Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

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townman
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Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by townman »

The play off game is fixed for this saturday evening in Thurles, our minors are also out again Carlow in Carlow at 3 :x . we need a good support this saturday to keep hurling going in the county a defeat this weekend could well be the final Nail in our Coffin.

KillougheyGoBragh
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by KillougheyGoBragh »

Well said Townman, easy to follow Offaly when we are in an All-Ireland and the likes lets show these lads that we are still behind them even when they are between a rock and a hard place.

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townman
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by townman »

well its up to the players to get us out of it, theres no point in blaming Sid or his back room team
if we haven't the hurling to beat kerry or the players don't step up to the challenge thats put up to them in thurle's saturday evening they might as well forget about inter county hurling.

yes its now they need our support pity the minor is on to would have liked to see both.

kinnittyman
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by kinnittyman »

Townman,

You'd easily do Carlow to Thurles in 90 minutes going through Abbeyleix. Actually 75 minutes would do it.

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townman
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by townman »

i know you would Kinnittyman but its my daughters 7 birthday on saturday and have things on with her
i be lucky to get to Thurles that evening, don't want Mammy to be really pissed off :x as a pint or 10 will be got if we win saturday night. :wink:

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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by Toxicity234 »

Thurles it is.
I volunteer on Saturday morning so no chance of making the minor game :cry:
But Offaly Vs Kerry it is.
I sit across from a Kerry man in work and he never being to a kerry hurling game but i think he going to come on saturday.
I'm looking forward to getting an the road and see Offaly get on with the game.

i want to see a tactics game plan of the highest quality. Offaly Management team had last week to look at this Kerry team and i hope they have done they homework.
But getting Offaly Team and Tactics right are more important than anything else. We have 4 games of bad use of a sweeper and bad team selection.
Now is the time to get it right.

Dempsey
Wynne Healion Mc Donald
Rigney, Egan, Egan.
Hanniffy, Conneely.
Bergin, Mahon, Cleary
Qurike, Curims, Tom Geraghty

Corner back Pick themselves.
There only One Full back in the squad.
Half back are a mess at the moment. No good defence Centre back in the squad. If Colin Egan is going to play at centre back, he need to be left there to learn the position.
We need lads that can play wing back. Brady is looking his age so no point have him running around midfield Mark Egan was excellent up until injured. I don’t think Kenny, Gardiner and Morkan are near fit yet.
Hanniffy and Conneely. With Kilmartin gone (which is shocking) Sean Ryan being overlooked for one bad half against Cork were surprisingly short of Midfielders. Brady doesn’t have the legs and the Geraghtys are forwards, Hardworking but forwards.
Hanniffy and Healion can’t be put in the centre of a defence together. Mainly because Hanniffy spend so much time hurling he forget to defend at centre back.
Hanniffy is too good a hurler to be left off the team. Connelly we tried Parlon, Brady and ryan in midfield and Connelly look the best of them.
Bergin and Mahon are shoe in. In their correct position and with good tactics were very good. Cleary ahead of Dooley. Dooley is just not fit enough at the moment. That the only reason why Cleary ahead of him but Cleary works hard and is an excellent finisher.
Quirke and Curims are shoe in. Tom geraghty is there for a good reason.
We have being playing a sweeper against the wind.
If Offaly are against the wind in the first half and we want to use a sweeper, we can move out Geraghty to midfield and Drop Hanniffy as the sweeper. Hanniffy is an excellent reader of the game and delivers excellent balls to the forward line.
If we have the wind in the 1st half we can still go 15 vs 15 and Geraghty is a excellent Corner forward as well.

Use of Subs could be the winning of this game. I don't want to hear that we lost every battle and still only made two subs in the 62 an 65 min rubbish again.
Kerry are a good team.
Coming from 6 points down to beat Carlow shows that. This won’t be easy.
“Common sense is not so common.”

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townman
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by townman »

is Hanniffy and Morkam fit, if so the team i'd go for

1 Dempsey

N. Wynne G.Healion J.Rigney

D. Morkam R.Hanniffy M.Egan

C.Mahon P. Geraghty

S. Cleary J.Bergin S. Dooley

B. Carroll D.Currams S.Quirke

unlike toxicity i'd have Dooley on it he still is one of the best forwards in offaly and he needs games
subs if we need them to win saturday we are in trouble thats not looking down on kerry in anyway but we are after hurling Cork,wexford,Limerick, so them games should stand to us, still think we should have way to much for kerry plus thurles might suite our game and keep it spread wide.

the likes of Currams, Geraghtys Bergin, Sean Cleary Dooley, Carroll, should get enough scores to see us over the line by 6 to 8 point win.

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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by sam88885a »

townman
i agree if hanniffy morkam dooley and even kenny are fit start them but u honestly could not put bergin at cenre forward.
have u see him under the puckouts during the league . he didnt even compete never mind catch a single ball .
as for c mahon if u dont pick him at centre forward leave him off because his not a midfielder .mahon can stop the centre winning the ball and cause turnovers with him work rate .
dooley and bergin are proven finishers so keep them close to goal but their work off the ball is their weakness so u could not have b carroll there too because u have three really talented hurlers who would stand there waiting for the perfect pass .i dont think i have ever seen any of them chasing a defender who get out ahead of them and turning over the ball like d currams does.
i hear kenny is going some training but i think rory wont be ok yet my team would be if all are fit
demsey
n wynne g healion j rigney
d morkam d kenny m egan
r hanniffy c egan
d currams c mahon s cleary
s quirke j bergin s dooley

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townman
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by townman »

sam88885a wrote:townman
i agree if hanniffy morkam dooley and even kenny are fit start them but u honestly could not put bergin at cenre forward.
have u see him under the puckouts during the league . he didnt even compete never mind catch a single ball .
as for c mahon if u dont pick him at centre forward leave him off because his not a midfielder .mahon can stop the centre winning the ball and cause turnovers with him work rate .
dooley and bergin are proven finishers so keep them close to goal but their work off the ball is their weakness so u could not have b carroll there too because u have three really talented hurlers who would stand there waiting for the perfect pass .i dont think i have ever seen any of them chasing a defender who get out ahead of them and turning over the ball like d currams does.
i hear kenny is going some training but i think rory wont be ok yet my team would be if all are fit
demsey
n wynne g healion j rigney
d morkam d kenny m egan
r hanniffy c egan
d currams c mahon s cleary
s quirke j bergin s dooley
thats not true their have been a few games Bergin has caught a few high puck outs, why have him there because he can score and strike a ball under pressure or on the run Mahon can't , Mahon is fit and can work up and down the field and can win the dirty ball and pass it on to the forwards i have lost count on how many times Mahon has got into scoring poistions for offaly and k/k and fail to hit the target. we all have picked our team but i think Sid will pick Parlon at right half back, and don't be surprise to see Kevin Brady midfield.

Toxicity234
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by Toxicity234 »

I was under the impression that Morkan, Kenny Gardiner and Peter Gerathy are not fit for this game.
I mean if these lads are fit then i have to change my team.
Apart from that if they are fit. Let me say "YEAH" i be over the moon. Having Kenny for Centre Back.
Morkan, Kenny Gardiner would well be my half back line.
Rigney can go backing into the full back line or into midfield. I have to think about that.

The Kerry Centre back makes Kerry tick. Stop him Make life a lot easier. Mahon has to be centre forward. Bergin Played centre forward in the 1st two game this year and was not Good. (to the point where i thought he should have being dropped). He has being great at wing forward in most game since. So why move him. Mahon and Currams you could say have being poor but a lot of that down to our tactics being off the wall.
I have no problem with Cleary, Mahon, Bergin and Currams interchanging positions. Mahon a good wing forward. Currams can play all the 4 positons. Cleary pace make him dangers. Bergin moving between Wing and full forward will give the back something different to think about.
I could make a good case for putting Colin Egan Full forward on the Kerry full back who a good hurler but not great in the air from all reports.
Dooley is still a good bit away from fitness. His injury last year was a nasty one and the same goes for Slevin. Hurling slevin or dooley wing forward put the other two under pressure to cover the legs they doesn't have at the moment. in 5 weeks no problem have them there but let him get their fitness correct before we being to using him from the start of a match.

Our Puck out haven't being great over the league. They 2 reason for this. The Sweeper system we used meant that the opposition half back line only had to make sure that our forward didn't break the ball and it ended up with the extra defender they have. The other is the movement of our half forward, Our half forwards look like they have being practising win the ball in the air and not what happen when the ball hit the ground.

well also one thing that we must learn is win the ball in the air from puck-outs is not the be all and end all. when you creating a ruck from the puck out and winning the ruck is much better because it has drags in defenders and leave space for the other forwards. but you have to win them rucks. The damage that does to a defending team. You find that the next ruck defender standing off and you win the ball much easier and if you look out the field you find lads in space.
At the moment were not creating or winning them rucks.
“Common sense is not so common.”

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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by Toxicity234 »

townman wrote: thats not true their have been a few games Bergin has caught a few high puck outs, why have him there because he can score and strike a ball under pressure or on the run Mahon can't , Mahon is fit and can work up and down the field and can win the dirty ball and pass it on to the forwards i have lost count on how many times Mahon has got into scoring poistions for offaly and k/k and fail to hit the target. we all have picked our team but i think Sid will pick Parlon at right half back, and don't be surprise to see Kevin Brady midfield.
The problem is with Bergin isn't with catching a few high ball, the problem is what happen to the one he doesn't catch. They go straight back down onto of our defence. Mahon normal slows down that ball coming out of defence and with our defence at the moment that very important.
If Sid does pick Parlon at number 5 and Brady in midfield well them Birr we have a huge problem and it isn't our players.
There is nothing worst than a management team that doesn't learn for their mistake.

What the old saying “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”
“Common sense is not so common.”

Plain of the Herbs
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by Plain of the Herbs »

Arra hold on lads. David Kenny hasn’t played a match this year – there’s no way he can line out against Kerry. But part of the thing about supporters is that they want to see the best team take the field every day but they also want management to ‘put on all the young lads’, they want to see a settled team take shape but they also want to see experiments, they want to win every match, get excited on hearing of a challenge match won (for what that’s worth), despair when the league isn’t won, and can’t see why there is a difference in standards between club and inter-county.

Similar to Kenny, Derek Morkan can hardly be fit. Note too that Derek didn’t look sharp when introduced against Limerick and gave away possession on a couple of occasions. Rory Hanniffy will hardly be right either. Saturday might be a good match for Chris McDonald to line out at 6. Michael Cleary would be a good option to line out at full-back or centre-back were he on the panel. Every middling club hurler has been mentioned on this forum in the last week (as invariably happens during a bad run of results) but Cleary the defender was one of the most improved hurlers in Offaly last year.

Colin Egan was picked at centre half-back on the basis (presumably) of the cakewalk over Antrim, which wasn’t much of a test. I’ve no idea how he fared in the position in Ballycastle, but is’s difficult to envisage him as an intercounty centre half-back. Winning ball in the air and taking scores are what he does best.

Gardiner hurled U21 last Saturday so fitness isn’t an issue, whatever else it is.

Dooley remains a goal threat. My preference would be to keep him close to goal. Saturday is about ‘never giving a sucker an even break’. Offaly need to go hard from the start, dictate the pace, score early and often, maintain control of the game throughout (something the Offaly style of hurling is not conducive to), win the feckin’ match well and then banish the memory of NHL 2014 to the rubbish skip.
Pat Donegan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

"Offaly's hurling is exact and abrasive: full of assurance on the ball, devoid of fumbling and slicing and sod-busting". Kevin Cashman RIP (September 1994).

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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by GreatDayForTheParish »

Plain of the Herbs wrote:Arra hold on lads. David Kenny hasn’t played a match this year – there’s no way he can line out against Kerry. But part of the thing about supporters is that they want to see the best team take the field every day but they also want management to ‘put on all the young lads’, they want to see a settled team take shape but they also want to see experiments, they want to win every match, get excited on hearing of a challenge match won (for what that’s worth), despair when the league isn’t won, and can’t see why there is a difference in standards between club and inter-county.

Similar to Kenny, Derek Morkan can hardly be fit. Note too that Derek didn’t look sharp when introduced against Limerick and gave away possession on a couple of occasions. Rory Hanniffy will hardly be right either. Saturday might be a good match for Chris McDonald to line out at 6. Michael Cleary would be a good option to line out at full-back or centre-back were he on the panel. Every middling club hurler has been mentioned on this forum in the last week (as invariably happens during a bad run of results) but Cleary the defender was one of the most improved hurlers in Offaly last year.

Colin Egan was picked at centre half-back on the basis (presumably) of the cakewalk over Antrim, which wasn’t much of a test. I’ve no idea how he fared in the position in Ballycastle, but is’s difficult to envisage him as an intercounty centre half-back. Winning ball in the air and taking scores are what he does best.

Gardiner hurled U21 last Saturday so fitness isn’t an issue, whatever else it is.

Dooley remains a goal threat. My preference would be to keep him close to goal. Saturday is about ‘never giving a sucker an even break’. Offaly need to go hard from the start, dictate the pace, score early and often, maintain control of the game throughout (something the Offaly style of hurling is not conducive to), win the feckin’ match well and then banish the memory of NHL 2014 to the rubbish skip.


I would largely endorse the above.

The problem with the Offaly team at the moment is that there isn't really one. Not unlike the footballers, there are scarcely five players that all could agree on as being guaranteed starters. The reason for this is due to the change necessary after the stagnation of the last number of years allied the the fact that our calamitous and shameful underage structure has provided us with a cohort of underage players all of roughly the same ability with few standout exceptional talents. In many cases its splitting hairs arguing for certain players over the other.

My own two cents is that for whatever Egan is, an inter county centre back he certainly isn't. As for Shane Dooley, the by now annual spring fitness battle is growing tiresome. Perhaps not being guaranteed a start purely on the basis of absence of significant injury might be beneficial.

I've said it once and Ill say it again, using the club game as a point of reference for inter county selections is nonsensical. They bear no relation to the other. Just ask Galway.

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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by durra1 »

A young fit Kerry team showed up with a strong finish in the Div. 2 final and from reading the reports they are over the moon about the outcome but it didn't come from nowhere.

Causeway Comprehensive has been making great strides at schools level over the last few years and you have the tradition of a committed, albeit small local senior club championship.

No more than ourselves, it took them a while to get their house in order towards the end of last year with Tom Howard resigning in November and replaced by Tipp man Eamonn Kelly in December. Did I recall Brendan Cummins committing to some level of involvement on the goalkeeping side of things?
On some level you think Birr and its hinterland circa 1979.

Our management are surely thinking of their opponents in their selection and it appears they have not gambled on any players who are 50/50s on fitness. Make no mistake about it the way we capitulated in Ballycastle from a winning position, against fit, young motivated opponents on a dry sod in Semple, the players and management will need to turn up and turn up to win if they are to get see Div 1B hurling next year (Unless Congress propose another Cork-style get out of jail card for us!)

Surprised to see James Dempsey dropped. I have some concerns about 3 and 6 and fear we could be targeted here by a team who use their pace. Anyone know what the story with Sean Ryan is? I would have thought he would have been ideal for this kind of fixture around the middle for the park and certainly a stronger option than Ciaran Slevin.

Offaly (NFL v Kerry): Conor Slevin, Niall Wynne, Ger Healion, James Rigney, Cathal Parlon, Colin Egan, Barry Harding, Kevin Connolly, Ciarán Slevin, Joe Bergin Capt, Dan Currams, Conor Mahon, Brian Carroll, Sean Cleary, Stephen Quirke

I see Diarmuid Lyng writing in the Indo during the week rightfully addressing the injustice wrought upon Kerry for having to fulfill this fixture.

He describes Offaly as a team that ‘couldn't hit the ball out of their way in 1B’. A bit harsh considering we gave LK a game of it and especially coming from Gizzy who was certainly no John Troy in his day!

lovelyhurling
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Re: Offaly v Kerry 12 April Thurles

Post by lovelyhurling »

Sean Ryan has been injured for the last month and a half since the Cork game, still out with a shoulder problem
pull hard on your man, he's no relation

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