Accountability

A forum to air your views on Offaly GAA matters and beyond.
jimbob17
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Accountability

Post by jimbob17 »

10 games played in senior leagues this year. 5 football and 5 in hurling.....Not 1 win.... so who is to blame?

I for one dont blame Emmet McDonnell or Brian Whelehan for this. They are doing their level best with the resources they are given. Both went for their respective minor team jobs and were offered the senior job. Both struggle to get the proper resources in terms of coaching and sport science support in comparison with the other counties. Both are very inexperienced (especially Whelahan) for this level l.....

The footballers today looked fit compared to previous weeks but looked like they werent coached too well... Is this the managers fault? Not entirely. All other counties have an experienced coaching support team at their disposal.... Offaly have the bare bones and all involved are grossly inexperienced.....This is the county boards fault for not supplying the requisite support as they are trying to save a few quid.... maybe if they put in the resources they would get it back in revenue from attendance, there was barely 200 in Tullamore today.....

Brian Carroll said as much publicly when he asked why Offaly always have to have a first timer as Manager at senior level....

The hurlers are coached by an excellent physical trainer who has very little hurling experience. Meanwhile Laois have an equivalent of our physical trainer and backed it up with hurling coaches to coach the team..... Imagine that, having a hurling coach coaching hurling, sure that might make a small little bit of sense.....

Today I watched our county board gurus sit in the stand in their yellow (badge of honour) bibs in front of the vip section watch the football.

THESE GOBSH***S are F****** CLUELESS AND NEED TO BE TURFED OUT. THESES DINOSAURS ARE THE REASON WE ARE LOSING GAMES AS THEY FAIL ON A CONSISTENT BASIS TO IMPLEMENT PROPER STRUCTURES. FACT. Meanwhile, our chairman was distancing himself from this group and cowered away in the corner of the stand away from everybody else to watch the game.....

Ive heard lads from other counties sneer offaly for being so far behind the times and that famous man with the cheque book is one of the main reasons for this. Ive heard that the hurlers have yet to receive playing gear for 2014 but it being 2nd hand information, i am not sure if this is correct....

All in all, these losses are not happening by chance and at this stage, heads should roll.... The board should be petitioned by the clubs to step aside and a new progressive thinking educated in the methods and requirements of the modern games should be put in place....
jimbob

kingscounty
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Re: Accountability

Post by kingscounty »

100% agree jimbob , the county board are to blame plain and simple. Who were the guys that were picked to choose the hurling manager ? One year didn't they set up a committee of about 6 lads to pick new footballer manager and it took them that long that lads pulled their names out of the running . The year Paul o Kelly got the job he was ran within a few months. There is something very wrong within the county board when it comes to looking after young players and finding managers . Ollie Baker got the job with no management experience , joe Dooley the same and now BW. Money is an issue we all know that , but money at underage and at senior level is gona have to be spent in order to fix this serious problem . A Liam Sheedy, or another high profile name from Outside the county is needed. Also agree Carlow should be promoted , I wouldn't fancy offaly to beat Carlow anyway the way they played against them last year.

substandard
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Re: Accountability

Post by substandard »

Just out of curiosity, what is the financial situation in Offaly? Is there a report that is published, or is it kept in-house? What is the balance outstanding on OCP?

hawksforever
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Re: Accountability

Post by hawksforever »

Our county board are the blame , hope something is done shortly as the future is looking bad in both grades.
Sack McDonnell and get in a bid gun from outside the county and bring back those lads that were frozen out , well its a start.
Small crowd again so what does that tell you , support has voted with their feet.
I would give BW all the support he needs , lets not forget that Clare supporters were not happy to see squeaky fitz when he was appointed , but he has the experience of the big time in club and county .

Killeighman
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Re: Accountability

Post by Killeighman »

2.1 million owed on the OCP development

Plain of the Herbs
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Re: Accountability

Post by Plain of the Herbs »

I want to copy Spot’s post he made on the other thread here as I feel it is more relevant here and it will quickly get forgotten about as we turn the pages on the Offaly v Antrim matches. This, and the 2003 Paul O’Kelly feature from the ‘Daily Cork’ all form part of the problem assessment process.

I am glad to see Spot raising the issue with his club and I hope it does eventually lead to an uprising and gets the support of a number of like-minded individuals and clubs prior to a County board debate. The one at the last Board meeting, if media reports are to be a reflection of the debate, seemed to concentrate on where Offaly played hurling and making team announcements early in the week. All part of a debate, alright, but not going to save Offaly hurling or football.

I don’t want to go rehashing history, but today’s problems were highlighted by O’Kelly in that article, no underage structure, teams and coaches not given sufficient support, delaying the appointment of U21 management, civil servants in positions of power. That article could have been written recently. It was written over a decade ago.

That Paul O’Kelly was effectively told to take himself and his three year plan and fuck off with himself is sad and shocking. Now, it might be that with O’Kelly still managing the football team in 2004 that they would still have lost to Westmeath by a point, might still have lost to Wexford and/or been beaten by Laois in 2005. But having a long term vision in place, with goals and targets to be achieved, would be of immense benefit today. Come to think of it, O’Kelly would make a good County chairman. A business adviser and management consultant, intelligent and articulate.

(You might want to skip this bit if you are a public servant) Instead Offaly Board is ran by a collection of Public Servants who are as described by Paul O’Kelly ten years ago. They ahve no experience of setting or meeting targets, of setting and achieving goals, have no experience of business, while the finance department expends about €1m annually and is headed by two octogenarians. Meanwhile the Chairman who fired Paul O’Kelly in 2003, together with the plan, is alive and well and is now the CEO. Business journalist Shane Ross would have a field day with this shenanigans.

The delegates aren’t blameless either. How could they elect Joe Higgins as Vice-chairman in December 2012 when they had the option, on the same ballot paper, of electing Colm Cummins, a man who had a track record with the recovery of the Edenderry club. I drive through Edenderry regularly enough and it’s great to see the signs up advertising the ‘Cúl Redz’ underage sessions.

Saturday’s ‘Daily Cork’ also contained a feature on Laois hurling, written by Daragh Ó Conchúir. On Laois’s underage programme it read ““at the time , we were struggling at U14 and we felt the skill levels weren’t good enough, and it wasn’t good enough to be starting coaching at U14, it was just too late hurling-wise” recalls Critchley, “So we decided to start this for children of 10, 11, 12, 13” It went on that the Cúchulainn programme (Cú Chulainn being the grown-up Setanta) was established subsequeltly and that caters for 14, 15 and 16 year olds.” Critchley is also quoted "In the past you were dependent on a good crop of players rather than a system that produces good players all the time and that's where we're moving now"

Eh, where’s our Setanta and Cúchulainn programmes? Alan Mulhall is reported to be doing great work with underage football, and I will accept that, but what’s John Leahy doing? For how long more can we send underage hurlers out to field against hurlers from similar-sized counties and be unable to deal with how the opposition play. To be unable to deal with a dropping ball, to be unable to deal with an opponent running at them at pace, ball on hurl, unable to deal with an overlap, unable to create an overlap. Too many Offaly hurlers need to let the ball hop on the ground before they can take possession, or hop the ball on the hurl, of both. This needs to be dealt with. Lots of kids pucking around at half-time at matches around the county, but at a rough estimate about a quarter of them grip the hurl incorrectly.

And I don’t want to hear misty-eyed bullshit about ground hurling. If ground hurling was the panacea we’d be taking puckouts off the ground. Anyway, Offaly never did play ground hurling – they moved the ball quick, but that was generally out of the hand. For feck sake, how many times in your life have you seen a hurling ball move from one ‘21’ to the next on the ground? They wouldn’t do that in hockey.

Look at Cork today. Stylish as you like, and the way they picked out loose men with short or middle distance stick-passes. Lusmagh played something similar when they won the Intermediate. Beautiful to watch, and effective too. And it was progressive and forward-thinking. Offaly continue to produce touch hurlers who would be well able to play something like this.

Of course, that would require long term planning and, starting at 10, 11, 12, 13 like the Laois programme, would take time to develop. And our Board, as we have seen, don’t do long term plans. There’s going to have to be a change of attitude in this regard. Offaly hurling will be down for quite some time, estimating a time span on this slump – at least a decade after a pre-teenage programme is put in place. There is NO quick fix solution.

Now it may happen during that decade of recovery that Offaly will run Cork to within a point in Cork, score four goals against Kilkenny, run Waterford to three points, and some galoot(s) will declare the famine over and query the necessity for such an underage programme. Ya know.

None of this is new to the site here. I think on this site we have a decent cross-section of those interested in the GAA in Offaly, between club players, supporters and whatever, hurling and football. There may be an age-bias here with internet activity but whatever. And there is general broad agreement on the problems afflicting Offaly.

Offaly County Board doesn’t have a track record of development of structures or infrastructure. The footballers of the 1960s and 1970s were developed in boarding schools like St Mel’s or Knockbeg or the like. And the treatment of two of its potentially greatest ever footballers (Peter Nolan and Tom Furlong) by the board in the 1960s is only rivalled by what Kildare did to Larry Tompkins. The hurlers of the 1980s were developed in Pres. Birr or Birr VS, which actually hurling academies before the term came to be used at all, the hurlers of the 1990s came up through Birr Community School and Banagher Tech. The county board never owned as much as a blade of grass until taking the lease on OCP in the last decade. No vision, no drive, someone else’s job.
Over The Black Spot wrote:I don't want to seem reactionary, or to be accused of scare-mongering, but today is a very dark day for Offaly hurling. We've fallen out of the top 12 (another chance to come I know, but it's a stupid system that doesn't send the 2A winners straight up) without putting up a big fight.

The tactic of playing a sweeper with the breeze beggers belief, but I don't totally blame the management. There is NO long term plan for the development of hurling in the county, nor has there been under the riegn of countless administrations, and we are seeing the fruits of it at all levels. We have NO U21 manager heading into April, and it's symptomatic of the contempt with which the game is being treated. This slide has been ongoing for over 15 years, and nobody is doing anything about it. Why?

Underage football has seen a measurable increase in standards over the past 5-6 years, due in no small part to the work of Alan Mulhall I believe. Why is there no hurling person in there doing the same job? Other counties have much larger games development personnel numbers, yet we stand by and save money. Why? (And I direct that question to the Treasurer who has managed the finances with an iron-fist for too long now!)

Offaly hurling needs to be saved now, or we might as well throw in the towel. An uprising of the clubs is needed, and I for one will be speaking with my club executive tomorrow night, and encouraging them to instigate a root and branch review of what's going on.
Pat Donegan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

ryot
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Re: Accountability

Post by ryot »

Substandard

I have not seen the CB Accounts for many years as I have lived away for over 40 years but

The Accounts are published every year, are discussed at Convention and every club that attends are handed them. So you can say they are kept inhouse, within the GAA members, if you wish but the journos are given them and report on them. The detail the papers publish probably reflects the actual interest most have............. very little I expect...........

Its fine for people to say bring in top outside managers/coaches/S&C/Physios/Medics but will those same people raise the 500,000 PA minimum to fund that or is there that sort of cash sitting in the CB band account............ I suspect such bank account is bare !!!!!

Sure there should be spending on Senior teams, Dev Squads, Minors & 21's but where is the cash to come from..................

substandard
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Re: Accountability

Post by substandard »

Thanks for that- as someone who holds their breath and says a wee prayer going to the banklink the few days before payday, I can't grasp the scale f running the finances of an entity the scale of a county board. I know you can't be reckless and do a Leeds Utd on it, but 2.1 million seems a fairly massive millstone to be carrying round. Again, I wouldn't know much about financial planning, but I'd imagine it's fairly basic that in order to draw crowds you would need competitive teams, and to build competitive teams requires investment from an early age; money has to be got from somewhere and channelled into a structured medium to long-term plan, I.e something that will see a return in the next 3-5 years. How long has it taken Carlow or Laois to build in hurling? Otherwise it strikes me like investing heavily in a state of the art milking parlour, but not buying in cows, or feed for the ones that are there already...

suckindiesel
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Re: Accountability

Post by suckindiesel »

I will nail a few subjects all on this one thread, ambling in from laois for the annual chinwig.

I was a member of the leinster council development committee over a dozen years ago and we spent 6 months analysing all the grounds in leinster, surveying all angles. when it came to the subject of backing investment projects in grounds, it was no easy task, simply because not all county boards owned their grounds. in the case of Kilkenny(nowlan park) an laois(moore park), both venues owned by the respective county boards, investment was straight forward. the likes of offaly, louth and others complicated matters. we drew up the road map with what we saw as 4 key venues outside of croke park, with moore park, nowlan park and connor park the most suitable investment vehicles due to location...there was little point in pumping big bucks into places like wexford park as it was rarely going to act as a neutral venue within the province. One very important decision we made was to force the adoption of a dedicated county ground where all provincial championship games minor to senior would be played, conditions permitting, hence stopping counties pulling the stunt of moving games to a smaller venue.
We also were adamant in that report that it was totally futile to financially support to a significant degree more than one venue in each county, as then we were creating white elephants and undermining and diluting the premier venue in each county. Hence, in your case, Birr, the Leinster council as far back as 12 years ago, supported at central council level, had a policy of zero interest in promoting a venue outside of tullamore in a small county like offaly. I do accept the "spiritual home of offaly hurling" argument to a degree, however as an outsider, I believe O Connor Park is one of the best provincial venues in the country and it should be naturally accepted by those in offaly as the only venue for home games in league and championship...birr has had its day.....and I promise leinster and central council will grant little or nothing to a secondary venue potentially undermining the designated county ground.


on the more concerning issue of your county hurlers and footballers....I would know more about the hurlers....laois were on the rim after two jinnet managements in fennelly and McCarthy....and the only way was up. however for the past 6 years whilst at times disastrous and pathetic on the public deck at senior level, below the waterline there has been incredible work going on underage....now we have a smarter senior management team fully in tune with modern hurling techniques in place and aided by the early products of the youth academy(if I can call it that), suddenly the future on our front seems a little brighter....we are playing with method. our weakness this summer may be the relative lack of strength in depth as you need a workable panel of up to 25 to compete seriously.

I look at offaly as a county who has produced an amazing array of individual hurling wizards over the years, mixed with the spirit and hey presto all Irelands. offaly seniors could produce an upset this summer, if they do it will merely be a temporary patch over the problems. the senior squad is degrading by the year. at underage level you are becoming a total joke, in the middle underage tier u14 to u16, you are on a par with Roscommon and below Kildare....you might laugh at this, but I am involved with the laois under 16s and we are a match for any county in munster, we played clare today with a and b teams at this age group and beat them in both games....I can tell you from experience our u16 B team will beat the best u16 offaly A team you can put out at the moment....and that is not saying we have superstars, just that we have a plan and are totally organised, we have squad, managers and full back up teams, organisers, designated pitches to train on etc...the more you put in, the more you get out.

in terms of offaly underage hurling the dye has been cast for the next 6 years and the results will be generally awful. I played golf last week with one of the all time famous offaly greats of the hurling field....I pinned him down on why offaly is doing nothing at teenage level and in particular why guys of his standing are not getting involved...his answer was two fold...he gave enough to his county and now wanted time for himself and his family, and if he wanted to get involved, he could train loads of adult teams in the region and pocket a ton a session, and why then get involved in a "thank you" job at county underage level?........a cold statement of affairs, but one that may ring through with many I fear.


so...my final words....you can all get your delegates to stand up and crib away at county boards meetings....that is simply reaction....the hard work is action...can you put in place teams of 6 individuals to take 4 sets of squads...u10,u12,u14 and u16....that's a minimum of 24 personnel...they need to be qualified coaches,planners and dedicated, plus getting full blooded support of clubs from player availability to pitch use .....and not just baby sitters or parents pushing their own kids...........
an awful lot of hard work involved? ....THE DAYS OF EASY LAZY SOLUTIONS ARE OVER.

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townman
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Re: Accountability

Post by townman »

good post suckindisel , offaly should start at the top County Board the same names are there years
Tommy Bryne Martin Boland, they know as much about hurling as a pig at a dinner dance
get them out the fuck.

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townman
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Re: Accountability

Post by townman »

as for with all the debate about where the hurling should be played, after this year with the footballers in division 4 and maybe the hurlers in division 2 A O'Connor park will be one big lonely place come next years home games, as i said before you can have a double header with the footballers and the hurlers in Geashill next year with the crowd that will be watching it sad times indeed :cry:

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Bord na Mona man
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Re: Accountability

Post by Bord na Mona man »

suckindiesel wrote:I will nail a few subjects all on this one thread, ambling in from laois for the annual chinwig.

I was a member of the leinster council development committee over a dozen years ago and we spent 6 months analysing all the grounds in leinster, surveying all angles. when it came to the subject of backing investment projects in grounds, it was no easy task, simply because not all county boards owned their grounds. in the case of Kilkenny(nowlan park) an laois(moore park), both venues owned by the respective county boards, investment was straight forward. the likes of offaly, louth and others complicated matters. we drew up the road map with what we saw as 4 key venues outside of croke park, with moore park, nowlan park and connor park the most suitable investment vehicles due to location...there was little point in pumping big bucks into places like wexford park as it was rarely going to act as a neutral venue within the province. One very important decision we made was to force the adoption of a dedicated county ground where all provincial championship games minor to senior would be played, conditions permitting, hence stopping counties pulling the stunt of moving games to a smaller venue.
We also were adamant in that report that it was totally futile to financially support to a significant degree more than one venue in each county, as then we were creating white elephants and undermining and diluting the premier venue in each county. Hence, in your case, Birr, the Leinster council as far back as 12 years ago, supported at central council level, had a policy of zero interest in promoting a venue outside of tullamore in a small county like offaly. I do accept the "spiritual home of offaly hurling" argument to a degree, however as an outsider, I believe O Connor Park is one of the best provincial venues in the country and it should be naturally accepted by those in offaly as the only venue for home games in league and championship...birr has had its day.....and I promise leinster and central council will grant little or nothing to a secondary venue potentially undermining the designated county ground.


on the more concerning issue of your county hurlers and footballers....I would know more about the hurlers....laois were on the rim after two jinnet managements in fennelly and McCarthy....and the only way was up. however for the past 6 years whilst at times disastrous and pathetic on the public deck at senior level, below the waterline there has been incredible work going on underage....now we have a smarter senior management team fully in tune with modern hurling techniques in place and aided by the early products of the youth academy(if I can call it that), suddenly the future on our front seems a little brighter....we are playing with method. our weakness this summer may be the relative lack of strength in depth as you need a workable panel of up to 25 to compete seriously.

I look at offaly as a county who has produced an amazing array of individual hurling wizards over the years, mixed with the spirit and hey presto all Irelands. offaly seniors could produce an upset this summer, if they do it will merely be a temporary patch over the problems. the senior squad is degrading by the year. at underage level you are becoming a total joke, in the middle underage tier u14 to u16, you are on a par with Roscommon and below Kildare....you might laugh at this, but I am involved with the laois under 16s and we are a match for any county in munster, we played clare today with a and b teams at this age group and beat them in both games....I can tell you from experience our u16 B team will beat the best u16 offaly A team you can put out at the moment....and that is not saying we have superstars, just that we have a plan and are totally organised, we have squad, managers and full back up teams, organisers, designated pitches to train on etc...the more you put in, the more you get out.

in terms of offaly underage hurling the dye has been cast for the next 6 years and the results will be generally awful. I played golf last week with one of the all time famous offaly greats of the hurling field....I pinned him down on why offaly is doing nothing at teenage level and in particular why guys of his standing are not getting involved...his answer was two fold...he gave enough to his county and now wanted time for himself and his family, and if he wanted to get involved, he could train loads of adult teams in the region and pocket a ton a session, and why then get involved in a "thank you" job at county underage level?........a cold statement of affairs, but one that may ring through with many I fear.


so...my final words....you can all get your delegates to stand up and crib away at county boards meetings....that is simply reaction....the hard work is action...can you put in place teams of 6 individuals to take 4 sets of squads...u10,u12,u14 and u16....that's a minimum of 24 personnel...they need to be qualified coaches,planners and dedicated, plus getting full blooded support of clubs from player availability to pitch use .....and not just baby sitters or parents pushing their own kids...........
an awful lot of hard work involved? ....THE DAYS OF EASY LAZY SOLUTIONS ARE OVER.
That's a fairly sobering analysis from suckindiesel. And it all makes sense and stacks up.

We are that bad. for the last 20 years, our ship has been set on a course for an existence outside of hurling's Top 12. Now we're finally getting there.
In the last 2 decades, the couple of one-off decent showings at minor and U21 have been the outlier, we have been getting worse and worse at a very steady pace.

The reasons have been highlighted over an over on this forum over and over. And I notice now there seems to be a growing consensus from people around what our problems are.

btw, I can well understand that ex-player's thinking.
I would actually be biased against ex-All Ireland winners and legends taking up these underage roles for a couple of reason.
- They might be less hungry to succeed having scaled huge heights already in their lives.
- Their ideas might well be out of date. We've seen plenty of this in Offaly. Nostalgia is bound to be a factor. 'Hurling in my era was better. Our winning formula of 1981, or 1994 is what Offaly need'
Once some former greats starts a sentence with "Offaly need to go back to" I get worried about what he's going to say next.

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Bord na Mona man
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Re: Accountability

Post by Bord na Mona man »

We can blame the County Board up to a point. I will say administration is generally a thankless task. I've done it myself at club level and it means making and taking dozens of phone calls every day, at all sorts of hours. Trying to manage people who can't be managed and trying to organise people who don't want to be organised. Keeping the ship afloat in a county like Offaly takes serious grind. Never mind having the time and energy for clearheaded strategic thinking.

POTH has raised something worth exploring as well. Historically there was no winning strategy from the County Board that put us on the path to success. We moved up the ranks in football in the 50s and 60s due to availability of employment in places like ESB and Bord na Mona. While other counties continued to be ravaged by emigration, Offaly now had better means of retaining talent.
Look how this feeds into the modern day. These traditional safety nets now have Offaly with the lowest participation rate in 3rd level. At the opposite of the spectrum, a county like Mayo, more traditionally on the margins and plagued by emigration now has the highest 3rd level participation rate.

Ahlethimoutwithit
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Re: Accountability

Post by Ahlethimoutwithit »

Fair play Suckin diesel for taking time to post that sobering insight.

I have highlighted many of these issues before. I was at a training session over the weekend where a group of early teens had a training session with no proper handpassing or kicking drills, let alone any contested games based drills.
Anyway, all you can do is keep plugging away trying to convert lads, but this situation in hurling is frightening.

The one thing that has to be said, and I am listening to it since I was a kid playing. "Sur what would so an so know about football?, Never kicked a ball in his life!" However right this analysis was, the scenario was the same, the critisiser...(spell check please!) could not/would not commit to training a team. Whilst the other individual was giving up his time.
Fast forward onto today, County Board is staffed by guys willing to give up their time, but dont have the skills to execute a turnaround plan. SO....where is the cavalry? I have gone to respected guys within our club to give up 3 to 4 hrs a week to help out train and coach teams, have tried to encourage coaches to go to workshops and its a source of continued frustration. Their atitudes are cat.

To be honest, I feel that until clubs bring in a ruling that unless coaches are properly qualified, and they have a year to complete the basic course, (which only takes a few hours, and attend a few workshops), then they will be asked to stand aside. Too many guys are making it up as they go along.

But ask yourself the question, why would you get involved in the County Board at the moment? One answer would be to look at Pat Teehan, preseide over the worst period of Offaly GAA with no positives to his name and he gets promoted. I'm in!!!!
Martin Boland is a decent guy, Padraig Boland is full of sound bytes so far. Tommy Byrne is not up to it. Jimmy Hogan and Andy Gallagher waltzing from Asistant to treasurer every 5 years.......shocking. Colm Cummins is a very good guy, and if a guy like him got in , it might have encouraged more to come forward.
But reality is that many clubs dont play any role in the County Board and send in clowns to the meetings who have no point of view on anything. Daingean are a club with a proud past hardly ever represented at meetings. But they have a fairly progressive chairman. Too many clubs are like this , Mick Sheridan was criticised but at least he generated debate.

With regard to John Leahy and the hurling end of things, he has a bigger job to do than his football counter parts.I dont know how much his political aspirations may have taken over his GAA ambitions. I am not saying this is the case, but he has a lot of committments and I would wonder. Personally, I think we need to identify young players in their early 20's who are interested in doing PE courses. Educate them, with them paying part of it, and then offer them a graduate role to head up coaching and training coaches around the county in order to develope themselves.Reward the most progressive guys. Maybe 4 guys for hurling. They go into clubs, schools helping to upskill our coaches and players. Build in for kids as part of an afterschool programme. Each child to get 2 hours per week. Do this in conjunction with our current resources.

*What are ye doing, (I see one guy here is going to speak with his club, fair play, I'm with you),
*Ask questions of what way are coaches trained/recruited within the club. Are you of an age to help out? Would you consider it. Great to see AZ involved in Tipp, Ferbane have got their structure right at underage. Why can't this be put into a working document and available to other clubs to roll out?
Anyone on here who is away, get involved in whatever county you are in, you might be back at some stage here!
*Clubs need to become more active in the schools, pay guys who are struggling financially but have an interest to go in and do a few hours. This way you get all kids to participate
*Organise street leagues in towns to increase participation

Ahlethimoutwithit
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Re: Accountability

Post by Ahlethimoutwithit »

I think there has to be some sort of gathering of the GAA fraternity to help build a plan to restore some semblance of credibility to Offaly GAA.
Jayz its hard to take when you think of where we were. But BNM man hit the nail on the head. We were blessed with employment and the BNM and ESb tournaments attracted thousands of supporters with many Offaly players getting huge exposure and were challenged to the highest level.

It's a sad time for all interested in Offaly Gaa.

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