So folks,is this it. Do we accept our fate and carry on regardless. Someone or something has to be held accountable. I have been a proud Offaly supporter since I was at my first game in Croker with my aul lad in the All-Ireland semi final against Down in 1981 at the afraid of heights age of 9. Since then I have experienced some extreme highs and lows and accumulated some memories that will live fondly with me for life. Some games like the 1982 All-Ireland final, 1994, member of the 1997 football panel, Thurles against Clare in 1998 just to mention a few. My pride has been tested at other times but Sundays game tested me the most and all I have heard is 'the Dubs haven't improved' from Pat Roe. FOR FUCK SAKE!
It's very easy for me to sit here behind a PC and give out about everything and everyone but I'm not happy with that performance on Sunday and it's not just another defeat for Offaly. There were 16/17 good footballers on that team and they are better than that. What excuses are there? did everything just go wrong on the day-NO, was it just a bad day out-NO, as individual footballers are we not good enough to compete-NO last year showed we can compete in Leinster anyway. So what's the problem. Karl Slattery and to a lesser extent Conor Evans stood head and shoulders above everyone else on the Offaly team when it came to passion,belief,heart and a bit of guts. Who the hell does Alan McNamee think he is not competing and walking around with his hands on his hips. Also on more than one occasion I seen PJ Ward free in front of his man but the ball was held up by Paschal until Niall became free. This tactic will not win games.
To me it boils down to Pat Roe and selectors. This Offaly team just did not look prepared either physically or mentally. They lacked motivation and struggled against a poor Dublin team that were there for the taking. To go from a well earned Leinster Final appearance in 2006 to Division 4 in the league, a disgraceful team performance in Croker and end up with London,Kilkenny and Tipperary in the Tommy Murphy Cup. Is this really happening. There should be an apology or an explanation of some kind from Roe and the County Board such is the severity of the situation. The game Sunday made us look like a division 4 team but the best is not been got out of these players and to me the book stops with management but sure what the hell about it,at least the Dubs haven't improved in 2 years
If half of what I've heard in the week coming up to the game is true, the the buck stops absolutely with the players. The county board may have acted the gobdaw with O'Kelly and Fahy, but you can't blame the county board for stuff peope do or do not do when they are on the panel.
I know there are lads involved in the panel that look in on this board, and to be honest I have no interest in naming names or deeds. I've never been one for knocking players publicly, but everyone knows themselves if they are putting it in.
Also, Pat Roe may well walk, which is a disaster in my view. Not so much because of the stellar job he has done this year, but another manager change would be no good to anyone.
If he does go, I reckon Stephen Darby should be given a chance.
Edit* - Or Brendan Clarke
Shane Gavin. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
I do not think we should get into a cavalry charge against Pat Roe.
Not because of his merits or otherwise but I think there was way too much of that crap went on here around Kevin Kilmurrays tenure and it achieves nothing.
I am not in the county and I don't know anything about what goes on at a local level. My only basis for judgement is that there was very little difference between what I saw last Sunday and what I saw against Leitrim last February.
The responsibility for the lack of progress has to be shared by management and players alike. Who specifically has most to answer for, I dont know.
I don't think Pat Roe will walk and I also don't think the County Board should get rid of him. You can't come into a county and turn it upside down in 12 months and then say good luck I'm outta here. I'm hoping he has learned a lot from his first year and will know himself where he fell down so he can bring us to maybe 3rd in Leinster and close to a title anyway.
So what kind of things were going on in the camp? No need to name names but if there is some crap going on that players do no matter what then there's fuck all management can do.
There's no point in Pat Roe going as someone else will come in and start with the very same experimenting.
In Division 4 next year, everything a manager tries will work. John Reynolds in goal, Niall McNamee at full back, Ger Rafferty at full forward. That's how bad our opponents will be.
Next year I'd expect Roe to apply some of the lessons learned this year.
However I would like to see a stronger backroom team appointed. For most of this year, we had one selector who didn't appear to have the sway to change Roe's mind on certain things, until too late in the league.
In Monaghan Seamus McEnaney drafted in last year's Cavan manager Marty McElkennon to assist him. It seems to have helped. Offaly should look to bring in one or two crafty lads to help Roe out. Now might be the time for Stephen Darby to start learning the ropes.
Seriously though.. who can ya point the finger at??
Out of the championship and relegated to division 4. Anus Horibilis springs to mind. Everyone seems to thing that there is potential in this current crop of players, yet when it was put up to them and the management to avoid relegation they couldnt rise to the challenge! When the dubs were there for the taking at half time last sunday we lay down and rolled over. With the exception of Slats and conor evans. As long as Im supporting our county teams I've never seen one lie down like they did last week.
Even the hurlers during that 31 point thrashing from the cats kept goin.
The panel arent up to scratch mentally and physically and there doesnt seem to be any more players out there chomping at the bit to join the team. As a county we have gone backwards and backwards.
Our skill levels are atrocious, I could go on and on...
I've held back from slaggin for the past while but for f**k sake, sundays game was too much to take. Especially when you look at last years games and compare them to this season.
Who else can ya blame... The county board dont tog out, the fans dont tog out..Its the players and the management who have to hold up there hands strap on a pair of balls and admit. WE ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
I'm wary of jumping on the anti-Roe bandwagon myself, however I would consider it unlikely right now that he'll be in charge next year.
In this situation you always like to look at what they have achieved or spotted, and what skills they are likely to improve on. With Kevin Kilmurray the teams were well motivated and well prepared, but his use (or complete lack thereof) of substitutes meant that we needed to be five or six points better than the other team to win by two. He got two years, and in that time he presided over three games which were as appalling as Offaly supporters have ever seen - the Championship loss to Carlow, the league game in Parnell Park and the qualifier debacle in Portlaoise. There were some good wins, but it was rare that we pulled a tight one out of the fire, and there were plenty of matches where it was so frustrating because the winning of the game was there but nobody made the little switch to shut the door before the horse bolts.
Pat Roe is different, in that if nothing else it would be a lot easier to look at the team and say that it's not his fault - the players just don't look that good. It would be very hard to look at that bunch of players from last sunday and see how they edged out three big championship wins against middling sides like Westmeath (albeit without Dessie) Kildare and Wexford.
It's possible that a lot of that is down to preparation. I'd hate to think that a manager would be judged by such crude metrics, but my gut feeling is that if a range of tests of power and fitness like benching and bleep tests were done on June 1st 2006 and 2007 the results would be very different. At least one man involved in the fitness preparation across the two seasons has said to me that last year's bunch were 50% better in terms of fitness - and Roe has to take responsibility for that. If players aren't putting it in, then those players shouldn't be there.
Equally, let's look at the big problem areas at the start of the year - all along the spine of the team, basically. The rest of the team wasn't too bad. Nigel Grennan admittedly fell out of form robbing us of one of our best performers last year, as did Tommo, but in terms of addressing the issues at 1,3,6,8,9,11 and 14, let's see how he did.
1 Kelly - the old hand, yet again conceded a championship goal to a high ball that he shouldn't have attacked.
3 Went back to Evans, who had little or no match time and by his own admission was not match fit. He was around to play a couple of league games if we wanted him, or in the Carlow match - but he wasn't used. That suggests to me that Roe didn't plan on using him in the championship until he ran out of alternatives.
6 Spent the whole league persisting with Shane Sullivan there, and with all due respect to Shane who is very committed and I have great time for personally, this was a huge contributory factor in us being in Div 4/Tommy Murphy. Players go through bad spells, but persisting with him in such a pivotal position when it clearly wasn't happening for him cost us a huge amount of scores, and ultimately, division 4. Come the championship, we had no solution so we reverted to Scott Brady, who the previous year struggled there due to lack of pace. Scott didn't get any quicker and while he did his best, it wasn't a good position for us.
8 Alan McNamee - the lack of alternatives makes him very hard to drop, but his tracking of his direct opponent can be disgraceful - and so it proved. if there is no alternative, working on that one aspect of his game could have made a big difference.
9 Niall Smith - I'm sympathetic to Roe here. Plenty of lads were given their go, and much like the hurlers, I think Niall is the best bet to give a run in the team to and hope that he matures into the midfielder we need.
11 Again, tried various things here during the league, Niall merely ended up proving how we can't do without him in the full forward line, and reverted to Paschal. Interestingly McManus at 11 was one of the big improvements for last year - but this year that was never done.
14 Ward had one good game all year - against Carlow. Like BnaM man said, if you played Rafferty there he could have scored eight points against that Carlow team. Again, no success here.
All in all it's hard to pick out Roe's successes. I'd still like to see him get two years so that there can be no more accusations of Offaly being a managerial graveyard, but ultimately if Roe was asked the question - "What do you think you did well this year?" I can't for the life of me think what he'd answer.
Not fit enough, that's what I truly believe. Fittness is not going to make the lads kick the ball straighter but it will mean that they have that split second more the pin-point the pass better. Look at all the top county teams out there, they are all savage fit. Apart from a few of our lads they are not up to the same fittness level. As much as I hate the c$*t but when Tommy Lyons came into Offaly in '96 the first thing he did was run the s$#t out of the lads for 5-6 weeks then turned around and said they are now fit to start training. The same thing is needed now. Those lads have the talent, just need someone to get it out of them. I'm convinced if they were mad fit they would have won Sunday by hitting harder, etc.
I'm fully sure Roe should go, who should take over I'm not sure. But whoever it is needs to be a big name for one year, with a massive training program in mind.
Gutted by the performance but I think the players have been let down also by management and the county board. I see comments saying that they gave up etc. I just dont think they were in the right shape for the game.
With regard to the training under Tommy Lyons,he started in September 96 and continued flat out training 4 times a week and at the end of November when those who were committed,good enough and 3 stone lighter did he break the news that they were only fit enough to train and ultimately they kicked the living daylights out of everyone in their path in division 4 thus creating a winning streak,the belief to win and a strong bond as a team.
Now I know Pat Roe had to come in fresh and trawl the county for talent but I spoke to the selector in December and they hadn't even started training proper and there was only unsupervised gym work to be done over the Christmas period. This is not good enough and I strongly believe it contributed to our downfall and our current division 4/Tommy Murphy cup status. Even just to compete in Leinster now which has a lot of mediocre teams means we need to train and train hard from October at the latest.
I'm not a big fan of all this accountability and notions that of having to resign as persons are answerable to the people.
Having said that the decision must be made as to whether chopping now is more beneficial medium term than persisting. If Roe decides to walk then fine - i don't think he will, he will try to maximise what he can out of the Murphy cup i suspect. However if the board decide to chop then it must be part of a structured plan
Forget about the Tommy Murphy Cup, we can't motivate ourselves for the qualifiers so this is a none runner. Micko will still have Wicklow flying and he will use this as a stepping stone for next year. He'll want to win it so you can be sure he'll have the players in the same frame of mind.
We have been in this position before i.e. 1996 before Tommy Lyons took over.
Lets face it some people may not like him but no other manager has brought Offaly any sort of success since 1982 as Tommy Lyons did. 1 Leinster title 1 League title an a couple of O’Byrne cups and all of this coming from a starting point of rock bottom down in the dumps of division 4.
So My suggestion is that we get rid of Pat Roe and bring back Tommy for next year he May not win us an All-Ireland but anything is better than being in this Fucking Tommy Cooper cup or whatever the fuck you call it.
0k folks, enough is enough. lets call a spade a spade. the whole thing is rotten from top to bottom and seious changes are needed. we were beat 5 points last sunday, but in all seriosness the dubs were at least 15 points a better team. it was embarrassing to say the least and for this i think heads should roll. it is very easy to point fingers at pat roe but we should be looking at the bigger picture. now everyone agrees that things were far from perfect under the killer but at least the team was well prepared by qualified people in the backroom team, despite little backing from the county board. they were competitive in div 1 of the NFL and had some good wins in challenges, o beirne cups league and championship beating armagh roscommon cork longford wicklow tipperary clare wexford fermanagh louth laois kildare donegal westmeath and were competitive in most games along the way all with full strength teams. in championship they were robbed by a ross munnelly goal after playing laois off the pitch and hitting 22 wides and reached a leinster final beating reasonable teams along the way. granted we were beaten by carlow and laois badly in qualifiers but players will tell you that there were lads on the beer solid up to 3 days before them games and put in little effort. massive shame last year with a q final place at stake. however, offaly are where they are because the same level of preparation was not put in this year and this happened because the county board put the structures in place and roe bowed his head to them unlike fahy and kilmurray.
GAA management is a business nowadays and while other county boards have individuals with foresight and cop on, offaly have stayed with the tried and trusted who rule with a tight iron fist. it has been brought to my attention that PR took on the job under certain conditions, one being that he wouldnt have group training sessions till january came because the co board wanted to cut down in expenses, effectively robbing of valuable time to get the players into shape after their excesses of the previous months. group gym sessions were also abandoned and players were given a programme to do, Titled (wexford senior football 2005) can you believe it, saw a copy with my own eyes, of which about 6 did correctly. players have commented openly that they werent physically prepared for battle with the dubs and this cost them effectively their place in the qualifiers too with all them early league defeats. co board officials have not got one iota of an idea of what is required to prepare a competitive inter county football team and try to cut corners at every opportunity. pat roe was left in a situation where he had no third selector despite half the county being asked because the county and its mother knew that things werent right and wanted nothing to do with the county board. he had no physical trainer coz id say the co board werent willing to pay someone to do it. hence you are lookin at a set up with two men to do the work of four for most of the year. i felt sorry for roe the last day because i think he might be good if he had the necessary back up.
as for the players, offaly football is wasting its time with some of them shapers. lads who have never achieved anything are doing the pub scene all over the county for the past 6 months up to a week before championship (FACT) parading as superstars, who do they think they are, there is also an underbelly of serious issues (and everyone has heard the rumours) regarding who some county players are hanging around with. being sucked into an ugly murky world that is so far away from where a senior inter county footballer should be. enough said. you cant be a good drinker and a good footballer at the same time.
so that is it folks, you get what you deserve in this world. div 1 to div 4 in the space of 6 months, tommy murphy, here we come. it all came out in the wash.
