Offaly vs Tipperary - 2014 All-Ireland SHC qualifier Round 2

[fifitrixiebelle]

Who's 'taggy'? funny u leave out tommy Walsh trowin the hurley in dat league final. U don't mention Delaney injurin a Galway player by peltin the hurley either, dat was de only one dat was a sendin off offence of dose. trowin the hurley isn't a red card but it is if you hit someone wit it. Parlon shud hav got a red as dat was a knackerish tackle goin for callanans hand when de match was well over. did dat prick Kelly even book him?

[sam88885a]

they real annoying thing about offaly at the moment is we are strong at club level thanks to great work at club level .
yes there is a big step up to inter county level they u21 s is a stepping stone on that journey . we coudnt even bother appointing a manager till april.
its mid july most of these u21 have played one inter county game and one round of the senior club championship . that not going to develope them into allstars .
last year we had a decent u21 team m cleary d king d kelliher p camon n wynne s gardner t carroll p geraghty t geraghty s quirke k connolly s cleary and b murphy e ryan e grogan who were not picked .surely if encouraged and keep all them at it and developed properly some of those lads can become good inter county hurlers in a few years .
for that to happen a huge amount of work needs to be done in the next 3 years because the work has not gone into them in the last 5 years since they were 16 .fitness strength hurling skills . their only 22 but that work needs to start within the next few weeks
offaly needs to cop on now the minor manager for 2016 needs to be appointed now and start working with lads now during this summer 2014.
the u21 manager for next year should know his panel for next year now also and be working developing them for next year.
we are in a hole its time for all the all stars in this county to get up off there ass and work with the young lads to improve them as is done in kilkenny .
all money should go into player needs not coachs or managers surely no true offaly hurling man would take money to coach or manage an offaly hurling team at club or intre county level . they give there time for the love of the game as players do .

[Toxicity234]

http://www.midlandsradio.fm/news/wheleh ... ffaly-helm
http://hoganstand.com/Offaly/ArticleForm.aspx?ID=220346

Whelehan want to stay. That just mad. He must be smoking the best stuff on earth.
How can he think he done a good job, almost every hurlers the county has gone from respecting him to just having nothing good to say about him.

Lets hope the county board have the balls to sack the man before he does more damage.
Nothing against Whelehan but he need to go back and manage a club or learn under a manager himself before coming back to Offaly as an experienced manager.

He just can't be keep on after only beating Antrim and Kerry this year and we were hammer by Killkenny and Tipperary. Been out hurler in every other game we played.

[True Red]

Offaly fought hard and showed more spirit in the second half than at any stage against Kilkenny and got the margin back to four points. Their basic problem is they’re just not fit enough, and Wexford have shown you need a standard of conditioning and endurance if you’re going to compete at the top level.

taken from Nicky English's article in todays Irish Times

[Lone Shark]

By no stretch of the imagination was this year anything other than a failure, and I've no doubt Brian Whelahan would be the first to acknowledge that and to acknowledge his part in that fact. It could have been much worse, in the sense that if either the Kerry or the Antrim game had been lost, then we'd be in a much worse place, but either way it's fair to say we've regressed by a considerable amount over the past twelve months.

Tipperary were utterly sleepwalking in Portlaoise last Saturday night and I genuinely believe that if the 2013 Offaly team was playing that match, they'd have made them pay, or brought the game down to the wire at the very least.

That said, it's a bit naive to say that the board could easily just fire BW and expect things to improve. We've said this before in football and in hurling, we are not an attractive proposition for any manager right now. In hurling it's all about trying to manage the decline, since every player that retires over the next three, four and indeed six or seven years looks set to be replaced by a lesser hurler. I'm not saying that there are no bright prospects in the county, but guys like Rory Hanniffy and Brian Carroll have been utterly immense for a decade and more and have consistently hurled to a really high level - they rarely if ever had days where you could say that they just weren't on form. Both of these guys stood out by a country mile even as teenagers and those kind of players just aren't there now.

Secondly, outside the county, we would be seen as having acted rashly, which would in turn deter any managers from taking the job. Brian is clearly passionate about what he does and everyone watching on TV can see that - they can't see the fact that for whatever reason, either on account of him or the players, he simply hasn't managed to connect with them. Add in the likes of this - http://www.hoganstand.com/Offaly/Articl ... um=twitter - and you start to see why a dismissal would go down like a lead balloon and thus deter any potential managers from coming on board.

[townman]

http://www.midlandsradio.fm/news/wheleh ... ffaly-helm
http://hoganstand.com/Offaly/ArticleForm.aspx?ID=220346

Whelehan want to stay. That just mad. He must be smoking the best stuff on earth.
How can he think he done a good job, almost every hurlers the county has gone from respecting him to just having nothing good to say about him.

Lets hope the county board have the balls to sack the man before he does more damage.
Nothing against Whelehan but he need to go back and manage a club or learn under a manager himself before coming back to Offaly as an experienced manager.

He just can't be keep on after only beating Antrim and Kerry this year and we were hammer by Killkenny and Tipperary. Been out hurler in every other game we played.

lets be fair if we had Cody over us we would have still lost to kilkenny and tipp, yes Sid was at fault for his picking of teams and so and so, but its about time the players take abit of blame some don't care or are nothing putting in enough efford on the training field or are looking after themselfs right off the field. the one thing i have seen got out of offaly hurling the last few years is the pride in the jersey its not there anymore offaly were beatin before they left the dressing room in the two games this year. if we are to move on we need hurlers that we die with the jersey on we don't have that spirt anymore in offaly and thats a big problem.

[Kevin]

Some interesting comments over on Premierview regarding the game as it was in progress.

At least 1 poster stated that Offaly were winning the puckouts by a relatively comfortable margin. At one point they claimed 32 to 20.

Did anyone observe this or could they comment on whether it helped us press the issue in the second half/stem the tide or whatever?

As we have had problems with puckouts, was just wondering if such a stat could be taken as a positive sign or whatever in the overall context of things.

Thanks.

Edited to add this 'actual' quote from that site the aforementioned was not correct.


Offaly winning the puckouts 19 to 14, we killed galway on this stat last week, offaly 12 blocks to tipps 11, dont think our lads are working as hard as they can.

[Killeighman]

The stats did show on Sky Sports that Offaly won most of the puckouts.

[Bord na Mona man]

It was a funny old game in that sense.
Offaly won a decent share of the fundamentals - puckouts, breaks and turnovers.
The difference was that anywhere inside the Offaly 65, Tipp were always one missed tackle, one missed catch or one missed pick-up away from being through for a goal chance.

[Toxicity234]

Lets be honest here.
From last year we haven't gone backwards, we falling off a cliff.
Last year in every game we were competitive.

http://hoganstand.com/ArticleForm.aspx?ID=220492

Hanniffy needs his head examined. Sid was a great hurler.
As a manager he is shocking.

Their is no way he should be left in the job.
He should have been fired 4 months ago.

His treatment of the players has been shocking.
The abuse I hear him dish out on the side line is horrible.

His treatment of the young players Cleary, Connelly, King, Gardiner, Damien Egan, Kelleher, the Geraghty's etc could have destroyed the next group of hurlers. Lets hope that it hasn't.

His Man management skill are rubbish. The way he has handle the lads in the their mid 20's. Kilmartin, Slevin, Mooney, Morkan etc has been rubbish.

His game plan has been so far away from the way Offaly hurling should be play, It's an insult to everyone has work to make Offaly hurling great.
He look like he has only every gone to Birr club games in Offaly.
His treatment of player outside of Birr should mean that he should have been gone months ago.

Whelehan should have walk away after yesterday game.

Whelehan should do the right thing and step down himself, He is not up to the job.

[Plain of the Herbs]

With Tipperary in the state of complacency that they evidently were, the scene was set for an ambush. And while Tipperary will have been guarding against such a situation, it is still very very difficult to really produce a complete performance when the win is all but guaranteed. Which is something Kilkenny consistently manage and which is so admirable about them – but that’s for another day.

Tipperary’s early goals merely reinforced their complacency, and so they continued to press the snooze button until around 8.10pm Saturday evening.

Key to creating a shock is to hang in score-for-score, a little behind the favourites, then strike once, late and hard. Most ambushes are accomplished in that manner. Very few ‘against the head’ wins are accomplished by going (say) eight points ahead. That pokes the bear with a stick.

A pity then that Offaly went to Portlaoise merely to fulfil the fixture. Remember 2005? Three weeks after the 6-28 hiding from Kilkenny – Offaly took on (literally) Clare on a wet evening in Portlaoise. No fear, and Offaly held on until very shortly before the final whistle. I remember then Clare manager Anthony Daly quoted afterwards noting that he knew his side were in for a serious test when he heard the roars from the Offaly team during the warm-up on the back pitch.

I was typing my pieceen on Thursday evening and had considered that Ger Healion would be Offaly’s best candidate to mark Patrick Maher when news of Offaly’s selection came through. Ger Healion would not be starting, and the next best candidate seemed to be Kevin Brady. To tell the truth, I thought there might have been a 'cloak and dagger' plan to play David Kenny in defence. Whatever, the decision for Brady to contest the dropping ball with Maher from in front of the centre half-forward was critical. The defender should have stayed goal-side, so at least when Maher did gain possession he still had to go around the defender.

Challenge match pace, with a challenge match scoreline to match. Just it cost €20 to get in! And in fairness Tipperary did find the extra gear to kill the game off going into the final quarter. Yet, Offaly won a decent amount of possession, and won enough frees for Brian Carroll to haul them back in touch. A few breaks for, as in Colin Egan’s goal which was probably in the ‘square’, a few against - Conor Mahon’s ground stroke that whistled past the post evoked memories of a similar Michael Duignan effort in the 2000 All-Ireland.

An opportunity lost. But not lost on the night, rather lost over the course of the last nine months. 2014 - what a waste.

[sam88885a]

townman if we had b cody over us we would have a game plan and everyone would know their job . the team would be fit full of spirit and sent out to win .
b cody would tell us about all the talent in the clubs in offaly and lads would be at training an hour early .lads would have to work to get onto the panel and work twice as hard to stay on the panel.
he would be at every school game, every club match .
as a manager cody is the best ever , his love for hurling is infectious .
in my opinion there is no manager even close to him.
i rember e kennedy starting at centre back for kilkenny struggling to strike the ball on his weak side but within a few months he was scoring points off the weak side . attention to detail .
another manager would see the faults but cody is a teacher and he knows it never too late to learn .
imagine the job cody would do on c mahon and c egan d kilmartain d currams d kenny p cleary d kelliher j bergin s dooley.
big lads that he would turn into men .
townman there are 31 other counties wishing they had b cody but we need better than b whelahan

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

Some strong words of condemnation of the manager there Tox. I would hope that there is evidence to back up what you say.

But in all fairness, how can the County Board actually get rid of Brian Whelahan as manager?
He applied for the minor job, and they gave him the senior job. So in all fairness, if he sits down and says that he learned x, y, z from the year, and needs x y and z support in order to help progress the team, it would be very harsh if they got rid of him.
What criteria did the County Board set with Brians appointment, did they say that they would review it after 1 year as they and him were taking a chance on this appointment?

To turn around and cast him to one side would seem unfair, but on the other hand if his man management skills alone were as bad as what was said here, (plus a number of prospects have walked away), for the future of Offaly hurling, how can they keep him?

So , to cut to the chase, I dont know what they should do! But for a lot of people whatever they do will be wrong and thats it.

For me the disappointing thing is what is being said about his man management skills. To me this is a vital component of modern day management, as players have never been more sensitive. Technical skills can be brought in from the outside, and let do their job.

As I say some of the stuff posted here is very harsh in relation to Brian as a manager, and I hope much of it aint true. But what is termed abuse in Offaly, could be the norm in successful counties , as you can demand more from players in counties who are successful but on the other hand reward them better.

I would like to think that Brian can put forward information that shows what he has learned and what he might do differently and be able to progress. But if this appointment is done wrong , we will be set back a long way.
As LS says, if some senior players come out and back him then its going to be difficult for the CB to go against him. Personally I think the CB have no choice but to reappoint him.

[Toxicity234]

Some strong words of condemnation of the manager there Tox. I would hope that there is evidence to back up what you say.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6652&start=165

I was stand behind him at the Dublin vs Offaly match in Ballyboden. his instruction and his abuse he shouted was "not good"

[SearingDrive]

The stats did show on Sky Sports that Offaly won most of the puckouts.

Offaly did win most puckouts, but they really need to improve their fitness levels, and play with a plan. When Offaly got within 2 points in the first half, a sloppy line ball led to Tipperary scoring a third goal.
When Offaly got it back to 4 points in the second half, Tipp pulled away again. Offaly played a bit like individuals, as Nicky English said in the commentary.
I think we have some talented hurlers, but need to get the best out of them. Who that will be is the big question.