Offaly vs Cork - SHC Qualifier Rnd 2 07/07/2012

[Turenne]

Heads up, the sun is out and shining in Cork city.

[uibhfaillian]

Anyone know if you can watch this match online somewhere.

[Bord na Mona man]

1-12 to 1-10 in Cork's favour at half time.

[Bord na Mona man]

Cork win 1-26 to 2-16. Cork pulled away in the end, Offaly lead for a while early in the second half.
Jimmy Barry-Murphy said he was 'surprised' how good Offaly were. You could take that as an insult or a compliment.

[uibhfaillian]

Was just listening on the radio but sounded like the usual story, good effort, but come up short again. County Board again let the hurlers down by not finding a way of securing at least alternate home games v opposition in the qualifiers. Whatever happened to the designate "weaker" teams getting home ties in qualifiers.

Haven't been on this site for a while but it does my head in when some people around here don't recognise that playing in Tullamore as the Offaly hurlings team's home ground can be an advantage to the team. Unfortunately the County Board aren't making use of whatever advantage that might accrue from playing in Tullamore anyway.

[kingscounty]

sounded like we hurled well but we seemed to tire near the end. i would like to see some new thinking , maybe when club championship is over the management could pick a B team (or development squad) and let them train over the winter and get up to county standard and when league comes around we would have a few options we could try out . instead of throwing lads in at the deep end where they might get 3 or 4 training sessions before a game and then you have one chance to prove yourself and your gone.at least if a lad was developed in fitness and size over the winter months he could concentrate fully on the hurling side of things when league starts.cork,kilkenny and the top sides have junior or inter county teams and imo this is a great help to these teams , if you have a guy that is hurling well you can develop and bring him on with the county junior/inter team where he is getting game time at a county level and then the county senior manager has a team whom he can pick players off of if needed. we need 25 players that can all fill in when needed , cork from listening to the game ran on a few subs that made an impact, kilkenny can do the same. baker needs to get to as many club games as possible and be ready for next year with some new talent at least to try out in the league. we have to develop and get with the times and move offaly hurling on to a new era, or else we will be at the same thing every year getting a clap on the back for playing well but not winning.

[atomic]

Without trying to sound too critical we lost by 7 points as was expected. We are a great side for moral victories

[joe bloggs]

Without trying to sound too critical we lost by 7 points as was expected. We are a great side for moral victories

Are you Roy Keane?

We were within a puck of the ball with less than 10 mins left. I know we fell away after that but it was not a bad performance

[Plain of the Herbs]

I was unable to travel, and the result is galling. I honestly thought Offaly would win that.

The RTE match report doesn't help either - "Rebels manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy will be thankful for the stern examination that Offaly gave his young team". A stern examination is feckall use to a team who won't have another match for six months.

It goes on to say "Goalkeeper Eoin Kelly from Lusmagh made his Championship bow for Offaly, while there were also first Championship starts for defender Conor Hernon and midfielder Sean Ryan". which shows what they know or care about Conor or Seán. As far as they're concerned we're just another county from Leinster who contribute feckall to hurling. That hurts.

And if the Tribune use the words 'gallant' and 'Offaly' in the same sentence (and they will) I will rip the fuckin' page in two.

Anyway, hats off and a sincere 'thank you' to David Kenny who had to leave a major family event today to line out for Offaly. We, the peepel, get the imprression betimes that the players don't care. What David did today serves to remind us all what commitment to inter-county demands. Thanks, David.

[Bord na Mona man]

A few crucial spells decided the game.
With the momentum of Colin Egan's goal, Offaly hit the front by 4 points in the 1st half, leading 1-7 to 0-6.
Cork got their goal just then, but if they hadn't hit back so quickly, perhaps Offaly could have pushed ahead and made Cork chase the game more.

Losing by 2 at half time, Offaly opened with the first 3 points of the half to take the lead, but then didn't score for about 20 minutes! Cork managed to open up a 5 point lead in those 20 minutes. These huge white spaces in 2nd half scoring have been a too frequent feature of Offaly hurling this last decade. There was a similar one again Wexford.

Another scoring burst from Offaly got the Cork lead down to 2 points with 10 minutes to go. In the last 10 minutes Cork outscored Offaly by 8 points to Shane Dooley's goal from the close-in free.
By the sounds of the commentary, in the 2nd half, Offaly missed a few goal chances and the link up play between the forwards started to break down.

I believe Offaly are at a fundamental disadvantage though when it comes to winning these sort of games.
We simply don't have much experience of actually winning tight games against teams with reputations like Cork.

Put Offaly in an 8 team Division 1 and they'll almost definitely lose 5 games out of 7. In the 5 that they'll lose, they will most likely lose without ever getting close, or ever believing they have a chance. Put Offaly in Division 2 and they'll coast through most games and get away with all sorts of sloppy stuff, rather than creating a real positive winning momentum.

Worryingly, in the particular league games that Offaly have genuinely gone all out to win, Tipperary in 2010, Clare this year etc. they've never managed to actually to hold on for the win. This creates huge self-doubt in a team. People talk about winning habits and the things that successful teams do at crucial times, unfortunately Offaly just aren't developing these.

[atomic]

I just think we will never progress if we continue to be happy with good performances but no results. There is some serious potential in that Offaly team I would jus like to see it realised.

also, on another note, Sean Ryan played very well and is a player i have often been critical of in the past, so he shut me up

[townman]

Sean Ryan is a fine hurler if he is played in the right place.

[kingscounty]

from looking at the sunday game the little they did show the lads gave it a right good go. sean ryan seemed to do well at midfield,we scored some nice long range points and if we could have got one or two of the goal chances we created we could have pulled it off.its just a pity we couldnt have got a bit further this year and reached a quarter final at least, we still have a young enough team that has experience of a few years championship behind them , well capable of beaten any team on the day all they need is to believe in themselves and we wont be to far off the pace if they can keep it together for next year .

[fifitrixiebelle]

there is no chance of our lads believing in themselves when u have the likes of duignan telling them that theyre just lucky to be in the same stadium as his beloved kk. we need to regenerate respect & belief in our teams.
regarding yesterday i thought wadding rode us big time

[onthefence]

didnt go down on saturday after ( was pi*sed off after galway game) but listen to Gerry Russell and The Gift on the radio it seemed Cork should have had a man sent off and in general Wadding was very harsh on us ( i know Gerry can get things very wrong).
also on the the Sunday Game high lights showed the penalty which was a joke and another clip of Sean Ryan being pulled up for over carryin which was harsh.

not blaming ref decisions for loosing by the way.

just a note on the your best forward not having to work as hard and throwing in work horses around them, noone told Joe Canning yday that he didnt have to chase back 60yds to tackle Kilkenny players!