Offaly v Westmeath, Mullingar, Sunday 1st May

[joe bloggs]

It really is ridiculous to think that Sheedy has his hand in our till and yet he was not even present for our first round of the championship. It's not the the fault of the Tipperary men that we have fallen so low, but they have accepted the task of trying to reverse the decline.

[sam88885a]

lads D Owens will never get the offaly job because kk have still not been excepted in offaly hurling circles . talk to guys in birr rynagh clareen coolderry ,they blame kk for offaly decline .

i wounder would Anthony Cunningham be interested . he is a proven manager .

Kelly started S Dooley who was sick .s ryan and k connolly are the only 2 others who have won a county medal .
most of the rest dont even play with the top clubs .
i cannot understand why c kiely and d king didnt start in midfield, why c egan wasnt centre back , why j bergin wasnt full forward with s kinsella centre forward and build the team around that spine .
kerry lost to westmeath by 15 point in the league last year under kelly and scraped out a win by a point this time last year so kelly should have been prepaired .

offaly are much better than yesterday but if we put out the same team against carlow we get defeated again .
IT back to the drawing board i love to see the county board sacking kelly and bringing A Cunningham or d owens now but they are more lightly to reappoint kelly for 3 years and tell us to be patent while he finishes the job .

c mahon d kilmartain b leonard d currams k grogan and g healion are far better hurlers than any of the starting 15 yesterday every efford needs to be made to get at least some of them back

[allstar2010]

5 days before we take on Carlow and we're talking about getting rid of the management team and bring in players that haven't been training all year!! Jaysus!!

Leicester City were 5000/1 to win the Premiership, we're only 500/1 to win the All Ireland!! Believe!

[sam88885a]

i guess there will be no reaction from the county board so here is the team i think should start next week
J Demsey
C mc Donald
D Shortt
P Rigney
P camon
C Egan
S Gardner
D king
s ryan
P Murphy
S kinsella
C Kiely
J Gorman
J Bergin
S dooley

E Kelly probally wil start J Samon B Connelly And p Guinan in the full back line
Are u sure they ever trained because if we picked 15 guys out of a nursing home they would have no fight and spirit than those guys .
there is a lot of talk about all the work that has gone in , it was hurling for sure .
one of the birr backroom team told me today if u want your club hurlers to improve dont let them near the county team at the moment because the will destroy them .

[allstar2010]

one of the birr backroom team told me today if u want your club hurlers to improve dont let them near the county team at the moment because the will destroy them .

.... And therein lies the problem, complete discouragement from clubs to have their players on they county team which is why the players that have stuck it out need our encouragement they get enough sneers from their own clubs!!

Jesus lads, in fairness, those lads are going to be hurting more than ever. And if there is anything in them they will let us see it in the next two games. They owe it to themselves and no one else.

[Keiap]

Sam the broken record again..if Danny Owens is so good why was he booted out of his club job???also birr do not discourage any of there hurlers from playing for there county at any level.to go on about players who should be there again and again fixes nothing..I know for a fact that 1 of the players you go on about dropped himself from 3 different panels.thats 3 different managers they all can't be wrong to me that's a fella who has either a big opinion of himself or isn't bothered with putting in the hard graft..1 thing is right the 2 fellas without disrespecting the to much are well out of the dept at full and centre back,they were part of a team last year that got bet by 25+ points last year in every championship game

[keyboardwarrior]

"uncorking the outrage" ... brilliant ..... exactly what happens with the heros here at every 'new' low that is reached.

Are people so simple that they think Liam Sheedy can somehow restore OY to AI contenders over his 1 or 2 year tenure and ultimately be a threat to Tipp? Really could people possibly believe that? And the myriad of former County players managing against their former teams .. one of whom Eamon Creagan did the business for us in 94.

Kelly Cummins and his Tipp ticket lifted Kerry out of a very low base and we recognised himself Sheedy and CGS appointments as being necessary and a recognition by our own that we needed this level of direction from the outside.

At what point is reality acknowledged by the horde or total hero's who religiously 'uncork the outrage' on this forum?

[sam88885a]

it does seem to be a problem that club dont encourage guys to get involved . it understandable when unless a lads is on the first 15 he is getting no game time for club or county .
c kiely has only played 1 full game of competive hurling this year and that was with kk. hard to be match fit then.
In the lead up to sunday game it was clear e kelly doesnt belive in these lads and his team selection was full of fear . it backfired because westmeath came on and went for it .
we need someone with experence in the key role at centre back to manage they guy around him.
c egan is the only player on the panel with that experence .
i think we will have to have a spine to our team like this
d shortt
c egan
c kiely d king
s kinsella
j bergin
we can build a team around that but e kelly seem to be a very stuburn guy and could put out the same team as last weekend and expect a different result .

[sam88885a]

"uncorking the outrage" ... brilliant ..... exactly what happens with the heros here at every 'new' low that is reached.

Are people so simple that they think Liam Sheedy can somehow restore OY to AI contenders over his 1 or 2 year tenure and ultimately be a threat to Tipp? Really could people possibly believe that? And the myriad of former County players managing against their former teams .. one of whom Eamon Creagan did the business for us in 94.

Kelly Cummins and his Tipp ticket lifted Kerry out of a very low base and we recognised himself Sheedy and CGS appointments as being necessary and a recognition by our own that we needed this level of direction from the outside.

At what point is reality acknowledged by the horde or total hero's who religiously 'uncork the outrage' on this forum?

i didnt expect that sheedy would restore us to been at serious threat to kilkenny tip clare or waterford in 2 years but i would have expected that he would have keep us up with kerry westmeath carlow laois antrim maybe i expected too much of him.

[Bord na Mona man]

Maybe the problem within offaly G.A A. Is a lack of follow through. The hurling review in the county arms, from 2 years ago , what came of that?

Good point. The easy bit is to fill a hall with outraged people though, getting follow through is another matter. About a decade ago there was a similar crisis summit and lots of stern vows made on the night to put things right in Offaly GAA. I think it was around the time the first academies were launched.

I'd go as far as saying that these things can be counter productive. You'll got a ton of people to show up and air their views. There'll be a hall of fame of legends present too. People come away from it falsely reassured that we're not in such a bad state after all, with so many liginds guarding the flame.

[keyboardwarrior]

Probably worth asking what the horde of hero’s would propose Kelly, Gleeson, Sheedy (or for that matter … the Rattler Byrne, Louise Morrissey, Shane Long, Dan Breen, Michael Lowry of Effin Eddie Maroney) … do to address each of the following issues (outside of the required drastic and surgical rectification of team selection and structures around the county senior and u-21 panels):-

1. Perennial pastings delivered to OY minor teams by opponents of every hue stretching back to the 90s?
2. The enduring Blueball / Fivealley (depending on your pro or anti KK bias) ‘DMZ’ that continues to divide the county at underage level?
3. The determination of club and county board officials to perpetuate (by actions and most critically – by inactions) the said DMZ at underage level?
4. The large ball protectionist forces at work in clubs in urban centres in the North of the county.
5. The complete culture of disinterest around player participation in Fresher’s / Fitzgibbon tournaments at third level which has existed since the 80s.
6. The oft-mentioned low uptake of underage club coaches in upskilling themselves by participation in national coaching programmes.
7. The gradual decline of St Brendan’s as a completive force in schools hurling and the unwillingness to move towards an ‘OY Schools’ team involving it or all other schools in across the county.
8. The complete indifference to underage tea-leave-readers such as Paudie Butler who have given the warning signs years off.
9. The effect of the dominance of Birr, KK (and arguably also Coolderry) on the competiveness of challengers.

On a broader level...

1. The shifting birth patterns in underpopulated south offaly. The team of 90s had it band of brothers which was well lauded yet went the full decade without ever adequately filling a few key positions. Families of 5 or more are now extremely rare.
2. The rise of other competing sports. Leinsters Peter Dooley a classic case in point here.
3. Employment opportunity south offaly. Let’s face it … Birr is not a hotbed of stable long term employment opportunity. Since 2007/2008 hurling for the county is rightfully no longer the be all and end all for every school graduate in the country. If they cant work proximate to where the need to train and convene for matches this creates an enormous time and travel burden on the players ... not to mention less sympathetic employers.

(As an aside) …… it irritates me greatly when you hear talk from half-baked journalists about the demise of OY as ‘traditional’ hurling county. Our first Leinster was in 1980 – 96 years after the founding of the GAA.
Whilst I appreciate the sentiment … why like some in the game suggest do we deserve any special recognition or financial support from the outside (ahead of what the likes of Leix, Westmeath or Kerry) when we ourselves have shown such disregard to the promotion of the game in the county?

[Bord na Mona man]

8. The complete indifference to underage tea-leave-readers such as who have given the warning signs years off.

I'd say the clue might be the assembled mob of pitchfork wielders wanting to drive any Tipperary trespassers off Offaly's patch...

[Bord na Mona man]

daithi regan said in 2012 that we would be christy ring standard by 2017.he was abused on here for saying it.he was only speaking what he could see happening.how right he was...great brave skillful men and great teams during that period have left a lasting impression on all our lives..we stood toe to toe with kilkenny for 20 years and gave as good as we got....i doubt we will ever get there again..i hope im wrong..

I don't remember Daithi Regan ever being abused here for suggesting that? He was hardly tipping Leicester for the Premier League in fairness.

[shamlads]

Offaly are finished for a long long time lad's.There is no fight in them,Their bullied all over the pitch no matter who they are playing.Constantly giving away stupid free's mainly because they can't keep up with their opponent's.Skill level is almost non existant.management may or may not be a problem,but it's the guy's on the pitch who have to show some determination and the fight and will to win,but it's not there.I don't give a damn if they don't happen to win a game,but just to show a bit of fight and pride in the jersey.All that's gone..There are some big guy's there who should be well able to throw their weight around but can't or won't.When you think back to the like's of simon whelehan throwing his body on the line,putting his head where you would'nt put a shovel,all for the cause,for the pride of the jersey,It has to be said that the guy's at the minute just don't have that will or pride.At the moment and for past while they are almost non existant on a pitch.Other team's must love to know they are facing them in a game.A handy number for anyone now.How sad is that to say about Offaly hurling.People on here saying,hopefully we will beat Carlow and Kerry.BLOODY HELL.Offaly hurling gone to that depth.that we are actually just hoping to beat these team's.Christ almighty it's unbelievable.

[sam88885a]

ger loughnane thinks we need help from outside the county . Thought that was the plan with E Kelly