SFC Qualifier Draw - Offaly vs Tyrone

[tkmax]

The margin of victory in OCP yesterday, while massive, shouldn't really surprise anyone.

A few points to consider here before we lose the run of ourselves in condemnation of yesterday's performance.

Since May we have lost, for various reasons, the following players, Dalton, Pender, R. Brady, D.Brady, Moloney, Brasil, A. Sullivan, Connor and Rigney, (9 players) off a panel, that we have to admit is Division 3 standard at best. How would any other Division 3 Team have coped if they lost 9 panel members in a space of 6-7 weeks before a crunch knock-out tie?

Yesterday we played a seasoned county side that has been operating in the top flight divisions for years. Offaly have not been exposed to the benefits of Division 1 Football in about 10 years.

Tyrone have a 10 year rolling plan for the development of Gaelic Football in their county. Offaly have various initiatives but the structures are weak and you would often be forgiven for thinking that we d'ont know what we're doing next week yet alone in 10 years. The nett result of this is lack of policy is that we are not producing enough quality players with much of the potential within the county never making it to senior club level let alone Inter county level.

Tyrone has a population of approx. 177,000- Offaly have less than half of that 77000.

Tyrone for the most part focus their resources on football- in offaly we "try" to be competitive at both codes meaning that we essentially halve the limited resources and talent available to support football / hurling.

The hiding we got yesterday is primarily the inevitable consequence of all of the above . The question that should be asked is not how did we get humiliated to the extent that we did yesterday but rather, how could it ever have been any other way?

Regarding The comment that we should forget about football in favour of hurling - If Daniel Currams fitness levels are anything to go, by I think we can throw our hat at the hurling as well. That said, at least Currams made himself available so he deserves some credit for that.

P.S. Even though it had absolutely no material effect on the outcome of the game, I thought the referee was brutal yesterday and very hard on Offaly in my opiinion.

[the veteran]

nightmare to look at and watched it all argh read d comments some brutal like give up football .never give up that a basic essential in life. we lost many players but stil had ten regulars bet by 22 points no matter what team u have thats unacceptable ,right from d start the hoisted d white flag shud a got refunded . all i want from any team is honesty of EFFORT for d game.need a new manager harsh no thats hjs team a reflection of him and 9 players missing allen comes on as 5 sub madness never got aproper chance in his preferred positions all year although game was over showed gud aggressive attitude to d game .an offaly man to lead us forward

[Bord na Mona man]

Hugely disappointing day on Saturday.
The score could actually have been worse if Tyrone didn't ease back a bit in the 2nd half.

First off, I naively thought that Offaly, despite all the missing players could at least give this game a decent tilt.
Tyrone might be a another step ahead of Kildare, but Offaly had home advantage and Tyrone were missing starters also. Division 3 or 4 team don't automatically lose by 20 to 30 points to Div 1 teams as some geniuses will no doubt suggest.

If Offaly were to make it anyway interesting a whirlwind start was needed. Get a couple of early scores, give the players something to chase
Unfortunately Tyrone had the strong breeze in the first half. Offaly had to try running the ball into the wind and this was a bit of disaster. A few early moves broke down with sloppy Offaly handpasses and Tyrone broke downfield with ease for handy scores. It was already alarming at this stage how easily Tyrone cut through the Offaly cover.

After 10 minutes several Offaly players already had the demeanour of beaten players and it was clear an utter rout was on the cards. It was a footballing lesson after that. It was painful to see the pace at which Tyrone moved with the ball, the quick hands, their movement off the ball and the physique of their players. There were times when Offaly players couldn't even get close enough to foul a player, never mind try and tackle.

Progress has been made this year, but this was another reminder of where the top teams are really at.
Even it the panel does all the right training for 7 or 8 months, this gets undermined if a dozen players need to be drafted in the summer months.
I can see a good few changes in the panel for next year. The management might heave learned a lot about the league during the league campaign, but they also learned a lot more about certain players since then.

[PatSpillaneOffaly]

At the game on Saturday and was hugely disappointed. The three amigos wouldnt have made much different to the outcome of this game. Im sure the lads are feeling pretty vindicated after this heavy defeat. It is scary to think we are this far behind the top tier teams.

[durra1]

“Tyrone has a population of approx. 177,000- Offaly have less than half of that 77000.”

I think the ‘Very Reverend’ Wille Mc Crea and ‘Lord’ Ken Mc Gaginnis might have something to say about your understanding of the demographics of County Tyrone tkmax!

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

Ah look, really disappointing finish to the season.

Agree with BNM man , there may be changes to the panel, but McDonnell will have learned a lot about some of the players. And there atitudes.
He tried to do the right thing in terms of discipline with letting a few lads go but was let down when some of the lads upped sticks after the Kildare game.

Really needs to be a focus on what we can do to keep lads at home over the summer. One idea might be set up GAA camps for 12 to 15 year olds over the Summer and get clubs and Club Faithful to provide funding, along with a charge per kid.Whilst helping develop players it gives an opportunity for county players to earn a few bob. Either way there needs to be a way to ensure that we have a fully committed panel by September, and a repeat of this debacle must not happen.

GAA in Offaly is in crisis at the moment on the ground, and until we get a solution and a joined up approach in order to bring through quality underage club players , and club players, schools programmes (develop these further, through more interaction from the clubs)

Basically, yes, we have scarce resources, but we need to maximise what we have, and we are clearly not doing that at present.

And finally, there needs to be a change to the championship, the fact that London are in a Connaght final , fair play to them, but this is clearly not right, Also Mayo hammer a poor Roscomon team, ditto Cork & Kerry. Also, no point in all competing for Sam Mcguire either, we along with 23 other counties are kidding ourselves.

To the players who have stayed in, came in and have put in a huge effort, look, take something from the game at the weekend. Go back to your club and enjoy the championship. Dont mind the lads telling you to pack it in, your county needs ys and ye are the only ones who can pull us out of this situation.
We will have some good games in Div 3 and this is the starting point next year.
Thanks for your efforts and more importantly, Keep the Faith!

[Bord na Mona man]

“Tyrone has a population of approx. 177,000- Offaly have less than half of that 77000.”

I think the ‘Very Reverend’ Wille Mc Crea and ‘Lord’ Ken Mc Gaginnis might have something to say about your understanding of the demographics of County Tyrone tkmax!

Aye, they'd be more hurling men than football.

[brownie]

we all knew we had problems but I think we have hit rock bottom.i think both the management and players were to blame for last Saturdays mauling.the attitude of some players was terrible young and old.Alan Mac had no interest in being there,bricland picked a ball straight off the ground,Carroll jumps on top of a man.thats only a few of the basic mistakes and attitude problems we had.
as for the management,why bring in 3 hurlers and only use 1.other recent additions were used before players that had given up 8 months and had given 100%.surely these lads deserved a championship run out.
why was casey told to take a free from his wrong side and Cunningham told to take the next which he scored. why do 15 minutes weights as part of the warm up.was that to frighten Tyrone?
most of the club teams in our county would have these basics sorted out ,why not the county team.
hard to see where it will go from here but it had all the signs of a shambolic set up.

[durra1]

"why do 15 minutes weights as part of the warm up"



Say it ain't so Joe?

[True Red]

Alan Mac had no interest in being there

I doubt that highly.

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

I think Brownie should be taken with a pinch of salt!!

Few press ups , Squats and lunges, nothing that most club teams would do.

Also Veteran, take a bit more time to write your post, little bit of grammar and spelling would be nice.

[brownie]

ask any of the players if you think im bullsh..ting.

[Lone Shark]

This is going to sound terrible and possibly unfair to any of the players who had to endure that experience on Saturday, but as a supporter, I'll be honest, I'm still very raw after it, and I'm going to be fairly critical.

It hurt to watch players throwing in the towel so easily in that game, and even though we were never going to win, we still could have performed much, much better. We are much better than that. There were a couple of guys out there who played to a standard that wouldn't get them on to a senior club team, they walked around the place, they were nowhere close to their man, there was no intensity to their performance. That's just not good enough. Tyrone are an excellent team, one of a group of six that have separated themselves from the chasing pack, and they were tuned in. I knew from talking to supporters on the way in and from researching in the run up to the game that there was no danger of complacency here, and that was exactly what happened. They treated us as if we were Donegal or Dublin, bringing pure controlled intensity into the game, and you have to respect them for that. That's why they have won three All Irelands in the last decade, from a base of none in the previous century. If we came out of that game having been overpowered and lost by ten or even a bit more, I'd say fair enough. That's where we're at, and that's where they're at.

However you can't tell me that there weren't some of our lads who could have done an awful lot better, or that there weren't lads who just weren't tuned in. Of course the absentees hurt us - when you include Graham Guilfoyle, who was clearly not fit, we were down seven guys who started the NFL Division four final, not to mention a handful of guys who would have been the "next men up". However that would be fine if the other players went at the game with gusto and it was just our youth/inexperience/conditioning that let us down. It wasn't. David Hanlon, to pick one example, struggled in the tackle due to a lack of power, but he never stopped covering ground all day and never stopped trying. We still have a core group of senior guys on this team who need to lead the way and while I don't want to pick on anyone, I'll just say this - Brian Darby showed an exemplary attitude, while Alan Mulhall and Shane Sullivan couldn't really be faulted for anything they did, but after that, my personal opinion others fell short to varying degrees, relative to THEIR OWN ability. Note here I'm not expecting any of our players in the middle third to match up with Seán Cavanagh or Peter Harte for pure ability

The decision to call in the hurlers backfired in the sense that a lot of guys who were on the squad seemed hurt by this. However to them, I would say this. Emmet McDonnell made a call, and certain players feel like it was the wrong one. However if a colleague of yours gave the wrong pass, or kicked a shot wide when there was a guy flying off the shoulder, or had a handpass blocked down coming out of defence that led to conceding a score, would you ignore him and give up trying, or would you work hard as a team to make up for the error? Some of these guys have to understand that it's all in together in this situation and if Emmet McDonnell is the manager and he makes a call, you have to be strong enough to stand by that and make the best of it. Plenty of guys didn't do that on Saturday. The county board are Emmet's "selectors". They'll decide if he deserves to stay on or not, and once he's picked, well then he's picked.

The time to discuss structures and all that stuff is after a game where your team his tried their guts out and fallen way short. This wasn't that game, so I don't think structures are the issue here. I do appreciate that lads put in a serious amount of effort this year, but what the f*** is the point if you're going to go out in the championship and throw in the towel like that? This is what you were training for. Act like it.

[the veteran]

loan shark u put brolly spillane etc to shame .everything u said is spot on and echos everything i feel myself .Im going to park this year now and forget about it and return in spring with renewed optimism

[clubman]

would also agree with lone shark,offaly were brutal except two or three players.bringing in the hurlers and an a few others might not have been the best idea.if u were a sub and trained since last november and see someone that only trained two weeks and get on instead of u then next november u probably wont turn up.having said that some of the so called offaly stars went missing and did nothing but throw in the towel. looking back on the year i dont think offaly made much progress.barely got out of d.4 after playing some terrible football and saturdays game brought to an end a poor year.emmet mcdonnell has had a hard year but will have learnd a lot.it is a big difference managing a school team to a county team. county board will probably give him another year so next year it will be make or break for him