2015 Walsh cup

[Bord na Mona man]

We're nowhere near where Dublin were 10 years ago though. Back then Dublin were moving upwards fast and starting to compete strongly with Kilkenny at minor. It seemed inevitable they'd win a Leinster title.
Offaly are the team that Westmeath, Carlow, Leix, Meath etc look forward to playing against at minor.

[Bord na Mona man]

also they had ex county hurlers from other countys over senior and underage teams in Dublin, Richard Stakelum Liam Hogan, Vinny Teehan, Nicky English, and theres alot more.

We have 100s of Vinny Teehans and Liam Hogans in Offaly though and we've put lots of ex county hurlers in charge of teams. If it was simply a matter of 'asking the men with the medals' as some people implore, we'd be at the top table.

[Sharp Eye]

Every Team needs Leaders on the Pitch. This leadership is usually given by the players from the Senior Co Club Champions. This year in Offaly the Senior Co Club Champions have been given the honour of leading Offaly as Daniel Currams has been appointed captain. It appears that his club colleagues with the exception of Cillian Kiely are letting the captain and the County Team DOWN by their lack of commitment to Offaly. The best players do not play for a manager, they play for their county, club and themselves.

[sam88885a]

offaly have always struggled at underage ,that the way thinks are, we have a small pool of players . escept for the late 80s and 2000 .
there are clubs in dublin with far more resorces than offaly has .
yet our senior hurling clubs are at the top table .
i was talking to ballyhale supporters on saturday and i said that ballyhale had improved from the kk game .
They disagreed and feet that kk would have beaten gort easilly too . they said that they were very very lucky to beat kk and no other club team and some county teams including offaly would have defender of the quality of kk to contain their key forwards .
The rated g healion as one of the best club full backs in the game and said his injury help open up space in injury time , they also said that there is no better half back line in club hurling that kk s .
what they couldnt understand is why they offaly team is not built around those kk lads .
they said that none of the defender that played for offaly in nolan park last year against kilkenny had the defensive qualities of grogan leonard or the healions .
any county that has strong clubs should have a competive county team was the view.
clubs are the building blocks of any county team .they produce the raw material of your county team.
they kk are clearly not wanted by the current manager and i wont be surprised if young kiely is pushed aside during the year

[King Kev]

If anybody could get in contact with that man from ballyhale and see would he take the offaly job. He seems to know his stuff alright.

[TheGreatGame]

Sam I think you ignoring the massive gap between club and county hurling. K/K are a very fine club side, they play as very driven unit and rinse every last drop of ability they have, but it could be argued that they don't have one bona fide inter county standard player. They have an abundance of excellent club players, but which of them would get on to the Limerick team for example? Clara won the Kilkenny county final recently and they had only Lester Ryan, a fringe player, from the Kk county side.

Galway have the most competitive senior championship in the country and it isn't resulting in All Irelands on the national stage.

[Toxicity234]

The problem facing Offaly is not the need for a good manager.

But a good manager sure as hell wouldn't make the situation any worse.

The problem is the clubs are unable to produce county hurlers that have the mental and physical skills needed to win.

There is an element of true to this statement. The club are producing good young hurlers which is fine. Yeah they could produced better hurler but so could ever club in county.
The problem arrive when good hurlers come out of minor and are throw into the Senior inter county team at 18 years old and then mess around with and given no chance to grow into the players they could be.
Over the last 4 years The likes of Sean Gardiner, David King, Conor Doughlan, Emment Nolan, Kiely and others have been throw into inter county matches way before they are ready. Then they struggle they dropped and told there not good enough draining the young hurlers in the county of an confidence.
They been sent back to there clubs damaged by the experience of Inter county training not improved by it.
What been product in club should be maximise by the County not destroyed by the county.

Offaly are now where Dublin were 10 years ago. Dublin got their act together, went away from those who played for the county and focused on getting those who were good at coaching under age teams to work on the county dev squads. The Offaly production line is the problem, not who happens to be the manager. Ye have good people who work for the county board. They are been held back in trying to do their work.

A man can only work with what he is given. From where Im looking, Offaly simply do not have the players to compete at Liam McCarthy level.

Its not fair to compare Offaly to Dublin. Dublin Gaa get so much more money than Offaly.
http://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic- ... 65882.html
the rest of us only 400,000 more than dublin gaa get by themselves.
I was at the Club Faithful AGM last week and listen to Mr. Boland talk about the problems with the Finance within the County and how he and finance committee within the county are now only getting a handle on it now.
In fairness he didn't go into detail. He just said that they were working with Croke Park to get a handle on it.

We have 100s of Vinny Teehans and Liam Hogans in Offaly though and we've put lots of ex county hurlers in charge of teams. If it was simply a matter of 'asking the men with the medals' as some people implore, we'd be at the top table.

While i like the idea of having ex-inter county hurler involved in coaching and training. the idea that great players automatic been great coaches and managers is something that need to be stamp out now.
Joe Schmidt was an average rugby player but is an excellent manager. Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger are excellent Coaches and manager but were not great players.

In Offaly we need to figure out what makes a good manager and coaches and put a programme in place to develop the skills need to be a good coach and a good manager.
The better Managers and Coaches in the clubs the better hurlers the clubs will product.

Sam I think you ignoring the massive gap between club and county hurling. K/K are a very fine club side, they play as very driven unit and rinse every last drop of ability they have, but it could be argued that they don't have one bona fide inter county standard player. They have an abundance of excellent club players, but which of them would get on to the Limerick team for example? Clara won the Kilkenny county final recently and they had only Lester Ryan, a fringe player, from the Kk county side.

Galway have the most competitive senior championship in the country and it isn't resulting in All Irelands on the national stage.

There is a gap between Club and inter county hurling but Kilkenny, Galway and Limerick are looking to win title at the top grade of hurling with good clubs hurlers pushing the hurlers on the inter county panel for a place on the panel. Its not about getting Kilcormac Killoughey players on the panel. its about getting the maximise out of the potential that we have in the county. I wouldn't care if there was No Kilcormac Killoughey or Rynaghs players in the county panel. if the lads that were there playing as team and been competitive. We not. you surely can't say that Galway, Limerick and Kilkenny aren't competitive.
The idea that the gap between inter county hurling and club hurling is massive is rubbish as well. There is a gap but that gap is only as big as the inter county manager make it. The idea that the majority of good clubs hurlers in Offaly are not able to make the step up is something i disagree with strongly and that what going on at the moment. of the top 30 club hurlers in the county about 16 are on the Offaly panel.

[sam88885a]

ballyhale have been the real force in kilkenny hurling and its reflected in the county panel .
galway have titles at under age and lots of at club level yet the have under preformed at senior .
its lazy to dismiss club hurling when u want to paint a grim picture .
The real problem is we have had no real capabale manager at any level, underage or senior in a number of years . someone that can bring everyone along and get guys to preform to the best of their ability .
kk are currently one of the top clubs in the country yet there is a huge resistence in hurling circles in offaly to give them credit .kk have show themself to have huge self belief and ability to hurl as a team , qualities sadly missing from a lot of the current offaly panel

[private joker]

A couple of replies have been made to my post.

In regards to comparing Dublin and Offaly, I meant it from a point of view that no one could name more than 1-2 players off the Dublin senior hurling team. Same now goes for Offaly. No one was really interested in hurling for the Dublin senior hurling team. Same now applies to Offaly The change came about when the Dublin county board got an OK manager in, Tommy Naughton. He brought on a load of minors and 21 s to the set up. Older more established players were moved along. It was a very young and well organised set up without been overly slick. That came about from huge work been done in clubs and dev squads. Then Daly was brought in......planning

The funding given to Dublin is there because of a few reasons. Dublin has more people in it than nearly the rest of the country. It also has more competition from other sports. Half of LOI clubs come from Dublin. Junior soccer is massive, the AIL rugby is huge in Dublin, leinster rugby is in Doneybrook, hockey and Basketball is huge in Dublin and then there's the Gaelic football team, all far more successful than been a Dublin senior hurler around the 2000's.
Why they get so much funding is down to a few fairly important reasons.
(1) They had plan on how to spend it. stuck to it. (Raising the blue flag is what it was called at the start.)
(2) They had people who knew how to spend it properly, to get long term success.
(3) it was not spent on the senior team.
(4) It all went to coaching and games. dev squads 13 to 17, college teams minor and under 21.
(5) clubs helped fund Games promotion officers, maybe rather spending 80-90 euro on a senior manager, 5-6 clubs in Offaly could get together and fund for a GPO to work for them?
(6) No white elephants.

Also the open forum that was held in 2014 would have been looked at, from people in high places to see what was your county board capable of doing. I doubt if they came away think, ''yeah lets give these lads 1 million euro over the next 5 years and see what they do''. Get more Game promotion officers in the county, train your mentors better, and COACH your dev squads better and build from the bottom up.

Offaly needs a complete overhaul, Dublin was at one stage viewed as a black spot for G.A.A. You never saw a lad with a hurl anywhere. It could easily have been viewed as too big a county to organise and get it to the standards its at today. Hard work, and smart work.

[Bord na Mona man]

A couple of replies have been made to my post.

In regards to comparing Dublin and Offaly, I meant it from a point of view that no one could name more than 1-2 players off the Dublin senior hurling team. Same now goes for Offaly. No one was really interested in hurling for the Dublin senior hurling team. Same now applies to Offaly The change came about when the Dublin county board got an OK manager in, Tommy Naughton. He brought on a load of minors and 21 s to the set up. Older more established players were moved along. It was a very young and well organised set up without been overly slick. That came about from huge work been done in clubs and dev squads. Then Daly was brought in......planning

The funding given to Dublin is there because of a few reasons. Dublin has more people in it than nearly the rest of the country. It also has more competition from other sports. Half of LOI clubs come from Dublin. Junior soccer is massive, the AIL rugby is huge in Dublin, leinster rugby is in Doneybrook, hockey and Basketball is huge in Dublin and then there's the Gaelic football team, all far more successful than been a Dublin senior hurler around the 2000's.
Why they get so much funding is down to a few fairly important reasons.
(1) They had plan on how to spend it. stuck to it. (Raising the blue flag is what it was called at the start.)
(2) They had people who knew how to spend it properly, to get long term success.
(3) it was not spent on the senior team.
(4) It all went to coaching and games. dev squads 13 to 17, college teams minor and under 21.
(5) clubs helped fund Games promotion officers, maybe rather spending 80-90 euro on a senior manager, 5-6 clubs in Offaly could get together and fund for a GPO to work for them?
(6) No white elephants.

Also the open forum that was held in 2014 would have been looked at, from people in high places to see what was your county board capable of doing. I doubt if they came away think, ''yeah lets give these lads 1 million euro over the next 5 years and see what they do''. Get more Game promotion officers in the county, train your mentors better, and COACH your dev squads better and build from the bottom up.

Offaly needs a complete overhaul, Dublin was at one stage viewed as a black spot for G.A.A. You never saw a lad with a hurl anywhere. It could easily have been viewed as too big a county to organise and get it to the standards its at today. Hard work, and smart work.

Good post.
You'll find a tendency for people to attribute Offaly's problems to microscopic items with not enough acknowledgement of the bigger picture.
Realistically, whether Jimmy or Johnny are left off the panel, or Mickey is the manager, or whether too many/not enough from a certain club are being picked are not big factors in where we are.

[substandard]

If, over a 5 year period, from ages 16-21 were given development squad modules at different stages of the year with focused, high quality coaching, then in 5 years you would have the bulk of your squad aged 21-26. And broaden the base at younger ages from the current 30 to 45, to allow for natural drop off. From having worked with development squads in football, the number of sessions when you will have 30/30 available to play a 15 a side game in training is zero. Bringing 2 teams, either mixed or A and B should be the minimum carry through from 14 to 17....

[greenairfield]

I have been at matches and supported Offaly since the 70s but whats going on now has just changed Offaly Gaa for the worse and it will never be the same again.ALL the blame should fall with the county board. This is there third appointment who has no experince as a manager.They appointed him and he is like a fish out of water at county level management.Apparently his own son is training with them now?? Surely its time to look at what we are doing and where we are going?

What has happened to the great revival of Offaly hurling that was going to go ahead.All the talk from Boland and the CB when Dermot Healy came on board.Why did they not talk about Healy running away from it within two weeks of his open forum.Boland is a good speaker who says what the supporters want to hear each time.For me he cant pull the wool over my eyes anymore,I think its time he resigned and he brough his gang with him and try get fresh blood in.Look at the facilties in Coolderry,Kinnity, St.Rynaghs surely there is good people from these clubs who would get involved if approached in the right way.

Offaly Gaa is in a crisis and its only going to get worse.

Christy Ring trophy in the next 5 years and we will be there to stay!!

[Lone Shark]

I think its time he resigned and he brough his gang with him and try get fresh blood in.Look at the facilties in Coolderry,Kinnity, St.Rynaghs surely there is good people from these clubs who would get involved if approached in the right way.

Just two things to pick up on here.

(1) If you're measuring Offaly GAA by facilities, then criticising this administration is way off the mark. Our county ground is second to none, and plans are well advanced for a training facility also. We're not where we need to be obviously, but there have been significant steps forward in this regard over the last twelve months. Neither is the county board entirely exempt from praise for the fact that in terms of club facilities, Offaly is ahead of the pack. In Laois you can count on one hand the number of grounds that offer you a roof over your head when watching a game, in Offaly it's a rare club that doesn't have this.

(2) If Padraig Boland resigned and as you put it, "brought his gang with him" - I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean by the way - who is then charged with the responsibility of going up to these un-named club people and "approaching them in the right way" as you put it? Again, one criticism that you could never make of the Offaly county board is calling them a closed shop. If you come forward and offer to help, you'll be facilitated very quickly.


This is not me defending all the people in power utterly or anything like it, but I do feel this particular line of criticism is unfair. Convention is just gone by and basically none of the roles were contested. The last people you can blame for that are the ones in the respective hot seats.

[jimbob17]

The blame game can be laid at this that and the other as has been done but the whole "bring it back to Birr" line is far from the biggest of the issues. Really, the fact is that there are numerous questions that need to be addressed from the very bottom to the very top.

Firstly, who are the people we have over the development squads and are they adept enough when compared to people in successful counties - Im sure many are but some for certain are not.........
What kind of resources are going into development squads in comparison with other counties?
What kind of resources are we putting into our senior team in comparison with other higher rated counties?
Are lack of resources a factor in good players coming in or leaving and what could be done to improve things?
Are players being looked after in relation to expenses?
Are our teams being coached in the modern game and if not, why is this?
Who are the hurling coaching people in the county that we should be looking to get involved that arent?
Are there young qualified GAA people in the county that we could get more use of from a coaching perspective?
Are we encouraging players to play at Fitzgibbon level? Some other counties provide grants!!!
Are we getting the most out of our business dealings?
Are we losing good players and coaches and if so, why?

if these questions can be answered, then we might have an idea of how we can improve.........

[sam88885a]

lone shark ur point about gaa facilities is fair .o connor park is top class and most clubs have decent facilities also.
The county board seem to have all managers minor ,u 21 and senior appointed much earlier this year so to allow team time to prepare properly .
The county board seem to have plans to develope a county training facility .
we should give credit where it due and p boland seems to be working hard .
my big fault with p boland is his involvement in appointing B whelahan as offaly hurling manager and then to re appoint him again this year after what a disaster he was last year.
it was clear from day one B whelahan is the last man that should have got the job ,his record at a number of different clubs is very very poor . if P boland had talked to people in those clubs he would have been told that B whelahan was out of his debth as a club manager .

lone shark do u honestly think that the 15 plus top club hurlers that wont hurl under B whelahan are doing so because their afraid of the step up or dont want to test themselves against the best .
Clearly there is a problem there but sadly p boland and yourself along with others are in awe of B Whelahan and continue to make excuses for him .
offaly wont win an all ireland with the current crop of players but if we had everyone involved and a decent manager we could be hard beat at least .
jimbob good post all ur question need to be answered before offaly can talk about 5 year plans .
we certainly are losing good player and i think its clear why