Offaly vs Tipperary - SFC Qualifier Rnd 1 30/06/2012

[timber]

but more worrying for me is that they seem to be lacking in the football side of things. in the games we played this year we struggled to score much scores , playing in divison 4 next year isnt going to help much either.

Have to agree. The basic skills are lacking so badly. They have to start by getting the basics right and build from there.

[Bord na Mona man]

Coffey was right to highlight the difference between Offaly and Kildare in terms of fitness, physique and conditioning.
This was after they beaten us, so it wasn't as if he was trying to blow them up before we played them.

We are a long way off what is needed. And we'll fall even further behind if we keep up our outdated ways.
The Offaly approach seems to be:

January - After the training ban, give a few club players and U21s a run in the O'Byrne Cup.
February - Having been whipped in the early games, start phasing in the established names for the League.
March - Start realising, we're in big trouble and miles off the pace.
Early April - Players start walking off the panel.
Late April - Start dragging in half fit fellas who were dispensed with months ago to fill jerseys.
May - Get beaten in the first round of the Leinster championship.
June - Get beaten in the Qualifiers.
October - Start thinking about appointing a manager for the next year.

You'd wonder how the hell we ever managed to win All Irelands years ago, when we're such a circus these days!

[townman]

Coffey was right to highlight the difference between Offaly and Kildare in terms of fitness, physique and conditioning.
This was after they beaten us, so it wasn't as if he was trying to blow them up before we played them.

We are a long way off what is needed. And we'll fall even further behind if we keep up our outdated ways.
The Offaly approach seems to be:

January - After the training ban, give a few club players and U21s a run in the O'Byrne Cup.
February - Having been whipped in the early games, start phasing in the established names for the League.
March - Start realising, we're in big trouble and miles off the pace.
Early April - Players start walking off the panel.
Late April - Start dragging in half fit fellas who were dispensed with months ago to fill jerseys.
May - Get beaten in the first round of the Leinster championship.
June - Get beaten in the Qualifiers.
October - Start thinking about appointing a manager for the next year.

You'd wonder how the hell we ever managed to win All Irelands years ago, when we're such a circus these days!

we won all irelands years ago because we had guts ball's the belly for the fight we had players won wanted to win the jersey mean something to the men who
put it on them back then.

we can't say the same today, Tom Coffey was blowing shite about kildare been the all blacks of football during the week because they beat an bad poor offaly
side who were beaten before they took to the field, he said as much after the game, Meath made his words look silly after yesterdays game.

i agree with the aboves offaly approach thats why we are in the state we are and if there was a division 5 we would be in it.
this blame the county board shite has to stop its the players that have to stand up and be counted now.

i have to say we would be just above kilkenny in the football ladder in ireland at the moment that says it all

[Bord na Mona man]

but more worrying for me is that they seem to be lacking in the football side of things. in the games we played this year we struggled to score much scores , playing in divison 4 next year isnt going to help much either.

Have to agree. The basic skills are lacking so badly. They have to start by getting the basics right and build from there.

The basic skills rapidly deteriorate with fatigue, which is a bigger problem for Offaly than simply lacking the skills.
We struggle for scores because we have very a very poor attacking platform to build off, rather than simply lacking forwards or the skills.

Very quickly into both the Kildare and Tipperary games, Offaly weren't able to carry the ball from their own '45 to the oppositon '45 with any sort of pace. With a fit team, 3 to 4 players on a burst, should be able to run it through this central area in a matter of seconds, by running it around any opponents and laying it off support runners.

With Offaly, what usually happens is that players give a handpass and can't/don't run on to give an overlapping option. Eventually at around the opposition '65 the Offaly man in possession has no support players in front of him and at this point has to either a) turn back for support (allowing the oppositon to funnel back), or b) try and kick it towards the full forwards.

Despite what Pat Spillane might have you believe, long punts from this range generally don't offer the forwards great odds. On Saturday night about 80% of these 'Hail Mary's' were possession turnovers to Tipperary. Tipp then had an empty field in front of them and could work it back to half way fairly easily.

[kingscounty]

but more worrying for me is that they seem to be lacking in the football side of things. in the games we played this year we struggled to score much scores , playing in divison 4 next year isnt going to help much either.

Have to agree. The basic skills are lacking so badly. They have to start by getting the basics right and build from there.

The basic skills rapidly deteriorate with fatigue, which is a bigger problem for Offaly than simply lacking the skills.
We struggle for scores because we have very a very poor attacking platform to build off, rather than simply lacking forwards or the skills.

Very quickly into both the Kildare and Tipperary games, Offaly weren't able to carry the ball from their own '45 to the oppositon '45 with any sort of pace. With a fit team, 3 to 4 players on a burst, should be able to run it through this central area in a matter of seconds, by running it around any opponents and laying it off support runners.

With Offaly, what usually happens is that players give a handpass and can't/don't run on to give an overlapping option. Eventually at around the opposition '65 the Offaly man in possession has no support players in front of him and at this point has to either a) turn back for support (allowing the oppositon to funnel back), or b) try and kick it towards the full forwards.

Despite what Pat Spillane might have you believe, long punts from this range generally don't offer the forwards great odds. On Saturday night about 80% of these 'Hail Mary's' were possession turnovers to Tipperary. Tipp then had an empty field in front of them and could work it back to half way fairly easily.

fitness is a vital part of football today im not saying its not , but fitness will not win an all ireland on its own . if you take kildare yesterday i thought meath beat them by playing a good brand of football, they took some lovely scores from distance where as when kildare got the ball they were looking for someone to step up and shoot. kildare were beaten by a more or less brand new meath outfit, a kildare team that are if you listen to all the hype about them are a top 3 team. kildare are a team who must have listened to pat spillane so over the last couple of years as they are a team who kick long punts into o connor many times so as fit as they are suppose to be they still have to resort to the long ball themselves where o connor trys to set up close range shots for in my mind poor enough forwards who struggle to kick points against the better teams and they very rarely score goals or create goal chances. offaly need a half forward line who can get the ball make some space and pop the ball over the bar from distance instead of running into trouble all the time, a long ball into full forward isnt a bad thing now and again but we need numerous game plans and ideas to develop our forwards into a team that can score 14-15 points in a game instead of scorig 8-9 points in games.

[jimbob17]

I think really that this is a much bigger issue than just the senior team. The board cut corners at every level. successful counties have good people in at all levels and improving counties are the ones leading the way in terms of how things are done. eg Roscommon, Longford underage and Tipperary underage. Roscommon are consistently winning minors and 21 beating galway and mayo consistently.Reached a 21 all ireland final this year and won the other night to reach another connaught final at minor level. They have a template for development from 15 to 21 and everything is done very well with support teams with all squads. We need to look around and realise that tiperary have now passed us out in football as have numerous other counties we would perceive as lesser counties. Unless there is political will for change it wont happen. And from what i hear there is absolutely none with a prominent member of the county board as recently as yesterday, laying the blame squarely at the feet of the current players. Instead of having a constructive view of thinking looking at what can be done better, they are laying the blame game to take the heat off themselves. This is their view and mentality, a defensive one to take the heat off themselves. As i have said in previous posts, those at the top do not have the intelligence, know how or qualities to improve things. This is because they dont actually realise what is required to bring a team to be competitive at a decent level these days.

[Truth as i see it]

I say this without an ounce of Misogyny in me, its ironic that the the women's codes are putting their male counter parts to shame off the pitch with the fantastic work being done at underage, development squads in either codes are continuously getting to leinster finals, the footballers are starting to show improvement while the hurlers (camogie players) have rocketed through the grades and are starting to compete well with the the best teams in the country

I wonder if you had the current county board in charge of these teams would you see the same results?

naa not really.

One can only deduce that the people in charge are more enlightened on modern GAA

I think someone should do a draft on what the women's board are doing, do a comparison with the men's along with current results and send it to the county board.

It might just embarrass them into reviewing their own attitude towards the game

Then again.....

[Lone Shark]

After watching the shambles in Semple Stadium - and that's exactly what it was - I came away thinking that we must be near enough to the worst team in Ireland now, and what's more, how there are so many similarities with our county hurlers. The players play an outdated, old-fashioned style of play that gets walked on in an intercounty context. The crucial difference is that the hurlers have players like Dooley, Bergin, Hanniffy, Kenny and others who would get on to any team in Ireland, while the panel as a whole has a high workrate and is willing to put the hard work into representing the county with pride.

The footballers have Niall McNamee, who is clearly badly hampered and shouldn't even have been playing, and they have a mixed group of individuals, some of whom clearly put their hearts into playing for Offaly, but others just don't. And whereas last year the team and indeed the crowd might have been lifted by a tackle from Slattery or a point from distance by McManus, this year those kind of leaders simply aren't there. Alan Mulhall did all he could from goals, Brian Darby couldn't be faulted for his effort and players like John Moloney, Nigel Dunne, Anton Sullivan and Michael Brazil clearly have a lot to offer, but there were too many passengers.

Still though - you'd have to wonder how teams can look at intercounty football and not pick up on certain basics:

(1) Any intercounty forward pairing in Ireland will make hay if left 2 on 2 with defenders in acres of space. You simply can't allow that, and Tipp didn't.
(2) Long ball into tho full forward line is all very well, but it has to be sharp, crisp, and delivered from inside the opposition 65 at least. Long, high hanging punts from your own 65m line are no good to anyone. All too often we played long ball from too far back, meaning that by the time possession had been secured, we were too far from goals and the defence had funnelled back.
(3) You only create chances by taking players out of the game and creating extra men. That can be done by taking a man on, or by quick passing moves that give you a yard of space and confuse the defence, or by bypassing the defence. Despite having some very sharp players on the field, I felt we didn't really run at a slow Tipp back line. Anton does it a bit, but there is no point putting players like Guilfoyle and Cunningham on the field if you're not going to give them licence to run at the defence and beat players. That's what they do, and picking them in roles where they spend all their time running around and putting in tackles in the middle of the field is nonsense.


I don't envy Tom Coffey. He has a lot of work to do with a squad of players that clearly don't even understand enough about how modern football is played. It's going to be a long way back to respectability.

[llkj]

no doubt about it but this season was an absolute shambles. Thoughts definitely turn to next year and the way forward straight away. seeing as this season is over in June, I see no reason why the county should not be back training by September 1st at the latest, with a full time manager at the helm. Also, I dont see any reason why a 3-5 year plan for Offaly football can not be put in place in that timeframe also. It is not rocket science - just copy the blueprint that nearly every other county has already drawn up, tweak it a bit to work for us and get cracking.

Obviously, the senior team is the flagship team and need the right person at the helm. We need to decide in the next few weeks whether that person is tom Coffey or not. If not, start the search for his replacement by the end of July at the latest and have him in place asap. Personally, I don't know if he is the right person that we need. The main reason for this is that he is now in a very difficult situation. He loses one of the main advantages that any new manager brings with them - an air of fresh energy and opportunity for all. He has worked with the team for 2 months now so most players will have already heard what he has to say, learnt his philosophy on how the game should be played, his motivation techniques, man management skills, etc. Judging by the 2 performances to date, it is hard to see his personal stamp on the team, which is worrying. At very least, you would have expected some kind of a new manager kick from the team, but we didn't see it.
If he is to be kept on, then I hope that they can draw a line in the sand on this year and start afresh in a few months. However, that may be a very difficult thing to do. If he does stay on and achieve something with this team, it will be a huge achievement.

[jimbob17]

While there is a lot of apathy amongst everyone, it is not all doom and gloom. There is a good bit of talent there. There just seems to be a systems failure or even total lack of system in the first place.
Just a few questions answered could point us in the right direction.
What are our 14 15 and 16 year old county teams doing and who is over them and what are their results like?
What is being done to develop these players physically and technically?
Is there a system follow through between these ages and minor level in terms of coherent progression?
What is the link or coherence between minor and 21 progression.
Does someone keep a list of those involved at various ages in terms of their potential, fitness test scores etc.
Are players being tracked through the ages. Are there good minor and 21 players falling away because they come from junior and intermediate clubs?
Why arent we entered in the Leinster Junior championship where aspiring senior players get to transition between minor 21 and senior like Kildare do?
If we can answer these type of questions, then we might be going somewhere.

As for the present management. While they are not long in the job and deserve a crack given their success in club football, i am not fully convinced of their credentials with regards to coaching. It is relatively easy bring a good crop to win a final in Offaly and we both know that Rhode and Tullamore are easily in the top 3 consistently in offaly football with poor levels of competition around. Steven Darby set that team up for tom coffey to walk in to success, and while he did a good job with them, it doesnt necessarily mean he is county management material. IMO, the soundbites that come out in the media dont portray him in the best light, but that is just maybe getting used to being in the spotlight that bit more than at a club team. I would love to see both Tom Coffey and Phil Reilly as selectors to somebody with a proven inter county record like Sean Boylan, Liam Kearns, Joe Kernan etc with a good coaching set up and professional backroom set up where they could learn the ropes, but unfortunately i dont think this is going to happen as the board will want to cut costs at every opportunity.

[Ahlethimoutwithit]

The board have no choice but to cut costs lads. Look at the support out there for Offaly GAA? Its not as if there is an Abrmovich bank rolling us.
- Need to be smarter with how we train our teams
-Need to be smarter in nurturing talent, keep in touch with young lads, encourage them to get into third level colleges and play top football
-Proper monitoring and training of the coaches involved and bring in admin people to help, these can be volunteers from clubs-who are trained to record training data, fitness records, diet and nutrition

Whether Coffey is the right man, i dont know. He would need to send out a message that the door is open for all who are willing and able to play a part, as far as I can see there were 4 too many Rhode guys on that team. I can understand this logic in the short term as he had a short time to try to implement a plan , and he knew these guys would buy in to his methods and with that bring the rest of the panel with them.

However at the end of watching the 2 games close up and rewatching the first one, I cant for the life of me figure out what that plan entails? When you add this to the fact that Rhode threw away 2 great chances of winning a Leinster after getting off to great starts, I would doubt whether tactically Coffey is up to the level needed.
But in fairness to the man, he has done a lot of good work with Offaly teams and it would be harsh not to give him a chance, but I would insist that Paschal gets another crack at the u21s, and that it is made clear that they must work together at developing 2 squads of players, (u21 and Senior, with the level of conditioning required.
Ideally as has been said someone with experience of Inter county working as a mentor to Tom Coffey would be the way forward.

But lets face it lads, you cant condemn andy county for balancing the books.

[summerindublin]

as far as I can see there were 4 too many Rhode guys on that team

The Rhode lads on the team were Shane Sullivan, Brian Darby,Eoin Rigney, Alan + Niall McNamee and Anton Sullivan, so the 4 too many are Shane Sullivan, Brian Darby,Eoin Rigney & Alan McNamee IYO??????