by Bord na Mona man » Sun Jun 07, 2015 11:44 pm
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.