Offaly Minor Football 2014

A forum to air your views on Offaly GAA matters and beyond.
wheelo
Junior C
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2014 11:21 pm

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by wheelo »

Just to clear a few things up, these bunch of lads have played some of the best teams in the country and come out on top but what happened on Thursday night was hard to understand, they played Clare in the league and got beaten well and a week later beat Westmeath by 18 or so points and next they played Cork who are as big and strong as Dublin and came out on top after a great performance to reach the league final against Longford, lost that match by 4 points after two Longford sloppy goals and a very anti-Offaly ref. After that they played challenge matches (take them which ever way ye want) beat Monaghan by 4 points, beat Galway on two occasions, played Kerry twice, won the first by 5 points and lost the second by 10. So where did things go so wrong ? These young lads are better than, or is that the problem, they were lads playing men.

kingscounty
All Star
Posts: 1082
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2011 4:42 pm

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by kingscounty »

boomcha wrote:
kingscounty wrote:
blue biffo wrote:This will be short and maybe not so sweet,did we get carried away with ourself.I may get slated for this but we beat Kilkenny in the first round then a bad Westmeath team next but having said that I saw that match and we played a good brand of football that night but how bad was Westmeath.I now hear as you do after been beating, we were well beaten by a Longford team that Dublin beat in an earlier round and these lad went to Limerick for the weekend a few weeks ago and played Kerry,were beaten by 30 points and only scored 3 point in the game, heard that 2th or 3th hand not sure on that.
I thought I seen the score from the Kerry match , Kerry 5-18 Offaly 5-10 , so someone must be telling porky pies somewhere. If they only scored 3 points that's very worrying , why lie about score line , you will just get found out in the end!!
Yeah, they only lost to Kerry by 7 or 8 in a high scoring game so that would seem right. It was a terrible outcome but I would still leave everything as it is and learn from the mistakes next year. How many are minor again?

Side note: did anyone see the game being advertised as all ticket?? Are all games in OCP all ticket now?
Never heard anything about game been all ticket , it was terrible set up , large crowd standing out on the main road trying to buy tickets .

Ballyduff
Junior B
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2013 10:18 am

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by Ballyduff »

Kingscounty all games in O'Connor Park are now all ticket and have been since the Offaly U21 Football Final on the 12th April 2014. You must not be a regular vistor to the county ground

jimbob17
All Star
Posts: 914
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:40 am

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by jimbob17 »

Agree with a lot of what is being said......this negative approach did our lads no favours at all and we need to learn that negative 13 men behind the ball football is now outdated to a large degree - see what happened Cavan at weekend..... We showed little or no ambition to win that game and paid the price in a rout that was a lot greater than the the talent that is in the Offaly squad......Offaly would have beaten the Dubs among many of the other top teams at underage levels previously and this was the reason for the optimism around this team and this is why the nature of the defeat is so disappointing......
jimbob

User avatar
the Untouchable
All Star
Posts: 217
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 2:15 pm

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by the Untouchable »

I'll be honest here...these lads aren't as good as we hoped they would be...we're fine beating teams in challenge games & the likes but the Kerry game should have been a warning to us that we had some major defensive problems!!

Dublin players were built like lads who wouldn't look out of place in a senior panel, Offaly's lads just had no size or strength to stop a powerful team that runs straight at us!!

I've been to a good few u16 games in the last few years & seen alot of these guys play & what's always struck me about the way every u16 club team in Offaly plays...it's you play football & I'll play football & the best footballing team wins...you wouldn't see a decent challenge put in the whole year...so these lads get become lovely stylish footballers when given time space...but then then run into a team like Dublin at minor level & you see that the gap is already massive...Pascal setting us up defensive was us raising the white flag before we ever went out because not only were we not playing to our strengths but we were asking players to try play a style of football that we don't play at any level in Offaly...no team in Offaly plays defensive football where they grind out wins...so how did we expect our minors to just adapt & play like that!!

As for Pascal, I really hope he sticks with the minors for another year or 2, hopefully this loss will be used as a learning exercise to help build for next year, there's a lot of work still to be done with these lads if we're to start to really compete for minor titles!!
The Untouchable

kingscounty
All Star
Posts: 1082
Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2011 4:42 pm

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by kingscounty »

Ballyduff wrote:Kingscounty all games in O'Connor Park are now all ticket and have been since the Offaly U21 Football Final on the 12th April 2014. You must not be a regular vistor to the county ground
I would be a regular supporter in O Connor Park not a Visitor or (vistor) as you put it, I didn't realise that all underage games were all ticket . When I was at the two games between Galway and Kilkenny I could understand why they would be all ticket because of the demand but I did buy my tickets in my local CENTRA so that saved me standing in line in Tullamore. I don't mind at all if the games are all ticket , I would just like a better set up for buying them instead of standing in the way of the traffic on the road.

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

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by Lone Shark »

Lads just to point a couple of things here. Firstly, for those who are giving out about a defensive set up, ye realise that was what he did with this team all year, and what brought them so far? Paschal knew that in terms of the team's strengths and weaknesses, ball winning was always likely to be one of the areas that would have to be compensated for - we didn't win a lot of primary possession against Westmeath either, where the Castledaly lad (Hynes?) had a really good game. Once Colin Kenny was forced to stop playing, this group lost a standout midfielder and a lot of the guys who played there would be good footballers, but not natural midfielders, Jack Egan being the perfect example. It was a case of needs must, so lads ended up cast in a role that was not ideal, due to the lack of alternatives.

Against Westmeath we could sit back and break out and it worked to perfection, because (a) we were able to break the tackle when carrying the ball, and (b) we had Ruairí McNamee picking them apart with incisive passes.

It was the same with the under-21 team two years ago - everyone was delighted when we pulled off shock wins against Meath and Dublin playing a defensive formation, yet when we lost to Louth doing the same thing, people were queuing up to talk about how we should go "man to man" and play 1960's football. I was chatting to a couple of people outside OCP after the game and one older gentleman came up to make this very point, highlighting how you'd never see the really good teams like Kerry do anything like that. Clearly the same individual didn't watch the Munster Final the previous Sunday, where Kerry played as thick a blanket as I've ever seen, they just burst out of defence to great effect when they secured turnovers.

I know the history books are written by the winners and all that, but it's not fair to castigate management for doing the same things they did all year. If we weren't strong enough - and let's not forget that Westmeath weren't able to match us physically, so there was no sign that this was coming - then that's a great flaw to have, because that's fixable. If these lads weren't good footballers or weren't able to kick scores, then you'd have a real problem.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

Ahlethimoutwithit
All Star
Posts: 764
Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:40 pm

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by Ahlethimoutwithit »

Theres defensive and theres defensive LS, if we were properly set up defensively, we should have been well able to have numbers on to the breaking ball, which we didnt. Our half backs rarely attacked the breaking ball, it looked like they were told to hold their line , the guys dropping back into midfield would contest it.
One other thing is why was the goalie changed from the last day? The kick out did not help us in any way as they came straight doen the middle and hung perfectly for the bigger Dublin midfielders and their half forward line to catch, (often unopposed). I would have thought the change may have been made to help move Dublin around under the kickouts?
Against Westmeath at least we looked longwhen breaking out from the full back line, we killed ourselves carrying the call back into traffic.
There were plenty of occasions where there was an out ball to the wing and not used.

Mgt played it very defensive in U21 3 years ago, but it is very different trying to play that style in the depths of Winter and in the height of the Summer.

Westmeath might not have been great but there is no way we played as defensive against them.

substandard
All Star
Posts: 174
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2012 12:33 am
Club: Shamrocks

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by substandard »

Ahlethimoutwithit got there ahead of me, nearly word for word. To my mind, there was a vast difference in the tactical set up on both days. At most, there was 2 brought deep against Westmeath, and they generally patrolled midfield, and were available as an outlet to create overlaps when coming from the halfback line/ midfield. Against Dublin, it seemed as if some kind of zonal system was enforced; it's the only explanation I can see as to why support was non-existent, and Dublin players were able to breeze through one tackle at a time, and get into positions openly around the goal.
I was pleasantly surprised at the Westmeath game, because I'd heard about Paschal' preference for defensive systems, and I said here after the game the only time Westmeath had any joy or looked anyways threatening was when Offaly retreated into a more defensive formation in the 2nd half.
At no stage did Offaly pose any questions of Dublin throughout; Dublin could do as they pleased, and to be honest, I didn't see very much more in that Dublin team than Kildare had last year when beaten by Roscommon, who played the entire 2nd half with 14 men.
Regarding the keeper, I have a lot of sympathy for him, and again I'd wonder was he kicking under instruction, or had he been given any instructions at all? I would always make it clear when coaching that nobody gives out to a keeper; outfield players can make several mistakes that are barely recalled 5 minutes later, goalies don't have that luxury.
One final point- it seemed as if the players froze because they were either unsure of what they were to do, or else they didn't believe in it themselves.

jimbob17
All Star
Posts: 914
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:40 am

Re: Offaly Minor Football 2014

Post by jimbob17 »

Have to agree with substandard and ahlethimoutwithit....... Dublin didnt catch a huge amount of kickouts at all despite the physical advantage, but they mopped up on the breaks constantly......numerous times they broke the ball down to their lads (Clearly palming it in a given direction) and our fellas seemed to be hanging back waiting for them to take it and attack us instead of actually competing for it first off......OK if we are going to be defensive, our half forwards should have been at least contesting our kickouts at least, not standing behind 45 waiting for Dublin to attack off them and then trying to defend..... as John Giles said the other night, the best form of defence is attack......but we didnt have the "courage of our convictions" to even attempt that which was hugely disappointing!!!!

As to how they played all year, i have to say i only saw 3 matches so my comments can be taken at ones discretion....Dublin, Westmeath and Cork in League......There were vast differences in approach from Dublin to Westmeath as others alluded to......However, In the Cork game in the league it was a game of two halves - one like V Dubs and other like Westmeath.....In the first we were shocking defensive and invited them on to us and struggled hugely as a result and were lucky to be in the game at half time being only 5 or 6 behind after playing with the wind...... In the 2nd half the centre back at the time (a forward) was moved up the pitch if i remember and we went at them man for man like we did Westmeath and won the game as a result.....There was plenty of link play and good movement. This was a key indicator of the talent in the team as Cork would be one of the better teams in the country.....My point simply is the change away from this ultra negative attitude allowed us to create some attacks and make a game of it and we won as a result.....

Perhaps with a change of emphasis, we may not have won, but we certainly would have been a lot closer!!!

LS used the Kerry example......but Kerry played the game V Cork as we did V Westmeath......Guys tracked back somewhat, but they always had someone to kick it to or pass it to higher up the pitch with some incisive movement.....You cant have incisive movement if you have nobody to give it to in the 1st place...... we never had incisive movement as we had a 90 yard gap between the 13 inside our 45 and the 2 in the full forward line......There was never a viable out ball and we just kicked it straight back or hand passed to the opposition as a result. It was shocking poor and i felt sorry for the players at times as when they looked up, the next man was nearly a 100 yards away..... and some seemed either frustrated or disinterested with 20 mins to go as a result......

There were about 5 occasions when our lads got it and passed it back 15 yards when it was clearly on to turn and go forward and attack......if this wasnt a strategic pattern, it certainly looked like one and the groans from the huge crowd told it all.......We had very good reason for optimism for this game as this is far from a very good Dublin team by their standards and Offaly would have had success against this team at Development squad level.....In fact Offaly would have been the best team in Leinster at U14 level with the lads presently at U18 level and we also had a good crop of U17s to back them up..... Dublin only scored 13 points despite owning and being handed possession constantly and had numerous wides from good positions......

Look, I firmly accept that everyone did their best (players and management alike) and all tried hard and did their best and that is respected, but like the Senior hurlers V Kilkenny and Trappatoni's Ireland (and it was nearly as bad), if we fall so far short of getting the most out of ourselves because of how we set up, then we only have ourselves to blame........
jimbob

Post Reply