Just to pick up on a few of the points raised here:
Sharp Eye wrote:I would like to see an Offaly Born Manager with Inter-County Management experience manage the Offaly Senior Hurling Team. Former Offaly players such as Pat Fleury, Padraig Horan & Kevin Martin have the experience and "Drive" to bring a Leinster title to Offaly within 2 years.
Two aspects to this that would cause me to raise one eyebrow at the thought. Firstly, the reason that most of our county players are county players is because they don't show the drive when they get handed the jersey, they show the drive when they're miles away from it but they work hard towards their goal. If I was a former Offaly player and I wanted to manage Offaly, I'd be making sure to be involved in management and to be adding skills to my range all the time. In fairness to Padraig Horan, he was managing his native club this year and he's always involved. I'm not saying I would or wouldn't endorse him for the job, but at least he's involved in the game now. Kevin Martin had a club championship and intercounty experience under his belt two years ago, but I genuinely don't know what he's been doing since then? Ditto Pat Fleury - is he doing anything beyond analysis?
Secondly, we have to go back to the point about how the game has changed. Five years ago is a lifetime in the sport right now, Kilkenny changed the game utterly, while Cork, Dublin and Clare all innovated this year to unseat them. The rules are interpreted differently to how they were a decade ago, it's a very different sport now. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but recent experience, either playing or managing, strikes me as imperative.
Plain of the Herbs wrote:Toxicity, you are making it up to suit yourself if the Slevin example I used is an example of good management. For me it is an example of a player taking ownership. Which is fine, that’s leadership. But Owens’ lack of input is striking and it is Owens’ suitability to manage an inter-county team that is being debated..
Implementing tactics and gameplans is one thing. Counteracting an opponent’s tactics is quite another. Danny Owens has never stood in a dressing room as part of a team who successfully counteracted a team playing a running game. I’d prefer someone with some experience of being part of this.
I'd actually take that one step further - I've never seen the K-K hurlers under Owens do anything different, bar maybe change a player or two in the corners. Because they've got so many of the best players in the county and because they've been injury free, it goes back to what we said at the start of the thread - this bunch, right now, require little or no managing. That's all very well when you have the best team in the competition, but we're not so foolish as to think that Offaly are the most talented group of hurlers in Ireland and they just need someone to get out of their way. That's all he does with K-K, and as I said earlier in the thread, that's not a criticism - he's doing what works.
Plain of the Herbs wrote:
Another reservation I have regarding Danny Owens is Danny Owens’ position as a County Councillor. The local elections will be contested next year (unless the Government of the day defer them as happened previously) and the campaign will be in full swing as Offaly build up to the Leinster quarter-final in Kilkenny. It would be impossible for Owens to manage the Offaly team while spending his evenings knocking on doors around Tullamore and its environs.
Owens’ profile being enhanced in the media by virtue of a position as Offaly hurling manager is quite another issue and one which cannot be ignored. As I drove to Tullamore for the recent hurling semi-finals I heard John Leahy on radio give what I felt was a political broadcast, taking a populist line on the ‘hurling in Birr issue’.
I'm not sure about this. Firstly, any person has personal and professional issues to keep on top of, Owens is no exception. On the one hand, you can understand why so many people involved in intercounty GAA are teachers and students, because they have the time to give to their craft, but on the other, overachievers in life tend to overachieve in sport. Rest assured that yours truly is not about to say that FF councillors are the benchmark for professional success, however in keeping with the old adage "if you want something done, ask a busy person" I wouldn't hang a man for the ability to keep a lot of balls in the air. That said, the county board should be able to lay out exactly what's going to be expected of the manager, time wise, and to make sure that he keeps to that. You don't want to get into a situation where the county board takes it for granted that the task will be given at least 25 hours per week of Owens' time, but he thinks differently. If everything is laid out on the table at the start and Owens is willing to commit to doing everything that needs to be done, I wouldn't let that be an issue.
On the topic of using the manager job as a platform, I think that's an issue for electoral fairness, rather than an issue for Offaly GAA. That's something that Midlands Radio 3, the local newspapers and his rival candidates will have to watch closely. He'll get plenty of airtime, particularly during the league, and it's up to the journalists talking to him to be concise and report what he says on hurling matters, but to cut out any waffle about "love of county" designed to serve a different end. Again, that's not to say he would do this, but the John Leahy point was well made.
I also heard that bit from Leahy by the way, en route to the same games. It was hugely frustrating, not a word said about the teams, about hurling, about tactics, about key battles, but instead a load of rhetoric about what field of grass should be used. If Midlands 103 had any sense, that should have been the catalyst to bump him down the pecking order and to give Joe Troy more airtime instead. I find him very informative when he's covering games and at least he talks about the game of hurling, as opposed to the politics of it.
Bord na Mona man wrote:
Kilkenny don't play a possession game per se, but they use the ball intelligently. Their movement off the ball is masterful, yet they make the game look simple.
One great catch, one offload to a man who has drifted into space. And then a decisive clearance, or a playmaking ball, or a shot. Why over elaborate when you can skewer your opponents so efficiently?
Funnily enough, I think this went out of their game a little bit in the last few years. They put such emphasis on every man's ability to win their own ball that they tended not to look too hard at where they were hitting the ball - once there was a wasp coloured jersey in the area, it's up to that man to win it. He swung timber all round until the sliothar was his, and Brian Cody glowered at the ref to make sure the whistle was swallowed. I simplify of course, but that was Kilkenny playing to their strengths. The skill was in the fact that these monsters in the battle for loose play turned into precision surgeons when the ball was in their hand.
The offload often came about because it took two or three tacklers to dispossess, so players knew to drop off and wait for the (often dodgy) handpass.
Bord na Mona man wrote:
Offaly now have catchers, but we still don't have that sort of support play. Look at our gameplan against Waterford. Hit it down to Colin Egan and then...and then...nothing. No support runners, no drifters, just onlookers.
This again stems from a disregard of possession that has been a feature of Offaly hurling in recent times. Whether it's coaches urging players to play hockey hurling, or roaring at fellas to 'get rid of it', 'drive it', 'let it off', players aren't being trusted enough and allowed develop the more sophisticated aspects of their game, like off the ball movement and support play.
We need someone who can coach our lads to improve on this sort of intelligent link play. Sadly, I'm not sure that expertise exists within Offaly. Maybe there are exceptions, but look at how unsuccessful we have been in coaching the 'Offaly way' outside of Offaly.
Again, I'm not altogether sure what this "Offaly way" is. There's a bit of the Holy Ghost about it - there's widespread acceptance in rural areas that it exists, but people would struggle to define what it looks like.
What I mean is this - a typical Clare score this year was struck on the run from around midfield, usually after a couple of handpasses, or perhaps swept over from out on the flanks by an inside forward sweeping out in an arc and shooting on the turn after taking a short pass. The typical Kilkenny score came from a great catch down one of the wings, usually a swashbuckling run of eight steps or so and either shrugging off the tackler or laying it back.
Cork this year used the full width of the pitch, playing plenty of diagonal balls and evading contact where possible. They'd prefer to strike the ball from a difficult angle under no pressure rather than go down the middle through traffic - which would be in stark contrast to Dublin, who liked to go for scores from close range, driving with purpose at defenders until they go to within 30m of goal.
These were the "bread and butter" type scores for these teams. I've no idea what Offaly's "plan A" point looked like, and I don't know if the players knew either. For that matter, is there such a thing with K-K?
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
