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frankthetank wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:18 pm Interesting to see a home and away format being used in this year's Senior A championship. E.g Rhode are at home to Edenderry in Round 1. I actually thought it might just be this game with this arrangement as Rhode travelled to play Edenderry last year to play at the opening of Edenderry's new grounds thus Edenderry would return the favour but Rhode, Clara, Gracefield and Cappincur all have home advantage in Round 1 and Tullamore, Ferbane, Shamrocks and Edenderry are all at home in Round 2.

Also interesting to note Tullamore are playing their home games in OCP and not O'Brien Park!! Make of that what you will but if I was a club chairman/secretary/manager I would have serious issues if I was asked to play Tullamore in a neutral venue down the line in the championship and then the game was fixed for OCP!

I see Tullamore have been fixed to play Rhode in OCP on Saturday 17th August - thereby OCP has been classed as both their home and their neutral venue!!

chimbonda wrote: ↑Tue Aug 06, 2019 3:40 pm

frankthetank wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:18 pm Interesting to see a home and away format being used in this year's Senior A championship. E.g Rhode are at home to Edenderry in Round 1. I actually thought it might just be this game with this arrangement as Rhode travelled to play Edenderry last year to play at the opening of Edenderry's new grounds thus Edenderry would return the favour but Rhode, Clara, Gracefield and Cappincur all have home advantage in Round 1 and Tullamore, Ferbane, Shamrocks and Edenderry are all at home in Round 2.

Also interesting to note Tullamore are playing their home games in OCP and not O'Brien Park!! Make of that what you will but if I was a club chairman/secretary/manager I would have serious issues if I was asked to play Tullamore in a neutral venue down the line in the championship and then the game was fixed for OCP!

I see Tullamore have been fixed to play Rhode in OCP on Saturday 17th August - thereby OCP has been classed as both their home and their neutral venue!!

I said it before: IT SHOULD BE PLAYED IN BIRR!!!
There’ll be a carnival atmosphere, a festival of football, drawing in the North Tipp and East Galway crowds.

Read the report of the Shamrocks-Rhode game in the Tribune. Amazingly, both ‘keepers were substituted during the game. Surely a first, is it?
I note that Ken Garry was withdrawn after 12 minutes and Brian Lowry after 63 minutes. Assuming both were injured, as there was no mention of black cards in the report. Although I think Rhode were awarded a penalty.

Anyway, best of luck to both keepers in their recovery, if they both got injured. A rare occurrence nonetheless.

I can see big trouble after next weekend with this criss-cross layout in Senior tables.
One team will have at least 3 wins out of 4 and be in a relegation final while a team who lost all 4 matches will be in the Quarter-Finals.
A similar scenario is unfolding in Intermediate as well.
It was pointed out to the Co Board when they came up with this crazy idea that this could unfold as is has, but they refused to listen.

Pretty crazy situation alright. This was easily remedied pre-championnship. Keep your 2 groups of 4, play your criss-cross games and then teams were ranked 1 to 8 depending on their record after the group stage. #1 and #2 to semis, #3 v #6 and #4 v #5 in Quarters. Not exactly rocket science. It’s actually even laid out this way on the offaly gaa website in the results section.

Ferbane or Tullamore probably favorites for relegation final seeing as both will have to beat Rhode and Clara respectively. Shamrocks likely to beat Cappincur which would put them through if either Ferbane or Tullamore fail to win.

Very flawed system but very exciting conclusion with all teams interested in score differences from all of the games!

Why have they the rankings on offaly gaa website when there not been used?

My initial thought after seeing them was that they were using them. But going by this forum it seems they aren’t.

Going by the tribune last week too the rankings are irrelevant. Just find it strange they put them up. Take it the underdogs werent meant to win and the seedings were to hold up.

Seán Doyle 4-10 (22)
Niall McNamee 3-12 (21)
Nigel Dunne 1-17 (20)
Johnny Kavanagh 2-13 (19)
Peter Daly 1-15 (18)
Joe Maher 0-16
Jack Walsh 0-14
Cían Johnson 2-8 (14)

Any idea on scores from play here?

So Tullamore into a Relegation Final with 2 wins from 4.
Cappincur into Q/F with 0 wins from 4.
Just bananas. Not ever remotely fair.

Geansai Gorm wrote: ↑Sun Sep 01, 2019 8:34 pm So Tullamore into a Relegation Final with 2 wins from 4.
Cappincur into Q/F with 0 wins from 4.
Just bananas. Not ever remotely fair.

Just one point on this, though I do agree there is some legitimacy to the view.

If, instead of the criss cross format, the Offaly SFC was just two groups of four, and they were drawn out as they are in this format. Chances are that on current form, the knockout places would still have fallen the same way, and Tullamore would still be a better team than Cappincur. Yet for some reason, that would be seen as grand. Why is that okay, but this isn't? As long as you have championship draws, you'll always have the possibility of one group presenting a lot more difficulty than another.

I take the point that if Tullamore had beaten Clara and all other results were the same, then Shamrocks would have been eliminated despite winning three games out of four. That would strike me as harsh. Yet in Tullamore's case, they had already lost a game, and they went into Saturday evening knowing that if they did their job and won their game, they would reach the knockout stages. They were unable to do that.

I fully expect this format to be changed, but I'm not sure that there is any injustice here. The groups were drawn out, and Tullamore were the poorest performing side out of the four in their group.

Can anyone give a brief explanation as to what you mean by “criss-cross format”. It seems most unusual?

Keyser Soze wrote: ↑Mon Sep 02, 2019 12:21 pm Can anyone give a brief explanation as to what you mean by “criss-cross format”. It seems most unusual?

Four teams drawn into group one, four teams drawn into group two. The clubs don't play the teams in their own group, they play the teams in the other group - so four rounds of games, and a league table at the end for each group. That's why Cappincur sneaked into third place out of four despite losing all their games, because their scoring difference was better than Gracefield, who also lost all four matches.