Un Cambio Es Bueno

[Kevin]

What I found so funny about it all was boland stated that we have a habit of doing our dirty washing in offaly in the public eye..He then went on to slate the offaly players(in public).Hes out of his depth and should step down sooner rather than later..I think the players do have alot to answear for but to say sheedy or Cody couldn't manage them is incorrect because these players have only played under very ordinary managers and still hung around.ex hurlers sorting out offalys problems again...oh good god please open your eyes cb

Too true.

[allstar2010]

Jesus those comments from Boland and Cleary epitomise everything that is wrong with Offaly gaa at the moment. An inept chairman trying to suggest that Whelehan wasnt at fault for such a poor year. Get him out of there quick! Cleary - a ridiculous snobbish comment by him showing that he should have absolutely nothing to do with this recovery programme, we need the whole county united behind this. Need lads involved that want change not a continuation of this mess we're in. Supporters are disgruntled, fed up and have lost interest. Club teams are getting more support! CB are going down a very dangerous path and soon will be lost for good.

[biffinbanner]

i heard the interview and read the article. jesus cleary really shot himself in the foot... i was chatting a man involved with offaly hurling about 15/20 years ago and he said having successful minor teams was a bad thing for the county.he said getting a few hungry young lads into senior every year who have nothing won was better..lets say i was puzzled by that

[townman]

funny that Pat Cleary done his hurling with tullamore north offaly, add in portlaoise in laois and was hurling with kilmacud crokes in 1985 when he won his all ireland medal, if dermot healy thought the same as pat he would have been left in Dublin in 85.

[Buck Face]

I feel like I'm almost defending the indefensible here but here goes -

No matter what is done in Offaly some people on here seem to manage to put nothing but a negative twist on it.

Yes the comments in the Tribune are more than questionable but so is the quality of the piece itself. It is alarming that comments and make up of the committee seem to have an unreasonable bias towards the hurling stronghold but it does state that the committee will be examining the 3 population centres of Tullamore, Edenderry and Birr which is a clear indication that the remit is wholly inclusive (as it should be).

LS – The crux of Pat Cleary’s point in relation to players being better off playing with their clubs than being wrapped in cotton wool is a valid point but may well be a bad example in this instance. The clubs suffer too much already with unavailability of senior players without doing the same throughout our underage structure. Comparing what we do with our players to what Dublin do is like comparing apples and oranges. We need to follow Kilkenny’s example on the likes of this.

OF – We have one hurling coach and development officer who is in the middle of a maelstrom here and you’re asking where he is? Seriously??? You are crying out for external people and they get a business man involved and you are still unhappy? It’s hardly rocket science to get a submission to the committee but if you still can’t figure out how to send one between now and September then at least go to Dooly’s. The avenues, as always, are there.

Babsandbob and Toxicity – In fairness Padraig Boland is being reported to have said that Offaly have some guys that could not be managed by Cody, Daly and Fitzgerald. Without going into any detail on the attitude of certain individuals Cody’s track record alone tells you that he’d manage them alright but it wouldn't be by letting them tog out for their county. Boland is certainly not slating the players in general in the quotes I’ve seen but referring to some players which isn't wide of the mark.

Townman and Allstar– when you talk about the crowd of muppets on the CB or the CB going down a dangerous path what group are you talking about? The CB is simply a representation of all our clubs. Townman, do you even know who picked this committee? I don’t but you (and many others on here) seem to know as you are directing anger somewhere so please enlighten me.

It’s time to stop all the negativity and direct our energies into something even close to positive as that might actually help make a difference.

[allstar2010]

Townman and Allstar– when you talk about the crowd of muppets on the CB or the CB going down a dangerous path what group are you talking about? The CB is simply a representation of all our clubs. Townman, do you even know who picked this committee? I don’t but you (and many others on here) seem to know as you are directing anger somewhere so please enlighten me.

It’s time to stop all the negativity and direct our energies into something even close to positive as that might actually help make a difference.

I mean dont get the wrong people involved, negative ex county players is not whats needed. We need people willing to encourage, put in the hours and get youngsters from u6 playing the game and enjoying it. It's very important that all primary and secondary schools in the county have at least one teacher equipped with the skills to coach the game to our future stars. The CB has to encourage this, if not, then that's what I mean by going down a dangerous path.

[bula bula]

Townman,

It is very easy to castigate all of the County Board and blame all and sundry on it.

However, I will remind you that one member of the County board is Andy Gallagher, the ONLY Offalyman to date to have managed Offaly to an All Ireland senior hurling title in 1981 and he is from North Offaly. He had the vision to get Diarmuid on board as coach, and was instrumental in getting the open draw in Leinster, both of which helped bring the success of 1980 and 1981. He has never been given the credit for what he did. Offaly hurling was in the doldrums when he took over as manager in 1976 and with hard work from a lot of people it was turned around. This can be done again. I would advise you to read Enda Mc Evoys book about Fr. Tommy Maher to get the correct story of Offalys breakthrough in the 80's and give credit where it is due

yes i know what he done but as you said that was 1980 the game and alot more has move on since, aren't we saying offaly hurling is living in the past long enough, Andy rules with an iron fist in offaly and has a say in lots of things like bring hurling out of Birr to pay for his pride and joy that is O'Connor park. its time for a change its not working the way it is run now, what happen 39 years ago is no good for today, its a fresh young view people to keep up with the times not people who live in the past like the CB we have.

Going on about hurling in Birr is not living in the past Townman? And throwing out things like " rules with an iron fist" and "bring hurling out of Birr to pay for his pride and joy that is o Connor park " are just ridiculous comments to be throwing in against the man.

[Lone Shark]

I feel like I'm almost defending the indefensible here but here goes -

No matter what is done in Offaly some people on here seem to manage to put nothing but a negative twist on it.

Yes the comments in the Tribune are more than questionable but so is the quality of the piece itself. It is alarming that comments and make up of the committee seem to have an unreasonable bias towards the hurling stronghold but it does state that the committee will be examining the 3 population centres of Tullamore, Edenderry and Birr which is a clear indication that the remit is wholly inclusive (as it should be).

LS – The crux of Pat Cleary’s point in relation to players being better off playing with their clubs than being wrapped in cotton wool is a valid point but may well be a bad example in this instance. The clubs suffer too much already with unavailability of senior players without doing the same throughout our underage structure. Comparing what we do with our players to what Dublin do is like comparing apples and oranges. We need to follow Kilkenny’s example on the likes of this.

OF – We have one hurling coach and development officer who is in the middle of a maelstrom here and you’re asking where he is? Seriously??? You are crying out for external people and they get a business man involved and you are still unhappy? It’s hardly rocket science to get a submission to the committee but if you still can’t figure out how to send one between now and September then at least go to Dooly’s. The avenues, as always, are there.

Babsandbob and Toxicity – In fairness Padraig Boland is being reported to have said that Offaly have some guys that could not be managed by Cody, Daly and Fitzgerald. Without going into any detail on the attitude of certain individuals Cody’s track record alone tells you that he’d manage them alright but it wouldn't be by letting them tog out for their county. Boland is certainly not slating the players in general in the quotes I’ve seen but referring to some players which isn't wide of the mark.

Townman and Allstar– when you talk about the crowd of muppets on the CB or the CB going down a dangerous path what group are you talking about? The CB is simply a representation of all our clubs. Townman, do you even know who picked this committee? I don’t but you (and many others on here) seem to know as you are directing anger somewhere so please enlighten me.

It’s time to stop all the negativity and direct our energies into something even close to positive as that might actually help make a difference.

I agree with the vast majority of this post, but just to address the bolded part addressed to me - I'm not saying for a minute that we should or shouldn't allow our county players to spend more time with their clubs. I'm saying that relative to pretty much every other county, we actually do very well in this regard, so whatever the reason for our difficulties relative to other counties, this isn't it. SOME clubs in Offaly - and I cannot stress the word some enough - seem to think that a county player should be available for training, challenge matches, football, hurling, senior, minor, the whole lot. This doesn't happen anywhere.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about:

Kilclonfert delegate Brendan Spillane felt county players should be available to their clubs for minor and adult league games.

For the love of God, a Kilclonfert minor player would have had fourteen league games in the first half of the year on this basis, not including any hurling he might do, and not including five games with St Vincents in the county u21 championship, and two adult IFC games with Kilclonfert. Throw in three or four games with his school and you're talking about at least one game a week from the middle of January to the middle of July, on top of what he's doing with the county. That's bloody daft.


You say we should use Kilkenny as the example, but my understanding is that Brian Carroll and Kevin Brady would spend at least as much time with Coolderry as Henry Shefflin and Michael Fennelly would with Ballyhale, and they'll also play at least as many matches in their club colours while the county team is involved - the problem is that because we have a county football team, and because we have a county football championship, they don't get as many championship games in that time. Kilkenny play SHC games throughout the summer, and so do we - however they played their football championship in March and April, and then plonked the county final on the Saturday night before the Leinster hurling final, ten weeks after the semis. The relegation final, between two teams who played one match in the middle of March, is yet to be played. No matter how much some hurling purists might like it, Offaly will never go down that road, nor should it. We have to play football rounds on alternate available weeks, and we can't put Offaly SFC games on when the county hurlers are out, or vice versa.

Now I'm not ruling out that this committee might come back and say that dual players are simply too awkward to accommodate any more, so we need to go down the road of counties like Galway, that will play domestic SFC on weekends when the county's senior hurlers are in action, and vice versa. If Dermot Healy and the lads do this, then fair play to them for being up front about it. I've long argued that we need to have a real debate about this one way or another and come to a resolution on it, rather than the constant tug'o'war we have now.

But I would challenge you to find any county in Ireland, (where BOTH sports are held in equal esteem) where clubs get more access to county players than in Offaly. I'd imagine you won't find one.

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

Fair post Buckface,

LS, with regard to access to minor players by the clubs, I would imagine the atitude is to go to the CB meeting and look for full use of the players with the aim of getting them for some of the league games.

I also would have to take serious issue with the comments around what Padraig Boland said about certain players and the difficulty in managing them. We all know that there have been breaches of discipline in Offaly over recent years, both hurling and football. Yes, we all know that its bloody hard to live the life of an intercounty player these days, but not much point in 75% of the group obeying the rules either. As someone said here that Cody would manage them in a different way, by giving them the boot.

With regards to Pat Cleary, again these comments may be taken out of context, where does it say that North Offaly will not be a key part of this plan?
And I am sure there are plenty of people in the North of the county that will have ample opportunity to give their input.

Personally, I would think that Na Fianna, Brosna Gaels, Edenderry, Tullamore need major focus, with the aim to help promote hurling in the National schools, Parish team for Na Fianna in years to come, seek out players for county development squads, and develop 10/15 players from this area in each of the development squad age groups.

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

"Mr Padraig Boland stated that Offaly has one of the lowest take ups on coach education in Leinster. He complained that very few go on to attend level 1 and 2 coaching courses. 'We need to be raising the bar,' he said."

POTH , I dont know what your point is with the foundation course in relation to the above?
In that I have done the foundation and the level 1 course and they are completely different. Is you point that because the foundation course is relatively straightforward that this is a red herring by Padraig Boland?

1) He is 100% right. In my club only around 3 people have done any type of coaching course this year. CB can only provide them, they cant force people to go.
2) I would say 70% of the people in charge of underage club teams are not garda vetted and have nothing but the foundation level qualifications.

How in the name of God can we progress when lads are not equiping themselves with the tools to do the job?????????? FFS, lads with no concept of the idea of games based training , and how the emphasis needs to be on first touch, weaker hand and foot, and games based situations in order to improve players option taking/decision making?

So in my opinion, until the coaches of U12/14/16/Minor teams, at club level, have a minimum of level 1 then we will go nowhere fast. In fairness, Level 1 costs around €50 per coach, and takes around 4 by 2hr sessions, is that too much too insist on?

I tell ye lads, many of ye are talking about comments made by people who are putting in time, what are the grass roots doing to raise the bar themselves. I am sick of looking at crap training sessions with no though or imagination being put into it for young lads to enjoy, learn and develope.

[Lone Shark]

LS, with regard to access to minor players by the clubs, I would imagine the atitude is to go to the CB meeting and look for full use of the players with the aim of getting them for some of the league games.

I'm not sure that I'd agree with this policy, since to me it makes the delegate sound unrealistic, but maybe that is the case. Obviously only the delegate themselves could tell you if they were trying cute hoority or not.

However my point here is that it shows how some people aren't taking this process seriously. Dermot Healy and the committee have been asked to examine Offaly hurling in detail at all levels, to identify problems and to come up with solutions. One thing we can say for certain is that access to county players, whether it's at the right level or not, is not the problem since our clubs have at least as much access as those in Cork, Tipp, KK etc, and far more than in counties like Clare, Dublin and Waterford. So all this shows is that delegates aren't engaging in the process, but instead are using it to try and piggyback in their old bugbears.

[Buck Face]

LS - Challenge accepted – let's look at Cork. They have managed to either put out a County Hurling team or play Senior Hurling Championship matches over every weekly period except 1 from the 25th of May up to their win in the Munster final on the 13th of July. As a result they played off 2 rounds of the club championship in that time period.

In Offaly we have had 5 idle weeks and played no rounds of club championship during this period. Granted things are better than they were but it’s time we realised the importance of giving more priority to our club championships, as they do in the likes of Cork and Kilkenny, when it comes to player development etc.

In relation to your point, having a game a week from January to July is not the issue when it comes to player burnout. The issue is the lack of recovery periods during the training for these matches. It is much more important to properly manage this than simply count the number of games.

Also, a GAA burnout report back in 2007 reported that almost half of inter county players interviewed felt isolated from their clubs as a result of inter county participation. This needs to be addressed. Forget all the media hype that prioritises the county scene and structure our club games in a way that gives maximum benefit to all the players as this will in turn raise the standards across the board.

I believe this is the crux of the point Pat Cleary was making and in my opinion it is a valid one.

[Lone Shark]

I'll happily accept that Cork are definitely exemplary in this regard, however Cork have two key advantages in their favour that we don't have.

(1) Cork is a dual county in name, but being honest, dual players are rare. We've all heard about Aidan Walsh and others, but those are very much the exception. Consequently, they can do things like playing a full round of domestic SHC fixtures on the same weekend that the Cork senior footballers played Tipperary in the Munster football semi-final. I've said it over and over, I genuinely believe that Offaly may have to go down this route, and I say that as someone for whom Ferbane is my home club and so we would essentially lose Colin Egan as a player, but nobody is saying this out loud. Instead they're talking in generalities like "clubs should get more access" without spelling out what exactly they mean. What Pat Cleary and others are essentially saying is that Tullamore may have to play an Offaly SFC game either without Shane Dooley, or to field him 24 hours after he hurled for Offaly against Kilkenny or Tipperary. If our county board presents this as such and delegates vote for it, I'd personally agree with it, but I don't see that happening.

(2) Because Cork have so many clubs (over 200) they are highly unusual in that they can run off games in dribs and drabs because they have several teams with no county men. By my rough guess, the Offaly SHC has Drumcullen and Ballinamere who have no county players, everyone else has at least one. Cork played games on the weekend of the 31st of May, one week before they played Waterford in the replay - that's not something that we'd be in a position to do.

Just to be clear here - are you advocating that we go ahead on this basis, thereby making it almost impossible to play county hurling and club football, or county football and club hurling, or not? I'm not saying you'd be right or wrong, but I just wish more people who were arguing for more access for clubs would actually come out and say this, then we could have an honest debate about it.


I accept wholeheartedly your point about burnout being about so much more than just the number of games played, but the key factor here is that if a county manager is doing a programme of development with minors, including all the strength and conditioning work that we all want to see, then of course it'll be impossible to give them sufficient recovery time, as well as accommodate all these extra games. In fact playing a load of games could be completely the wrong thing for some players if they are on a specific weights programme to build muscle in the first quarter of the year. I agree completely that county minors should be available for club minor league, and for adult and under-21 championship if required, but adult league is a bridge too far. Surely the emphasis at minor level still should be player development, not flogging them for all they're worth.

I've also seen firsthand this year what happens when you run off adult leagues where no games can go ahead without county players - here in Roscommon, some clubs went into the first round of the championship having only been able to play three league games. Admittedly Roscommon is one of those counties that should allow clubs more access to their players, but again, if you're a county hurler, your football club will be expected to work away without you. Offaly's league is done and dusted, and that's as it should be. Some clubs in Ros are only halfway through their programme now.


I'll say again - I think that allowing clubs plenty of access to their players at their own level is the right way to go. However this is being shoehorned into a debate about the welfare of Offaly hurling generally, and considering the context, I think it's a sideshow.

[Buck Face]

LS- So I found one then?

The simple fact is that a number of players were involved in Club Championship hurling in Cork between the two Waterford matches alone and there was no issue. This is not running off games in dribs and drabs. And it’s not that we are not in a position to do this, we don’t do so by choice.

They also fix games within a week or less of the Inter County Team still playing. We don’t. We put everything back until we are out of the championship.

In Offaly we played a round at the beginning of May and not again until the third week in July. How can this be right? What was wrong with playing senior hurling matches on the 11th or 25th of May. Or the 14th of June?

I believe we could better structure it without forcing anyone to decide if we had less of a tendency to ‘mind’ our County players. This is no side show but is something that needs to be addressed.

[Truth as i see it]

I know that people can pick holes in this process until the cows come home but honestly i'm just glad that there is something, Anything being set up to address the many problems at underage.

Over the past number of years after every humiliating defeat that both codes have endured i have said to myself and to others, surely the County Board will look to change things so that this never happens again, surely this will be the kick up the backside that prompts the County board to re evaluate there underage development policy.

Nope, it was a case of carry on regardless.

Remember this is a county that was the second last in the country to set up development squads in either codes and this was a full 7 years after Kilkenny had first pioneered the practice

Listen, all of this isn't to have a cut at the county board, it is in fact a well done to the board for finally taking the problem by the scruff of the neck and attempting to diagnose what and where the problems are coming from

For years there was no attempt made to analyze the situation because....(i don't know maybe it was too much like hard work for everyone involved, everyone has their own opinion on why they never bothered) but now they are rolling their proverbial sleeves up and getting on with the job in hand which is something i thought they would never do

The County board and Padraig Boland deserve credit for being the first county board in the county to finally put their hands up and say (Y'know what lads, maybe we should try and look at this and try to figure out what the problem is)

Ok the plan and the people involved might not be to everyone's satisfaction but its a start, a platform, a foundation to build upon for the next county board that comes in after this one.

In order to improve at anything in life you have to have an analysis process to see where you currently stand and what you need to do to get to where you want to go, past county boards could not comprehend this concept, it was too alien and idea for them to understand, this one (GOOD JAYSUS FINALLY) get what process needs to happen in order to move forward and that for me is a positive step in the right direction

Its not perfect, but its a start