Kilmurray himself, there is good and bad to consider. With respect to the good, as mentioned above:

(i) We did keep Div 1 status. However a lot was in our favour. We had four of the five games against beatable opposition at home - we went through most of the campaign with almost all of our key players available throughout, and we got the key win on day one against a team who were suffering from a range of defections. The achievement is still solid and worthwhile, but the ball bounced in his favour. Next year with three home games and two of those against Kerry and Tyrone will tell a lot.
(ii) We did lead Laois for a long time. However this was a derby game against a team with no more talent than we have, where we had a game behind us. It was a good, but not exactly amazing achievement.
(iii) A Physical approach is good if we have the ability to carry it off against the masters of the art. I'll believe that we have it when we can go toe to toe with an Ulster team in a Championship situation. Doing so against a Laois team who have I'd say 10 players of 5"10 or under is not exactly proving anything - that's just bullying within the rules.
(iv) Evans is an absolute legend. I've always believed this, but I had the benefit of seeing him play for UCD for years, people down home didn't have that luxury. Kilmurray saw that he was the obvious full back and showed faith in him all year, so fair play. I'll give him that one.
(v) Kilmurray didn't kick the wides, and it was a problem before he came on board. Which means that unlike Fahy who didn't have the benefit, he had a trend to go on, and either did nothing about it or whatever he did didn't work. He had the whole league to see that this issue was waiting to cost us big. And nothing happened.
(vi) To say we were the best team on display is a slightly strong statement that I wouldn't subscribe to. Kildare dominated Westmeath with 14 men, eating them alive at midfield. We on the other hand played well in some aspects of the game and poorly in others. Better than Laois, maybe - better than Westmeath, certainly. Better than Kildare? I'm not having it. That said, nobody is saying that no credit goes to management. However they picked the team, and it's hard to give them much credit for anything that happened from there on.
(vii) If anything naming a county panel in Offaly is a piece of piddle. Any one of the contributors on the board here could pick their panel at the start of the year and not be too far off the mark. Who else is really a genuine contender outside of the 30 that togged out on Sunday? Mulhare? O'Donoghue? Hurst? Hardly any obvious ones.
(viii) Regarding the tactician, if such a thing is needed it should have been identified in January, or after a few league games at a pinch. What brand of Wizardry could O'Rourke pull now?

Now let's add to the negative list.

(1) We play a system the whole way through the league then abandon it for the first meaningful championship match.
(2) We blood a new player in the first championship game of the season, he spends some time settling in then finds his feet nicely if unspectacularly, and don't give him even five minutes then in a game which should suit his style down to the ground.
(3) No speech or anything to say to the lads after the first championship game of the year. Does his TV interview and not a word - highly odd.
(4) Regularly comes across as an eejit on the airwaves. (Asking the public what he should do???) I don't know whether it's an act or not, but it can't be encouraging for the players that have to play with him.
(5) Notoriously slow with tactical changes of any kind. Rarely if ever makes a positional switch.
(6) Something needed to be done with McManus. The dogs on the street could see that. Only Kilmurray couldn't.

The likes of the timekeeping and Roy Malone thing are hearsay, so I wouldn't go pinning those on him. They are worrying though. There are other judgement calls, the Quinn substitution, Paschal sitting at fullforward etc. which some would disagree with, but others would find reasonable - again the jury is out there. However none of his odd changes for any of the games have proven to be a masterstroke, whereas some have backfired.

Dammit his mid-term report reads so much worse than O'Kelly or Fahy, and yet NOW we start talking about stability. That's well annoying. I agree with the stability argument, but I can't help but feel that it's like a Karma punishment that the first really poor manager we've got in ages is in charge when it becomes the buzzword. I see your point, but I just don't see any future in this guy. The only two players I know well enough to talk to about him don't rate him at all. It's just all a bit discouraging.

I tend to agree with GAAhead - I'd say anything we achieve will be despite him rather than because of him.

Bogman
All Star
Posts: 316
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 6:05 pm
Location: Tullamore

Neville Quote

Post by Bogman »

From Neville's excellent interview in the Sunday Tribune:

"This is only my fifth year with the county yet I'm on my fourth different manager. It's hard when you are used to playing one way one year and next thing a lad comes in and has you playing a different way altogether.

Padraig Nolan wanteed us to work the ball as quick as we could out to centre field and then hit a long ball into the full forward line with the half forward line coming in for the break or the lay-off. The following year with Paul O'Kelly, it was diagonal ball. If a centre fielder got the ball on the right he was to kick it to the left and vice-versa; you maybe hit the occasional ball down the middle. McManus would be told, 'Go for goal. No one will catch you'. After a few years, poor McManus was confused. 'Do I give it long?. Do I switch it over to the other wing? Do I run with it?"

Bogman
All Star
Posts: 316
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2005 6:05 pm
Location: Tullamore

Neville Quote 2

Post by Bogman »

Another paragraph from the feature article on Neville Coughlan in the Sunday Turbine (Tribune):

He thinks they've adapted to Kilmurray's style: the emphasis on moving the ball on quickly, the importance of tackling the man with the body ("Don't just shadow a fella; hit him and let him know you're there").

User avatar
Bord na Mona man
All Star
Posts: 4022
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:34 am
Club: Clara

Post by Bord na Mona man »

Bogman, do you have the entire article on soft copy that you could post up?
For once I didn't buy the Tribune.

As regards Kilmurray. He's only in his first year and will learn a lot from this campaign.
Think about how much O'Kelly and Fahy would have learned in their first year, but were booted out before they could implement the lessons learned.
You only really get to know your players' capabilities under the pressue cooker of championship. Offaly can learn a lot from last Sunday. Now that we, in a sense, have nothing to lose in the qualifiers, maybe the management can be a bit more adventureous in their decision making.

A lot of successful managers have had lean years when they were severely questioned. Sean Boylan was nearly fired in Meath after a slow start to his management reign. Ditto Alex Ferguson.

User avatar
the bare biffo
All Star
Posts: 444
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:37 am
Location: Nth Roscommon

Post by the bare biffo »

Management change has to be off the menu. No one would claim (surely) that O'Kelly or Fahy achieved anything of more substance than has been achieved this year. (And it's not over yet) But surely they both would have benefitted from the experience gained and used it in a second term.
I find Kilmurray a little puzzling, but there is more to be gained from stability and a chance for the man and his management team to learn than there would be from another change to what would surely be another unproven candidate (if any would be found).

User avatar
turk
All Star
Posts: 716
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:50 am

Post by turk »

three years for padraig nolan didn't harm kildare on sunday

User avatar
turk
All Star
Posts: 716
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:50 am

Post by turk »

three years for padraig nolan didn't harm kildare on sunday

Post Reply