Offaly v Longford - Senior Football Challenge this weekend.

[Hocker]

Offaly will play Longford in a senior football challenge match this weekend as the headliner for the official opening of Shannonbridge GAA playing grounds.

This promises to be a good workout for the team 3 weeks before the championship opener v Meath in Portlaoise.
Perhaps we may see a preview of the team Tom Cribbin would like to play against the Royals.

Below: From http://www.shannonbridgegaa.com

Shannonbridge GAA will host the Official opening of its playing grounds on Saturday May 1st 2010 with all proceeds in aid of Aware – the depression support group.
GAA President Christy Cooney will officially open Pairc Chiaran Naofa, and we will be joined by dignitaries from all over the spectrum including TV Sports personality Darragh Maloney (who originally hails from Shannonbridge parish) among others.
As part of the festivities which begins at 5.00pm there will be underage games and the main event of the day will see a Senior Inter-County Football Challenge match between Offaly & Longford with a 6.00pm throw-in, in which promises to be a good competitive game just 3 weeks before our championship opener against Meath. This game will be refereed by top ref. Pat McEneaney.

All support on the day will be most welcome, and as mentioned before there will be no entry fee on the day and any donation towards AWARE will be greatly appreciated.
Shannonbridge area like many others throughout the country has been devasted in recent years having lost players and parishioners alike through suicide and AWARE is a more than worthy cause to help prevent suicide and raises awareness among others of people with depression.

Thank you and looking forward to seeing you all there on the day.

[Hocker]

[black and red exile]

I can't wait to see what cribben is going to do with the half back and full back lines for the Longford and Kildare games after the rotten league campaign we just had. Should be interesting.

[Offaly2010]

Anyone know how we got on?

[Bord na Mona man]

Anyone know how we got on?

Lost by 4. I think the score was 0-16 to 1-9.
Longford finished with a late burst of unanswered scores, when Offaly had managed to get back level after being on top for a lot of the second half.
The game lacked intensity, so you couldn't use it as a barometer for how the championship might go. However there was little to re-assure anyone either.

Overall Longford were that bit better in their attacking and support play, as the score would suggest. Francis McGee stood out for them. He got scores and orchestrated a huge amount of their attacks from centre forward.
Scott Brady was in the problem full back position and did all right. John Reynolds was Offaly's main scorer. McManus worked hard and gave the beleaguered defence a bit of cover. John Coughlan gave Offaly a good attacking platform by winning several kickouts. Nigel Dunne and Alan Lynam came on as subs in the second half and showed well.

Shane Sullivan was in the squad. Niall McNamee didn't play as he is carrying an injury. I think Sean Ryan and David Egan are also injured.

[black and red exile]

BNMM summed it up really. I will go as far as to say we were crap AGAIN. There is no improvement at all with the backs apart from Scott doing fairly ok at no 3 but overall it was awful stuff between 2 dire teams, If Eamonn O Brien was in a tree nearby watching this game with a pair of Binoculars he would have fallen asleep with sheer boredom, he certainly will not be nervous about our challenge in 3 weeks time.
Well done to Shannonbridge on the whole set up last night, a nice atmosphere and everything nicely laid on for everybody, well done again Hocker.