Newspaper Articles and other media bits

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LooseCannon
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by LooseCannon »

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Lone Shark
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by Lone Shark »

I think it makes sense in a bigger county. I don't mean to sound harsh, but the Offaly football scene is small - I've never bought into this idea that there are hidden gems out there playing junior football who never get noticed. Because of our underage system, with so few actual teams entering at most levels, you will get spotted if you're a talented youngster. Of course there are those who develop later in their careers, but it's a pretty small subset of people who only come good in their early twenties and do so while playing for a club that is either bad intermediate or junior. In fact one would imagine that those clubs are the least likely candidates to create such players, since they're unlikely to offer the same calibre of coaching as a player will get access to at the strong senior sides.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

llkj
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by llkj »

I think it’s a good idea. Most management teams hold some form of trials each season, so why not try to make them as competitive and realistic as possible. 4 games gives everyone a fair chance and gives the management team plenty of scope to see different people and try different scenarios. Holding these in addition to reviewing club championship performance, plus just knowing who is available to you is a good thing.

LooseCannon
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Re: Newspaper Articles

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pigeon house biffo
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by pigeon house biffo »

Interesting that they've appointed there own S&C Coach. From the leaked 'contract' that came out from the county board a few weeks back about the stipulations of the job, I thought that the county board appointed the S&C coach who from my understanding has been Dave Hare for the last couple of years?

LooseCannon
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by LooseCannon »

https://m.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-g ... 62108.html

Unfortunately, there’s more than those listed that have been asked in and won’t commit.
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manfromdelmonte
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by manfromdelmonte »

Maughan is a dinosaur in his methods
they still talk about him in Roscommon overtraining all the talented young players they had
only the best...

jimbob17
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by jimbob17 »

Id have had reservations on Maughan from when he got job for same reasons - old style army dictator type figure with old school views on fitness etc. However, the players that are training appear to be very happy with how things are going in comparison to this time last year. Some have suggested the new S&C coach is very good and up with modern trends in training. That bodes well and speaks well of the new management irrespective of what views one might have had of JM. If he lets the backroom team use their expertise then no issue re fitness etc.

That said, I do find it a little strange that the county board are employing a full time qualified S&C person who was previously working with senior football team but who is now not working with either of the senior teams! Maybe it is better he be deployed at lower levels to improve base through dev squads.
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by private joker »

The Offaly S and C Gda is with the hurlers and every other county team. No matter how good the other guy is with the senior footballers, it should be the offaly employed GDA in charge. All teams should be training the same way. It's that simple. And the GDA is top class.

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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by jimbob17 »

That is only right. Hadnt realised hurling team had picked up use of GDA. It only makes sense. In fairness it would be hard to have involvement in both senior teams given that theyd often train same evenings and be busy at same times over weekends.
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LooseCannon
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LooseCannon
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by LooseCannon »

I just read Kevin Corrigan’s article on a recent meeting about the breaking up of massive underage teams at the younger age groups, where the county board reckon that every club should have their own team up to u11, with the possibility of an examination of the numbers that they have for older age groups may result in the super-clubs such as Vincent’s, Na Fianna, Broughan’s and St Manchan’s Gaels.
There is also mention of permission players at underage playing for Ferbane from Shannonbridge, despite the fact that Ferbane have more than sufficient “numbers themselves to field teams in each underage grade.”

Also the issue of having different arrangements at different age groups eg DER Gaels at u11, while St Manchan’s at u13, etc were not allowed to happen last year.

Just wondering what people’s thoughts on these matters were?
Whether you agree with what the county board are doing or not, at least they’re being somewhat proactive in trying to keep playing numbers up.
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jimbob17
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by jimbob17 »

County board are dead right. Keep the numbers as high as you can for as long as you can. Have B grade competitions for smaller / weaker clubs like most counties! Result is the adult clubs benefit down the line and we have a stronger playing base.

The alternative generates the opposite - take St Manchans for example - off a combined team each club might have 3 or 4 young lads getting football instead of 7 or 8 at each age for likes of a Ballycumber Tubber amalgamation or a DER Gaels amalgamation. Clubs need to think 10 years down the track. It shouldnt be about winning an U14A or Minor A for that matter. It should be about developing players to fill adult teams down the line. If Manchans stay as they are, in my opinion, the polloughs, Doons Ballycumbers of the world will be in an awful position in 10 years time! Their pursuit of short term underage glory will only help to eradicate their own clubs - it is extremely short-sighted. Let the development squads and schools fill the void of the argument that the lads need to be playing at a higher level!

There are huge numbers in some areas where there should be 2 teams at underage grades also - especially in clubs around Tullamore. As an example, the likes of Na Fianna have four or five primary schools - some fairly big schools feeding into them. Na Fianna could easily have 2 if not 3 teams at U11 & U13 level. This has been the case for a long time. If there were 2 club teams combined (Ballinagar and Geashill for example) then they would be very competitive with another group from remaining schools (Killeigh Killurin). That way 35 footballers see action and develop rather than 16. That is 20 potential adult footballers not getting an underage opportunity. For me its a no brainer and county board need to lead here and act bigger than the parish pump politicians! Our numbers are limited enough as they are!
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by Hankscorpio »

jimbob17 wrote:County board are dead right. Keep the numbers as high as you can for as long as you can. Have B grade competitions for smaller / weaker clubs like most counties! Result is the adult clubs benefit down the line and we have a stronger playing base.

The alternative generates the opposite - take St Manchans for example - off a combined team each club might have 3 or 4 young lads getting football instead of 7 or 8 at each age for likes of a Ballycumber Tubber amalgamation or a DER Gaels amalgamation. Clubs need to think 10 years down the track. It shouldnt be about winning an U14A or Minor A for that matter. It should be about developing players to fill adult teams down the line. If Manchans stay as they are, in my opinion, the polloughs, Doons Ballycumbers of the world will be in an awful position in 10 years time! Their pursuit of short term underage glory will only help to eradicate their own clubs - it is extremely short-sighted. Let the development squads and schools fill the void of the argument that the lads need to be playing at a higher level!

There are huge numbers in some areas where there should be 2 teams at underage grades also - especially in clubs around Tullamore. As an example, the likes of Na Fianna have four or five primary schools - some fairly big schools feeding into them. Na Fianna could easily have 2 if not 3 teams at U11 & U13 level. This has been the case for a long time. If there were 2 club teams combined (Ballinagar and Geashill for example) then they would be very competitive with another group from remaining schools (Killeigh Killurin). That way 35 footballers see action and develop rather than 16. That is 20 potential adult footballers not getting an underage opportunity. For me its a no brainer and county board need to lead here and act bigger than the parish pump politicians! Our numbers are limited enough as they are!
Just a thought and I'm only using Ballinagar and Geashill as an example because you have mentioned them above - But surely (I don't know the stats) they both individually have enough numbers in their respective primary schools to field a team on their own up to U11/U12 grade?

I would have thought this would be the case in every area in Offaly? I'd be stunned if a club like Daingean for example hadn't enough players in their primary schools to field teams up to U11/U12 on their own.

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Lone Shark
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Re: Newspaper Articles

Post by Lone Shark »

I think making hard and fast rules for situations like this is extremely difficult. To be fair to most rural clubs in Offaly, or the ones I'd be familiar with anyway, there aren't players slipping through the net, they just aren't there. People in bigger towns mightn't realise quite how stark things are, but it's not unheard of for clubs like the Doons and Shannonbridges of this world to have no more than two or three boys born in their catchment area in a calendar year. If that happens for a few years in succession, you could get 100% participation and still wouldn't be remotely close to fielding your own team.

Also, most adult clubs are keen to retain their own identity where possible, and certainly up as far as U11 and U13, would prefer to have a team in their own colours competing at a low grade than to join up into a bigger conglomeration in order to be stronger as a group.

Where the waters get muddied is from U15 up, where the pursuit of success becomes a factor. Trophy-driven coaches will look at a 10-year-old who maybe isn't the most co-ordinated or gifted athlete around, and they'll try and keep them involved because there is a sense that they might come into themselves after they hit a growth spurt, or something like that. If that lad is still a bit awkward and scrawny at 14 or 15, then there tends to be a sense that he's not going to turn into a senior player, so they start to focus on the handful of players with talent instead - and start looking at getting high level games for those lads, rather than working hard to keep a bunch of players who are deemed to have less potential involved. This is where I think there has to be a bigger role for things like the GAA registration system.

Notwithstanding GDPR restraints, it should be possible to log on to the teams of a parish - lets take St. Manchan's for example - and assess exactly how many players each of the four constituent clubs should have at each level. Some degree of fall off from U11 is to be expected, but if Tubber and Ballycumber had 30 players playing football between them at U-11, and four years later they try to argue that they need to join up with Doon and Pullough to make up a team, then there should absolutely be questions asked as to how this has been let happen, as opposed to the county board just stamping the forms and blindly accepting what's been said to them.


Just a couple of other points on this though:

(1) I'd be very wary of getting into the mindset of putting a lot of onus on development squads to look after the needs of the elite players, who might be "A" footballers born in a "C" village. Development squads have become a bit of a problem in the GAA as what was once a small operation that might involve the team meeting up once a week for 12-14 weeks, with a couple of blitz competitions thrown in, has evolved into pseudo-minor squads where players are missing club activity all in order to meet the increasing demands of the development squad manager. The GAA has identified this and I believe a serious curtailment is on the way - and so it should. My point out of this though is that if you're a Walsh Island, or a Doon, or a Lusmagh or a Drumcullen club official, you shouldn't lapse into the mindset of saying that the county development squads will ensure that their best and brightest teenagers will get the training they need, so all that needs to happen at home is just to keep things ticking over.

(2) I've covered this before but I'll say it again - Ferbane club don't push Shannonbridge to send their players down the road to them. Shannonbridge don't have numbers in most of the years I'm familiar with, so whether they go east to Ferbane or south to Cloghan, they'll end up playing as permission players. Given the track record of success, and the fact that most of the Shannonbridge players go to secondary school in Ferbane as opposed to over in Banagher where the Rynaghs lads tend to go, it's understandable that they choose to go to Ferbane. And to be fair to Ferbane, they will always field second teams and give lads games. I remember a conversation with one club official who had been part of the coaching set up for a particular group of players who won a lot of trophies, with a good chunk of them playing adult ball now. He told me that the thing he was most proud of was that at U-10, they had 35 players. Six years later at U-16, they still had 35 - they retained 34/35, plus one new lad had moved in. So absolutely, Ferbane have sufficient numbers - but so do St. Rynaghs. So it's really about what's best for the Shannonbridge players, and past evidence would suggest that going into Ferbane is working for them, since they have had more than their fair share of county players at all levels in recent years.

(3) As Jimbob said, there also needs to be a lot of focus on the town clubs. It's very easy to get hung up on a village club losing half a dozen players between U11 and U15, because that's the difference between them fielding by themselves and fielding as part of a combination. Yet we gloss over the town club that has lost 20 players in the same time, all because they can still easily field a team by themselves. To be fair to the Tullamores and Edenderrys of this county, these are quite progressive clubs that tend to do reasonably well in this regard, while Birr doesn't have the huge numbers of young players that either of those do. However even so, from an Offaly point of view, we can't ignore our towns just because we're a predominantly rural county.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

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