Offaly .v. Galway - LSHC Semi Final Replay - 26/06/2010

[leinsterman]

yes happy enough with that draw put we will have to take limerick more seriously than we did in the league
we will still have to hurl well to beat them limerick will have nothing to lose in that match remember the antrim match we have been warned,

[My Left Foot]

Taking my faithful head off to analyse that match

we were poor in the first half by top intercounty standards - too many missed tackles - too easy scores - changes not made soon enough to resolve them.Kilkenny would have got a hatful against us in the first half and that is the level we aspire to so must judge ourselves against that fact. ( both management and players alike)

second half - fitness and intensity and skill got us back into it - great to see it 2 weeks running.

man sent off - I thought we were all over the place at times with the extra man to the extent that Galway took 2 short puck outs - criminal.

I would have left Shane Dooley inside no matter what - I know he got a great point to put us in front but we may have got more from him being around the square.

Joe Canning got 3 excellent points off either hand - very impressive particularly the last one.

I hope the injuries received by players are not too bad - Stephen Egan particularly looked in a bad way.

the upside of injuries is that some players got good runouts also that may not have normally.

Can we learn from these 2 tight games and push upwards and onwards ? I hope so

Limerick will fight tooth and nail against us and we will be favourites, but we better hit the ground running or we could get caught like against Antrim.

It will be interesting to see how Galway get on next weekend. I hope they do well as its good for Leinster to have a competitive structure.

[Plain of the Herbs]

GreatDayForTheParish is in great form on the board lately, not unlike the Offaly hurlers. Keep it up, lad!

I don’t have much to add to his contribution. I would disagree with him on Joe Brady. Brady has a job to do which is to break the ball and stop the centre back from hurling. I think he did that well in Croke Park and in the second half on Saturday. His scoring return wouldn’t bother me, and his distribution has set up many scores for Bergin, Carroll & Murphy.

There is now a certain appeal to Ger Healion at full forward. He did well when he came on. A full-forward line of Dooley, Healion & Bergin has an appeal to it.

Offaly were undone in the first half by their own puckout. There is nothing spectacular about a puckout going all the way to the full-forward line, and very few of them were actually won by Offaly. Offaly’s half-forward line had did well in Croke Park, so why change? As it turned out, the half-forward line again did well into the wind in the second half.

The diagonal ball to the opposite corner was also counterproductive. With the corner-forwards behind their men, the cross-field ball suited Ollie Canning & Co. The ball should have been going in over the top, which yielded the goals the last day. They’re singing Ollie Canning’s praises now for his first half performance, but he was again made look poor in the second half. Damien Joyce should have been targeted after he was yellow-carded; I don’t think a ball went into that corner after his censure.

Offaly defence. In short, Offaly ate them. Absolutely ate them in the second half. Galway may have cribbed about the lob-sided free count in Offaly’s favour, but that was because Offaly had all the possession and poor Galway tackling led to those frees.

The most admirable thing was how Offaly stayed going despite losing Franks, Kenny & Egan. Having emptied the tank and left everything on the field twice now and left without a result, Offaly must be wondering just what they have to do to win a game. All they can do is keep working. The coveted win will come.

Galway will win nothing. Take Joe Canning out of that team and they are hopeless.

The Offaly performance may well dip to Antrim levels for the Limerick match. Hopefully they can score at least the high-teens and prevail. Remember this is the draw Limerick wanted too, though the wobble in the NHL match has emerged from the disguise to be quite a blessing.

Am I correct in thinking that repeat pairings in the next round are to be avoided? If so, and Antrim beat Carlow (not a given, mind), Offaly would likely face Tipperary. That would be at a neutral venue. Hmmmm!

[GreatDayForTheParish]

Anybody see the Sunday Game last night, in particular Galway's second goal? I remember seeing it at the time and thinking something didn't quite add up; one second two Offaly defenders were there, the next second none. Now I know why; watch as the ball lands behind Kenny and near Hayes and Egan. Watch what Hayes does next; he makes absolutely no attempt to play the ball opting to instead just tackle Egan off the ball thus clearing the path for Joe.

Hayes knew exactly what he was doing and the ref should have seen it. Vincent Hogan makes reference to it in today's Indo.

[the bare biffo]

Yea it was a classic third man tackle. Thought at the time it should have been a free out.

[Bord na Mona man]

Thanks for all the detailed reports.
Unfortunately I had to keep track of this match via text messages, RTE match tracker on my phone and running phone commentary.

At half time I feared the final result would undo the capital gained last week. Again great to see the traditional Offaly fighting spirit come to the fore.

Could we and should we have won it though? There were a few missed chances towards the end. I'm thinking back to last year when Waterford picked Galway off with a late rally. There is often a softness in the Galway mentality when you tighten the vice. Maybe Offaly are still a bit early in the learning cycle for us to start seeming greedy.

I think the benefits of a more settled team and Division 1 hurling are being seen this year. The more big games these lad hurl, the more they learn and the better they become. The Limerick game will be a huge test in a different way. Offaly will be expected to dictate the game rather than chase.
If we get better at putting away the Limericks and Antrims with efficiency and precision, they we become better at doing the same if one of the top 5 gives us an opening.

In boxing parlance Offaly now seem like they can brawl the full distance with the best of them, now to work on the knockout punch.

[BUFFALO]

Thanks for all the detailed reports.
Unfortunately I had to keep track of this match via text messages, RTE match tracker on my phone and running phone commentary.

At half time I feared the final result would undo the capital gained last week. Again great to see the traditional Offaly fighting spirit come to the fore.

Could we and should we have won it though? There were a few missed chances towards the end. I'm thinking back to last year when Waterford picked Galway off with a late rally. There is often a softness in the Galway mentality when you tighten the vice. Maybe Offaly are still a bit early in the learning cycle for us to start seeming greedy.

I think the benefits of a more settled team and Division 1 hurling are being seen this year. The more big games these lad hurl, the more they learn and the better they become. The Limerick game will be a huge test in a different way. Offaly will be expected to dictate the game rather than chase.
If we get better at putting away the Limericks and Antrims with efficiency and precision, they we become better at doing the same if one of the top 5 gives us an opening.

In boxing parlance Offaly now seem like they can brawl the full distance with the best of them, now to work on the knockout punch.

Towards the end of the game I said to myself 'that we can win this game' and it has been quite some time since I've been able to say that.
I thought we should have won it,but missing a couple of late chances scuppered those hopes.
I believe that with more games against the bigger teams that this group of players will acquire that 'cuteness' required to snatch tight games.
This is the sort of thing that cannot be brought about by training or instruction,but rather the experience of similar situations in preceeding games.
To that extent,I would echo your boxing analogy,and in due course this side will indeed learn how to deliver the all important killer blow.

[GreatDayForTheParish]

Brilliant analysis of both Offaly .v. Galway games here: http://www.anmoltoir-hurling.blogspot.com/

Essential reading, particularly on the question of 'Are we really a young team?'

[black and red exile]

The Limerick game is going to be awkward as hell and Justin McCarthy will no doubt drum it into his players that they were able to go toe to toe with Offaly in the League in O Connor PK and that they should have nothing to fear, put it this way I think limerick would probably rather be facing Offaly more than Dublin after the walloping Dublin gave them in the League. The favourites tag doesn't sit well with Offaly teams and after the two fantastic performances against Galway we will be red hot by the bookies to easily take care of Limerick which of course most of us know will not happen and as a supporter I'm not too bothered if the lads don't perform well just so long as they get over the finishing line.
As POTH said we could be on a collision course with Tipp if we get over Limerick which really gets the pulse racing big time. In my opinion Tipp are better than Galway and this would be the ultimate test for Offaly and a game that would see how far we have come this year. But first things first, LIMERICK.

[the bare biffo]

Brilliant analysis of both Offaly .v. Galway games here: http://www.anmoltoir-hurling.blogspot.com/

Essential reading, particularly on the question of 'Are we really a young team?'

Lots of stats included in a very different style of analysis. Interesting, but I would be in the Johnny Giles school of thinking on these statics based analyses.

One thing not in the report is the distribution of wides among the players. My impression was that while Brian Carroll did have a great game in open play I though his shooting was badly off in the first half. It would be interesting to see if stats bear that out or if it was just that i remember one or two bad efforts.

[My Left Foot]

just to get back to the 2nd goal again - i was beside where the ball was driven in to the corner and there was a 3rd man tackle there also so i was raging when the linesman never flagged when our halfback and his hurl were held off so he couldn't tackle galway man as he went past and drove in the ball to the corner, and then on top of that Hayes just "fell over" with Egan and Canning was free to bury it.

We have to learn from these things unfortunately - no goal line technology for us !!


Limerick will be tricky for us make no mistake so we better be on our toes from the off.

Lets just focus on them for now. - Walk before we run.