Dingle wrote:I dont have much time to reply in detail but I say the following.Lone Shark wrote:Dingle, I agree completely that dropping to Christy Ring level in the coming years is plausible. However to look at it another way, what right have we to expect to be top flight? You say it like our current set up is a joke, but right now the only counties that are better than us in hurling have bigger populations and are hurling counties first - we are where we should be, more or less. (Not including Galway or Cork who are big enough to sustain two high level sports) I'm not saying we should concede on these grounds or anything, but let's have realistic expectations here. Secondly, Wexford are no better than us at minor level. They beat us this year after a replay, but the record of both counties in recent years is abysmal. KK and the Dubs are way ahead, granted, but after that we're as good as anyone else.
Since you agree with OF's views, how about you take the extra step he never does - what would you do? OF tends to use grandiose statements about how everything is rotten to the core, and that we should spend fortunes we don't have on big name managers and several full time coaches, while also denigrating the existing coaches we have. With the personnel and budget that currently exists, what would you do? (This is not meant to be facetious, but endless complaints about the status quo without a plausible altenative are nothing but wind in my view)
Frankly, your attitude stinks of a loser mentality. You make every excuse under the sun for Offaly's hurling woes. Offaly were possibly the most consistent senior intercounty for 2 decades and two generation of players. Thats were the bar was set and thats where we should aspire to. We should demand high standards not excuses. Having a small population base has distinct advantages when Offaly are organised and well run. Having a small population base and being a disorganised shambles is a recipe for disaster and we are now seeing. We should have a top class coaching/developmental structures in place to produce competitve underage sides and potential senior players consistently. We dont.
This all comes to the a culture difference. In Kilkenny/Cork sucess is demanded/craved. In Offaly we simply dont deserve success because we dont want bad enough.
wtr to Wexford. WEXFORD have George O Connor employed fulltime to the promotion of hurling. He has overseen a complete over haul of underage hurling structures. If their supporters website is accurate Wexford underage sides are training 50 odd times a season. Their underage performances have skyrocketed and have won AllIre U16/14 in the past two seasons. Expect, from the coming season on, the minor sides to improve dramatically.
i have repeatedly asked for someone to outline exactly what is being done wrt underage hurling in the county. No answers so far, which leads me to beleieve that its not pretty. Maybe some would outline just what is being done.
You're right - we were competitive for two decades, with two distinct teams. The first was when we had a good bunch of players who got a progressive coach, all at a time when a good level of general fitness from hard outdoor work would have had you 70% ready for intercounty hurling. It was also at an era where Munster hurling was very poor.
The second era was when we had a freak vintage in that Birr CS leaving Cert class of 1999. Obviously training was some aspect of it, but with the best will in the world, no amount of training can create one bunch of about 40 lads that included Johnny Dooley, Johnny Pilkington, Adrian Cahill and of course Sid - with John Troy over in Lusmagh of the same age. Dooley, Sid and Troy are probably the three best hurlers ever to play for Offaly in terms of pure natural talent, and all three would be contenders for being on the best team of the TV era. I'm not saying it was dumb luck, but being realistic, that was why we won All Irelands. Rynagh's chipped in with a few lads to strengthen the team, but those three gave us something special. This is not meant to be an argument against an academy or anything - merely that you could sink tens of thousands into such a plan and still never see the likes of those three again for 100 years - that's just the way it goes.
It's all very well to talk about raising the bar, but you seem to think that not aiming for the stars implies that if we did improve by 50%, I'd be happy with accepting that and not trying to improve things further - of course not. However you do have to run before you can walk. Peter Ridsdale's time at Leeds should be a reasonable warning about what can happy when you try to go too far too fast.
Saying that population is as much an advantage as a disadvantage is nonsense. Of course your pick size is hugely relevant. Wexford is roughly the same population as Laois and Offaly put together. Are you honestly trying to tell me that if Offaly could also have picked Zane Keenan and three or four other Laois lads that we wouldn't have won down in Wexford Park in the drawn game this year? Of course we would. I'm not amalgamating a merger here, but these bigger counties have more players and at a time in Offaly when Rynaghs and Drumcullen are at a very low ebb (the clubs who tended to supply the hardier hurlers down the years) we don't have other clubs to step up and replace them. Put it another way - St. Martin's this year reached a KK county final, having been intermediate a few years ago. They'll no doubt have two or three lads on Brian Cody's panel next year. In Offaly there's no chance of a club coming up from intermediate to do that, because there just isn't enough depth.
This whole thing reminds me of a debate I've had with Ireland soccer supporters over the past few months on a couple of occasions. People give out about Staunton, talk about how bad things are, and how we should be doing better. pointing out how we are a small island and one of the lowest populations in the UEFA federation tends to meet with the same answer - "But look at Scotland and what they've achieved" - i.e. comparing ourselves to the biggest overachiever in the game at the moment. It's the same when you compare us to Kilkenny - when saying things aren't good enough, you compare us to a much bigger population, and a county which all but bans Gaelic Football in an effort to maximise their hurling. I come from a statistical background, so I can't help but look at the maths of it. Taking the counties with the sixteen lowest populations in Ireland - Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Clare, Kilkenny, Waterford, Fermanagh, Derry, Westmeath, Longford, Carlow, Laois, Offaly, Louth, Cavan and Monaghan.
We are fourth, and a lot closer to third than fifth. All the counties above us are hurling first counties with at least 20,000 more people. There is a difference between a "loser mentality" and being realistic, and aiming to secure our Liam McCarthy status and build from there is the latter, not the former.