Laois v Offaly – Leinster Hurling Quarter Final 7th June

[Toxicity234]

Best of luck to the management and players tomorrow

[kingscounty]

Brian do the decent thing and step down , this is fucking embarrassing!

[timber]

Time to get a fishing rod or something cause id rather be anywhere but near an offaly match with crap like that. Embarrassing.

[Chris]

It's an awful shame that the egos of some get in the way of the development of Offaly hurling.....no one is doubting the commitment of the management, but his ability is obviously seriously lacking.

We were nowhere near as fit as Laois......

Time for a change.....Round Robins 2016, here we come!!!!

The players know best.....and many of them have voted with their feet.....only to be proven right!!!!

[townman]

i think offaly hurling has hit rock bottom Sid has to go and lets be fair most of that offaly side are years away from inter county players, fair play to laois at least they had pride in their jersey and county which the same couldn't be said for offaly, we have been saying all year about our back line and midfield and it was nail home today big time also another AWOL From Bergin and Dooley again in championship hurling, and we will have years of laois hurling the shit out of us with our record at underage again them, anyway i am sure our county board will be happy with the laois and Galway game in tullamore its all about the money in offaly fcuk the underage and senior teams.

the senior footballers were away at a training camp last week thats their reward for been beaten by longford . so early june hurlers out beaten by laois footballers out in may beaten by Longford feck me can we go any lower i feel tonite

[cantona]

You can train all u like and blame Brian whelahan all day long, but if players have nothing in their stomach you,re at nothing. To many players didn,t want to win the 50/50 balls today. Anyone who saw the knockout stages of the championship last year, would not be surprised by today,s display. I saw Brian whelahan hurling many a time and never saw him pulling out of 50/50 balls. We just don't have the talent at the moment and we are at the level that we deserve to be at

[allstar2010]

Shocked?? No. Disappointed?? Yes. Most of us could probably name 10 different lads in the county that would have been better than what was there today in their position. Who's fault is it that they're not playing?? They're own? The management? The county board? Their clubs? I don't know, but for whatever reason we don't have our best 15 playing simple as that.

Is this going to be the wake up call we need? Probably not. The hunger for change is simply not there from county board, clubs and the general public.

[manfromdelmonte]

At this rate of decline, it could be Christy Ring hurling soon

[SearingDrive]

Shocked?? No. Disappointed?? Yes. Most of us could probably name 10 different lads in the county that would have been better than what was there today in their position. Who's fault is it that they're not playing?? They're own? The management? The county board? Their clubs? I don't know, but for whatever reason we don't have our best 15 playing simple as that.

Is this going to be the wake up call we need? Probably not. The hunger for change is simply not there from county board, clubs and the general public.

Laois far superior today, they were 4 points down at one stage in the first half , and scored 23 points to 15 points from Offaly. Today might be a watershed in Offaly hurling, I think Sid and Co, have to go post qualifiers, and OCB look at getting a proven manager, but it won't be easy.

[ah lethimoutwithit]

By the way, fair play to Laois and best of luck to them against Galway.
Laois hurling has had many a bad day too, and the real hurling folk deserve their day in the sun.

[first_touch]

Fair dues to POTH and LS, they got their pre-match analysis spot on. Unfortunately it was Offaly that were at the end of an 8-point defeat. As predicted, when Offaly failed to maintain and build on their early dominance Laois gained a foothold in the game, grew in confidence and started putting points over from all angles, mostly from long distance.

Offaly's failure to respond when Laois upped their game was particularly disappointing. We were completely overrun in the half back line and midfield. Today proved what everyone in Offaly bar the management knew: Colin Egan is not a centre back. In fairness to Pat Camon he is a good hurler and will have much better days in an Offaly jersey. Nothing went right for him today and any manager worth his salt would have replaced him at half time.

Our total inability to win, or even contest, ball in the air is really alarming. Apart from a couple of catches by Paddy Murphy we hardly won any of our own long puckouts. Surely Colin Egan would have been better deployed as a ball-winning wing forward.

As stated by another poster we didn't have our best 15 starting today, for whatever reason. This coupled with the loss of key players to retirement and long-term injury has stretched our playing resources. The neglect of underage for the past two decades is coming home to roost. While there are some very promising young hurlers such as Kiely and Nolan there are not enough of them to replace those already gone or those likely to go in the next two or three years.

After today's result and performance it is hard to know where to start to reverse or even halt the decline of Offaly Hurling. Putting a capable management team in place would be a start. But for the longer term investment in underage coaching and structures is essential. Based on today's display, such work by the Laois County Board over recent years looks like it's bearing fruit at senior level.

[kingscounty]

By the way, fair play to Laois and best of luck to them against Galway.
Laois hurling has had many a bad day too, and the real hurling folk deserve their day in the sun.

Agree here totally , Laois were well deserving winners. They took some amazing scores from long range and were really hungry for the win , If the game is in Portlaoise Galway won't have it easy , fair play to Laois onwards and upwards, As for Offaly I would fear another big defeat in the qualifiers and then we are really down and out.

[Kevin]

Very disappointed here.

Although I could only listen today it sounded like Laois just gained momentum and confidence and just went on a roll.

The run they went on before halftime was very alarming and unfortunately for us it was not a one time thing. The onslaught continued in the second half and we just could not answer.

Congrats to Laois and best of luck in the next round.

[Plain of the Herbs]

I'm sorry for the hurlers here. They were under massive pressure all match and there is no hiding place out there when that pressure comes on.

[Bord na Mona man]

It's easy to start blaming the players who played today, but they are the fruits of production line that has been failing for almost two decades now.
And I don't have any great reason to believe that a radical improvement is on the way. It was always inevitable that a more progressive county like Leix would eventually overtake us at senor level. I was hoping we'd hold them off for another while.

Aside from the general rot in Offaly hurling, I don't think we gave ourselves the best shout today with the set up and tactics. Take putting Colin Egan at centre back when the team are crying out for ball catching half forwards. He didn't have his best day today, but even if he had a stormer, it's still wrong to starve the forwards of a possession winning outlet. Alternatively, Eanna Murphy has the right attributes game to be an effective centre back and free up Egan for the forwards. Whelahan should have made this switch as the game unfolded today, but was possibly too stubborn to reverse a call he has stood by all year till now.

Sadly the chickens came home to roost again. Offaly's now customary lack of tackling prowess, poor catching and underdeveloped support play again came to the fore. We usually concede 45 to 50 scoring chances to the Kilkennys and the Tipps. Now we're offering the same odds to all comers.

I actually thought Offaly had done a lot of the hard work early on. They took the sting out of the game, silenced the crowd and edged into a lead. Only one out of two if Leix's long range pots was going over. However once the underdogs gets a purple patch a sudden surge in self belief, it's hard to repel them. The 10 minutes before half time was the winning and losing of it, everything else was a side show.

A word on Leix. Once they get the smell of victory, some of their shooting was superb. Put Kilkenny jersies on the players and Marty Morrissey would be having a 'When Harry met Sally' day in the commentary box. The brand of hurling they're playing is 15 years ahead of Offaly's. They're the Samsung Galaxy S6 and we're the Nokia 3210.