I'll break this up into parts, since there are a few elements.
sam88885a wrote:Lone shark good post but those guy did play at the top level and if the were playing now with "better" training "better" coaches and generally a more professional approach they would be even better players and they would be at the top table in my opinion.
Agreed - but this is my point, as a general rule, this was not the route these guys took, by their own choice. You can't force a former Offaly player to take a job he's not interested in.
I'm not going to name names, but if a former elite hurler wanted to develop themselves and add to their skill set, then yes, taking on your own team in the club scene is one way to go. However it would be far better to try and get yourself involved in an elite setup at county senior, county underage, Fitzgibbon Cup, or at a push, work with a really top class manager at the very highest club level. The problem with those gigs is that they tend not to be as lucrative. Athlone IT hurling might be seen as mickey mouse stuff for example, but the standard is not that bad at all - and yet they would kill for an ex-inter county player to come in and get involved with them, last time I was covering them it was still Enda Dowd of Southern Gaels doing the needful - purely voluntary of course. A star ex-player could look for a role as a selector with Davie Fitz at LIT, with Nicky English at UCD, or someone similar - or even try to get involved with a county under-21 side, and they'd learn loads and would be working with a high standard of player. That for me would look great on a CV - but it's not what former Offaly players seem to do. Instead our guys tend to be more interested in getting the few bob from a club in Westmeath or Laois, working with limited club players where 90% of your time is spent taking training sessions with 12-15 players, and chasing the no-shows in order to get them down to the field for the big league derby against the equally ordinary next door neighbours on Saturday evening. That's club management in a lot off cases, and it bears no relation to working with a county team.
sam88885a wrote:There are 3 guys that I forgot that have done well as managers other that Danny Owens .Pat Fleury got us to an all Ireland final in 2000.Padraig Horan led us to league title in 1999 and Aiden Fogerty has won Kilkenny county title with O loughlan Gales.
Maybe we don't give our own enough credit..
If you read my post above, you'd see that I said that there was no problem with Offaly managers until the game of hurling started to change dramatically around 2003. It's from then on that we struggled to move with the times. I'll admit that winning a Kilkenny SHC is no mean feat and Fogarty has done that, but I don't know how much of that is down to him and how much is the talent of the players at his disposal. Neither would I know his situation in terms of whether he'd be keen to take on a county underage role or selector's role, given that he lives in Kilkenny to the best of my knowledge.
Personally I would make an exception for Damien Fox - I think he has a very good understanding of modern hurling and he'd be one I'd like to see involved in some capacity with an Offaly team. I don't know if I'd say he has done enough to warrant taking on the main senior job yet, but if he was announced as a selector, I'd call that very good news.
sam88885a wrote:finally u clearly don't agree with Danny Owens game plan but its insulting to suggest that KK won 3 county titles in a row , broke birr winning game record by only having big strong hurlers .
U clearly never watch K Grogan ,great hurlers can give long killer passes to forwards from their own half back line.
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Lone shark there more than one way to play hurling and it is always evolving but if u have decent forwards give them good early ball as Tip did this year.
Firstly, as for disagreeing with Owens' game plan, I never said anything of the sort. Kilcormac-Killoughey had (and have) a lot of very good, talented hurlers - but it does so happen that they are big men. I consider Conor Mahon to be an excellent hurler, as I do Colm Coughlan - however from a management perspective, I don't need to think too much about how to feed Mahon - just horse it into him with snow on it and he'll beat most defenders. You can't do that with Coughlan, you need to find a way to work the ball into him in a more appropriate manner. K-K had a full forward line full of players who were good hurlers, but who were also good fielders - so that simple, direct approach suited them. It was horses for courses, and that's exactly what any good club manager would do - look at what's available to him, and formulate a game plan to suit that.
I consider Rynaghs forwards to be good as well, but they're not as physically imposing, so you need to put more thought into how you're going to get the ball into them. Francis Forde did what he had to do to make his team competitive, and while it would have been a waste for Danny Owens to play the same way with K-K, he was both short-sighted and in my view mean-spirited when he was so critical of Forde and Rynaghs in the aftermath of that county final win.
As for Tipperary, well that goes back to the same thing - if I have the best hurlers at my disposal, then I want to play a simple game, with lots of one on one battles - because I'll back my guys to win those battles. If you picked an All Ireland XV now, Tipperary would have six or seven players on it, imo - so of course they want to go with route one, simple hurling.
If Offaly went out and played like that against Tipp next summer, we'd get crucified. Whatever about the forwards, leaving the backs one on one against Bonner Maher, John O'Dwyer, Seamus Calllinan, Noel McGrath and the likes is just asking for trouble - these fellas are pure elite, as good as there is in Ireland anywhere. That's why it's vitally important that we have a manager who understands that the best system to maximise the players' ability is not necessarily the one that he or the players would choose in an ideal world.
Owens has been successful on the club scene, but he hasn't displayed any great level of tactical ingenuity yet, purely because he hasn't had to. That's why he'd be as well to take on a college job or something and then come back with a new case in two or three years' time.