Football League Division 3 2014

[substandard]

Haven't seen the team play this year, so depending on the wireless and this forum to keep up with happenings. The last 2 days out the team seems to start brutally slowly, allow a big gap to open up so it looks like there's a massacre on the cards, yet by the finish there's not a massive deficit. By all accounts, dropping players back or attempting to play sweepers isn't working. Looking at the results in the division, it's hard to see where points will come from...

[allstar2010]

Lads, it's time we packed in the football, we're an embarrassment at the moment. Waste of time and more importantly money been spent on this set up. We can't be successful at both codes not in this day and age. All efforts should be to make us strong at one code (hurling) and get us to level where we can compete. What's the point in having 2 mediocre outfits instead of the whole county from edenderry to birr just concentrating on hurling.

We really should have packed in hurling after the embarrassing defeat to Kilkenny in 2005.Then we would have had the last 9 years focusing solely on football and we might have won todays match or maybe be even playing in the top 2 divisions.

What was the score against Tyrone (a team that were never going to win all Ireland) last year in OCP??
Defeated by Tipp the year before, Limerick before that and again humiliated by Wexford in the fortress that is OCP year before that. Not saying the hurlers are setting the stage alight by any means just saying we have too small a pick to be competitive at both. Scrap football and send hurls to rhode, Walsh island, daingean and get coaches to bring them up to speed.

[DAF]

Lads, it's time we packed in the football, we're an embarrassment at the moment. Waste of time and more importantly money been spent on this set up. We can't be successful at both codes not in this day and age. All efforts should be to make us strong at one code (hurling) and get us to level where we can compete. What's the point in having 2 mediocre outfits instead of the whole county from edenderry to birr just concentrating on hurling.

We really should have packed in hurling after the embarrassing defeat to Kilkenny in 2005.Then we would have had the last 9 years focusing solely on football and we might have won todays match or maybe be even playing in the top 2 divisions.

What was the score against Tyrone (a team that were never going to win all Ireland) last year in OCP??
Defeated by Tipp the year before, Limerick before that and again humiliated by Wexford in the fortress that is OCP year before that. Not saying the hurlers are setting the stage alight by any means just saying we have too small a pick to be competitive at both. Scrap football and send hurls to rhode, Walsh island, daingean and get coaches to bring them up to speed.

You seem to think people in those clubs really want to play hurling. Daingean had a team in 2006 and hardly anybody bothered and we haven't had a team since then.There isn't the same interest in hurling in the north of the county so that idea isn't going to work and you can't force lads to play hurling.

[allstar2010]

True enough DAF, if the interest not there what's the point. Well in that case let us forever remember the glory days of 70s - 98 as we will never see them again. Offaly GAA RIP

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

This was really shocking stuff today. There is no doubt we have a limited supply of forwards, backs and midfield. But what is now abundantly clear to me is that Emmet McDonnell cannot get the best out of what we have. Defensively we were all at sea, and in attack we were abysmal.
Now... a couple of things,
1) Cavan were well drilled, and simple football destroyed us for 20 odd mins in the first half. Buts despite trailing 6-0 we fought back to 9 to 5 at half time.
2) Second half meandered along with a four point gap, until we handed them a gift goal to seal the game, so , in effect , Cavan scored 2 points in the second half.

Now back to the manager, we came out and continued the habit of carrying the ball up the field and into traffic for the inevitable turnovers, were hit with a long kick pass , quick hands and good shot selection.

In Ken Casey, Peter Cunningham, (bar a good individual point) and the rest of the forwards we were completely bereft of any idea of how to make space, and it looked clear to me that there are real issues around a game plan that could deliver the scores needed.

So for 40 mins of this game, the first 20mins of first half and the first 15 of second half we scored 3 points.

We are in a difficult postion at the moment, but there is something not right with the atitude of the players at the moment, and there is no real pattern emerging as to how McDonnell wants us to play. I think this is shining through and there was a defininte lack of enthusiasm as the game wore on.

I have to say, we do have some talent emerging from minor level but we are lacking leaders in the 25 to 28 yr old bracket.

Cavan were no great shakes but they played to a plan and done all they had to do to stop us breaking down the field, they tried to work a kick out plan, and ran off the ball to make space.
We were so bad at the basics that you would have to question the atitude of the players.

However, cop the hell on and stop this shit about us playing hurling or football!! When you have something rational to ad about the structure, team, game then come back on here.

Alan Mulhall yet again emerges with reputation intact.

[Bord na Mona man]

Today was disappointing because we don't seem to be learning or improving in the problems areas.
Cavan started with the wind and cut through Offaly with ease. Offaly simply didn't get any decent pressure on Cavan's attackers in the early exchange. Barely any tackles, half fouls or fouls. I'm not advocating rough play, but it least indicate some sort of pressure being brought to bear.
It doesn't matter how many players you drop back they need to putting heat on the man in possession or be blocking channels to the inside forwards. Too many Offaly players were not much better than training cones to Cavan to dodge around. Martin Dunne and Eugene Keating had a field day for Cavan with a supply of unpressured low ball coming in to them.

When Offaly had possession going into the wind they continually opted to take the ball into crowded areas and trouble. Last time I checked, O'Connor Park was a bit wider than the 30 metres that Offaly used of it. The only time Offaly managed to open the play up was near the end of the first half when the wind died down and the spread it a bit more with kick passes to the forwards.
2nd half Offaly had the wind and I had a sneaking fear this would be almost a disadvantage. And so it was, Offaly wasted a world of possession. Either kicking it away too early, or carrying it too slowly, but never managing to string more than 2 long passes together.
If Offaly had an attacking plan, I'm not sure what it was. To be fair Offaly did start to win more breaks and got a few decent interceptions by putting pressure on Cavan. However Cavan had eased up by this stage. They went the guts of 30 mins without a score in the 2nd half. If the ref had added on 30 extra minutes and Cavan weren't allowed to score in those additional minutes, Offaly still would have lost.

[Lone Shark]

I listened to people on the way out of this game talk about how the "lack of effort" from Offaly was unforgivable. All I could think in response to that was "that might be wishful thinking". I got the impression that this was an Offaly team who sunk a lot of energy and effort into that tie, but they simply weren't able to compete. The quality of support running, the tenacity in defence as eluded to by BnaMman, the ability to break tackles, none of it was there. Cavan were down their first three midfielders and their starting centre forward so we actually had a great chance to compete around the middle and to a certain extent we did - yet again Eoin Carroll emerged with a lot of credit for me - but up front it was desperate stuff. Anton, Peter and later Graham are all good men to carry the ball, but we need to get them carrying it in dangerous areas - not carrying it from their own half up as far as the opposition 45 and then recycling possession.

Let's not kid ourselves - Cavan could have kicked on and won that by more if they wanted to, Terry Hyland said after the game that it was great to get a chance to give Gearóid McKiernan a run out in a low pressure environment like that. That kind of comment is painful to listen to, yet he's dead right - Cavan were sauntering around the field.

We scored one point from play that wasn't from the boot of Niall McNamee, and let's be honest here, Niall could easily have been sent off in the first half for the kick out at the Cavan player near the touchline. Even that solitary score wasn't really created, it was a collected break and run from Peter Cunningham that was a fine piece of individual work, but not the kind of score you legislate for. This is in a forward line with plenty of what we'd call "scoring forwards" - to all those who say we played defensive football, there was at least five players on that starting team who would consider themselves to be scorers, not including lads like Guilfoyle, Allen, Smith, Moloney and Niall Darby, all of whom can kick points too given a chance. Our problem was not that we kicked long ball into an outnumbered forward line, or that we ran the ball into packs of Cavan tacklers, it's that the player in possession often didn't have a better option.

There are also those who would argue that with a three week break coming up, this was not a good week to expect some lads to be up at 4.30am in order to make it down to Offaly for 6am weights sessions as well - personally I'd be inclined to agree with that too.

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

How can we compete when the basic off the ball running and support running is so poor? Thats my point, I believe the game plan comes from the manager, and what I saw was tactically poor and I dont think that our forwards emptied the tank in terms of running to make space for the ball to be kicked into.
It sickens me to talk about the manager as I think he could be a good manager, but has been thrown in at the deep end, and has not got the experience around him to help deliver a gameplan that can allow us to compete.
I dont think we can change the manager now, not sure who would want to take it on.

Overall its really disappointing to hear that weights sessions were the order of the day on a week like this with a break coming up.

[townman]

just a quick question where is the Mcpaddens,Eoin Rigney, and i though Connor Mahon,Currams, Colin Egan,Sean Ryan, were playing both this year, or will it be like last years farce all bail in with the football
when the hurling is over.

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

Instead of spelling names, was wondering something similar about the "foothurlers"?

Also was in 5 mins before throw in and all the programmes gone, ridiculous.

[High School Musical]

Firstly, Cavan, on the day, were pretty poor themselves. The first 20 mins aside, they must be disappointed with how they played for the remainder of the game. For a team that would like to consider themselves as one of the potential challengers (1st time in a long time) in the Ulster championship this year, that is not good enough. Now I don’t know if Cavan took their foot off the pedal, succumbed to the pedestrian pace that Offaly brought to the game or whether Offaly actually nullified the Cavan threat after the first quarter. Maybe some of you can answer that? Inside, in Dunne and Keating, they have two real matchwinners. The ease and simplicity with which they took some of their early scores was very impressive. Both have done it against far better teams than us. Those two aside, Cavan look quite average though, albeit with some key men yet to return.

Secondly, our basic skills yesterday were not up to scratch. Our hand-passing when breaking forward was simply terrible at times. It completely killed the momentum of a number of attacks, especially in the 2nd half close to the sideline on the terrace-side. There was a number of passes out of hand that forced the man to have to go to the floor to pick up the ball and then turn backwards to give the ball back to a support player. In the first half I thought we looked physically overwhelmed in the tackle, but in the 2nd half we seemed to turn over a lot of Cavan possessions in the tackle, which was one of the more encouraging aspects of the game.

The forward play and lack of support running baffles me at times. The bridge from defense to attack was practically non-existent in the first half. This did improve slightly as the game wore on, but overall Offaly still seem to be of the mindset that we kick the ball into the forward line and let them deal with it. A reluctance to send players forward will continually cost us unless we start limiting teams to 8 or 9 points per game and become the equivalent of a ‘1-0 to the Arsenal type of team’. For this element of our play, the blame has to lie firmly at the hands of the management. Our style of play is seriously curtailing our scoring ability, so if that doesn’t change it is going to prove difficult to win any games this year. This Offaly team is not built to chase games, so falling so far in arrears early on is killing off any chance we have of winning games.

Lone Shark, I agree with you, Niall Mac was a lucky boy not to find himself sent off after his little kick in the first half. While harmless enough, you just cant do it and I’d had have no complaints if he’d seen the line for it. Luckily, the referee was lenient and no sooner had the incident passed than he kicked into gear with a lovely point (Offaly’s first) and then a second shortly after. A couple of McNamee’s scores showed real class. Unfortunately, he found himself on the ball all too little yesterday. While I know he is a heavily marked man, we need to get him on the ball a lot more. Cunningham showed glimpses of what he can do. He’s one that is definitely growing up and should become a key part of the Offaly team for years to come. His score in the first half was probably the highlight of the day from an Offaly perspective and showed what effect direct running & speed can do to any opposition.

Defensively, I don’t like the Offaly set-up at present. While we get a lot of numbers back behind the ball, I feel that we allow the opposition to get far too close to goal before standing up to them. Cavan hit the post three times in quick succession and had a number of very poor wides in the 2nd half. I think the margin of victory could probably have been greater rather than less. But for all of the negativity around the Offaly performance yesterday, amazingly, we weren’t actually out of the game until the goal. Paul McConway will no doubt be extremely disappointed. It was sloppy and we got the maximum punishment dished out to us. McConway battled hard throughout though and is worthy of a place on the team.

I don’t want to come on and have a go at individuals, I really don’t (but here I go!). I thought Ken Casey was absolutely abysmal yesterday. Looked completely uninterested and timid. Showed practically no ball-winning capabilities and his shot selection / ball distribution when he did have it was pretty awful too. Very disappointing because he’s a player I have always had plenty of time for. I don’t think he’s ever fully lived up to the promise he showed as a minor, when he was the star of the show. Another player I like is Niall Smith. His fielding abilities are a joy to behold at times, but in general open play I don’t think he brings enough. He did show some strength in the tackle on a couple of occasions, which many others failed to do. I hope he can improve his overall game. Worryingly though, I don’t think he caught a single contested high ball yesterday, and I don’t even remember too many kickouts coming his way either, which seemed strange seeing as I would regard him as our best fielder by a mile. A couple of other players were almost anonymous yesterday, and I had to double-take to confirm the presence of a couple of them on the field.

All that said, I still think there’s hope. This is exactly the position I, and most others if we’re honest, expected us to be in after two games. Our next two games are of vital importance and I welcome the few weeks’ break until the Sligo game. Avoiding relegation has to be our priority now. While not taking satisfaction from others misfortune, it would appear that Longford are on a very slippy slope downhill at present too. We have them in Tullamore in round 4 and I fully believe we are capable of beating them. With them being our championship opponents too, it will give us a good indicator of what to expect come summertime.

Anyway, as is my style, I’ve said too much. We’re all entitled to our voice, it makes for good debate. I’ll leave it at that.

[townman]

Instead of spelling names, was wondering something similar about the "foothurlers"?

Also was in 5 mins before throw in and all the programmes gone, ridiculous.

out rage that wouldn't happen in ST,Brendans park, i say bring the football to Birr to

[Lean Times]

Great attitude on here. Let's just give up. Makes me sick going on here sometimes. I'm astonished at how some of yer clubs keep running which such attitudes.

If anyone can say on here that the players yesterday did not put in a 100% and taht they don't care then ye don't have a clue. The energy put in by the players was enormous. If any of ye know anything about football when you have to carry the ball from deep every single time (Not saying that is right) it is energy sapping, especially how Offaly carried it through contact the majority of the time. I am not agreeing with this by the way. I am just saying how much energy Offaly players actually put in so don't anybody come on here and say they don't care.

Issues:
- For the game plan they are trying to play. Crowd out the defence and squeeze the opposition in the middle third. It was just too easy for Cavan players to pop handpasses the majority of the time. This shouldn't be the case. Offaly players chasing like dogs but to no avail. Players were not tight enough for this game plan to work.
- For all the powerful running by players like Jonhny Maloney, Cunningham and Carroll the rewards were not there. Far too often the ball was carried through heavy traffic in the centre and lost.
- Offaly use an extra man from the forwards as an extra man in the middle. Obviously the aim is to crowd this out, squeeze and pressurise the opposition but it is not working. When we win the ball we cannot deliver into forwards beacuse they are outnumbered and space is at a premium. This results in the same old of players running hard and blind. Offaly I feel are not good enough for conventional 15 players but current tactics muct be altered.
- Players are low on confidence. It must be frustrating for the effort they are putting in. The Offaly crowd (that actually turns up) piss me off. Cannot support a team and personally I feel they don;t know how to. If anybody can remember the O'Byrne Cup games last year against Kildare in particular. The crowd and the atmosphere was partisian and electric and the players fed off this. The opposite happens when nobody turns up and those who do only groan, give out and are negative. Negativity transfers.


We can still get out of this and avoid relegation. Need points from Longford/Limerick/Sligo/Fermanagh. I am not saying 4 wins but we should be aiming for 2 wins from here at least. Don't bother turning up if you can't buy into this. We need to get people back attending. Clubs should be trying to organsie away matches in the likes of sligo and fermanagh and head to match after to support the lads. Club faithful needs to organise events/iniatives to get kids and people turning up for home and away games. We can do this.

[Lone Shark]

Firstly, Cavan, on the day, were pretty poor themselves. The first 20 mins aside, they must be disappointed with how they played for the remainder of the game. For a team that would like to consider themselves as one of the potential challengers (1st time in a long time) in the Ulster championship this year, that is not good enough. Now I don’t know if Cavan took their foot off the pedal, succumbed to the pedestrian pace that Offaly brought to the game or whether Offaly actually nullified the Cavan threat after the first quarter. Maybe some of you can answer that? Inside, in Dunne and Keating, they have two real matchwinners. The ease and simplicity with which they took some of their early scores was very impressive. Both have done it against far better teams than us. Those two aside, Cavan look quite average though, albeit with some key men yet to return.

Secondly, our basic skills yesterday were not up to scratch. Our hand-passing when breaking forward was simply terrible at times. It completely killed the momentum of a number of attacks, especially in the 2nd half close to the sideline on the terrace-side. There was a number of passes out of hand that forced the man to have to go to the floor to pick up the ball and then turn backwards to give the ball back to a support player. In the first half I thought we looked physically overwhelmed in the tackle, but in the 2nd half we seemed to turn over a lot of Cavan possessions in the tackle, which was one of the more encouraging aspects of the game.

The forward play and lack of support running baffles me at times. The bridge from defense to attack was practically non-existent in the first half. This did improve slightly as the game wore on, but overall Offaly still seem to be of the mindset that we kick the ball into the forward line and let them deal with it. A reluctance to send players forward will continually cost us unless we start limiting teams to 8 or 9 points per game and become the equivalent of a ‘1-0 to the Arsenal type of team’. For this element of our play, the blame has to lie firmly at the hands of the management. Our style of play is seriously curtailing our scoring ability, so if that doesn’t change it is going to prove difficult to win any games this year. This Offaly team is not built to chase games, so falling so far in arrears early on is killing off any chance we have of winning games.

Lone Shark, I agree with you, Niall Mac was a lucky boy not to find himself sent off after his little kick in the first half. While harmless enough, you just cant do it and I’d had have no complaints if he’d seen the line for it. Luckily, the referee was lenient and no sooner had the incident passed than he kicked into gear with a lovely point (Offaly’s first) and then a second shortly after. A couple of McNamee’s scores showed real class. Unfortunately, he found himself on the ball all too little yesterday. While I know he is a heavily marked man, we need to get him on the ball a lot more. Cunningham showed glimpses of what he can do. He’s one that is definitely growing up and should become a key part of the Offaly team for years to come. His score in the first half was probably the highlight of the day from an Offaly perspective and showed what effect direct running & speed can do to any opposition.

Defensively, I don’t like the Offaly set-up at present. While we get a lot of numbers back behind the ball, I feel that we allow the opposition to get far too close to goal before standing up to them. Cavan hit the post three times in quick succession and had a number of very poor wides in the 2nd half. I think the margin of victory could probably have been greater rather than less. But for all of the negativity around the Offaly performance yesterday, amazingly, we weren’t actually out of the game until the goal. Paul McConway will no doubt be extremely disappointed. It was sloppy and we got the maximum punishment dished out to us. McConway battled hard throughout though and is worthy of a place on the team.

I don’t want to come on and have a go at individuals, I really don’t (but here I go!). I thought Ken Casey was absolutely abysmal yesterday. Looked completely uninterested and timid. Showed practically no ball-winning capabilities and his shot selection / ball distribution when he did have it was pretty awful too. Very disappointing because he’s a player I have always had plenty of time for. I don’t think he’s ever fully lived up to the promise he showed as a minor, when he was the star of the show. Another player I like is Niall Smith. His fielding abilities are a joy to behold at times, but in general open play I don’t think he brings enough. He did show some strength in the tackle on a couple of occasions, which many others failed to do. I hope he can improve his overall game. Worryingly though, I don’t think he caught a single contested high ball yesterday, and I don’t even remember too many kickouts coming his way either, which seemed strange seeing as I would regard him as our best fielder by a mile. A couple of other players were almost anonymous yesterday, and I had to double-take to confirm the presence of a couple of them on the field.

All that said, I still think there’s hope. This is exactly the position I, and most others if we’re honest, expected us to be in after two games. Our next two games are of vital importance and I welcome the few weeks’ break until the Sligo game. Avoiding relegation has to be our priority now. While not taking satisfaction from others misfortune, it would appear that Longford are on a very slippy slope downhill at present too. We have them in Tullamore in round 4 and I fully believe we are capable of beating them. With them being our championship opponents too, it will give us a good indicator of what to expect come summertime.

Anyway, as is my style, I’ve said too much. We’re all entitled to our voice, it makes for good debate. I’ll leave it at that.

Most of that would be pretty on the money, certainly I'd agree that Cavan could and should have won by a lot more, though I'd be slow to look on them any less for their performance yesterday. They did what they had to do, they were comfortably the better team for sixty minutes out of seventy, and they did that with a very raw group of players. You put Cian Mackey, Gearóid McKiernan, David Givney, Alan Clarke and Michael Lyng back into that team and you've a serious force. Basically Cavan were starting without their first choice players at 6, 8, 9, and 11, and Mackey who was their star man last year. Genuinely, I feel that this Offaly defeat has to be put in context and the context is not good.

The big positive for me is that relegation here was always likely to boil down to the games against the other weaker teams in the division, teams like Sligo, Longford and Limerick. In that sense, we haven't really lost a lot of ground yet - we'd be a lot worse off right now if we were like Longford, having lost a crucial head to head battle. If we can pick up two victories in those three games and just maybe catch Fermanagh when they've nothing to play for in the last round, we should be good enough to stay up. That might seem like setting the bar very low, but that's where we are right now and yesterday's performance proved that.

In terms of individuals, Niall Smith caught two targeted kickouts that I recall, but I agree that he's not nearly involved enough from general play. When you compare his involvement with that of Argue, his marker, I'd say the stats would come out pretty bleak. However it's hard to see what we can do to turn around the complete inability to win primary possession and taking Smith out makes it tougher still to do that. I like Eoin Carroll's attitude but the harsh fact of the matter is that you can't compete at midfield in your second year out of minor football, you just can't physically do it - even when you're a driven individual as he is. But look all across Ireland - you won't find 20 year old midfielders on any decent teams. I'm not saying don't pick him there - I'd prefer to put in a guy who is a little off but will grow into it than another player who isn't good enough and won't be in the future either - but he does need a bit of help alongside and Smith could be the best of a poor set of options.

The absence of Richie Dalton and Brian Connor is really being felt here, and that's not me suggesting that management should bring in guys that they don't want or that have to be cajoled.

[Bord na Mona man]

Great attitude on here. Let's just give up. Makes me sick going on here sometimes. I'm astonished at how some of yer clubs keep running which such attitudes.

1 or 2 people (who have previous form in such denouncements) posted along those lines. The rest of us have been trying to some proper analysis.