Offaly vs Longford, Leinster SFC, Saturday 16/05/2015

A forum to air your views on Offaly GAA matters and beyond.
Truth as i see it
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Re: Offaly vs Longford, Leinster SFC, Saturday 16/05/2015

Post by Truth as i see it »

townman wrote:no we wouldn't have done any better than longford today, go back to the last day longford played offaly off the field for the last 20 minutes, even their best player again offaly Smyth the half back who scored 2 points again us was took off but to be fair as Colm O'Rourke said the likes of longford and offaly are coming from division 4 theirs not a hope in hell would they give the likes of the Dubs a game in croker or anywhere else come championship time. for offaly its staying in division 3 next year should be the aim and work at it over the coming years, i was raging that we lost in tullamore the last day but looking at that today maybe its a blessing that we weren't there, i know they say you only learn playing the best but tell me what did longford learn getting the sh.t kick out of them today.
Thankfully Pat Flanagan disagrees with you and i agree with Pat Flanagan, he wants to get Offaly out of the bottom tier as quickly as possible like he did with Westmeath as he believes that if you stay in a lower league too long you become accustomed to playing sub standard Football and there fore standards will have dropped within the team and i believe he is right. this team in my opinion has the football ability to play in the top half of Division 2 at least, all they are lacking is confidence and they will not get that by hanging around division 3 for the next 5 years

As for the Dublin Longford game, while i will not dispute that we would have done any better than Longford today,but in order for us to improve we will have to face up to the fact that we will have to play the best teams eventually if we are ever to have any ambitions of winning a Leinster title and running and hiding from the big boys will once again do nothing to improve us, yes we probably would have gotten beaten by a big score like Longford today but if the players are afraid of measuring themselves against the big boys even at this early stage of their development (in other words adopt Townmans mentality of running and hiding) then we will never progress as a team or even a county.

Yeah a hammering can be damaging in the short term but if you never measure yourself against the best how will you know if you are improving or not?

Exiled in Connacht
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Re: Offaly vs Longford, Leinster SFC, Saturday 16/05/2015

Post by Exiled in Connacht »

I believe that our approach over the next say 3/5 years should be first of all to make progress in the league and second of all to pour whatever resources we have into our underage development squads. A win in the Leinster championship should be taken as a bonus if it happens.

For next season we must at all costs try to remain in division 3. Pat Flanagan is right about trying to move up through the divisions and consistently play the better teams. Who knows but in the next couple of years if the championship is restructured which it inevitably must it maybe a requirement to be in division 1 or 2 to compete for Sam. The days of playing in division 4 and winning a Leinster as in 1997 are long since gone.

Whatever about trying to compete with Dublin,Kerry,Mayo or Donegal we should look at say Tipperary or Roscommon and use them as a benchmark. Tipperary footballers have made progress despite having to compete for resources with hurling. We often talk at about the club scene in Offaly being poor but with the exception of St Brigids the club standard in Roscommon is average. I was at a first round game a couple of weeks ago and it was of a poor standard.I'm sure the club championship in Tipperary is not great either but both counties have put the work in at underage level over the last number of years.

Conrad
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Re: Offaly vs Longford, Leinster SFC, Saturday 16/05/2015

Post by Conrad »

Who knows but in the next couple of years if the championship is restructured which it inevitably must it maybe a requirement to be in division 1 or 2 to compete for Sam.
As mentioned above, talk of restructuring the football championship format is building. This photo is doing the rounds on Twitter.. A potential solution to the restructuring of the All Ireland Senior Football Championship.
possible football format.jpg
possible football format.jpg (71.55 KiB) Viewed 8938 times
It could be a total farcical idea but I thought id share it and see what the opinion was. POTH is usually good with fixtures - is it a realistic option?
Clubs would suffer I suspect.. But not a bad effort for something that looks like it was jotted down from a high stool.
Don't spread horse-manure over good crop

llkj
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Re: Offaly vs Longford, Leinster SFC, Saturday 16/05/2015

Post by llkj »

I don't see how that type of proposal is a solution to the problem at all.

First of all, I'd like a clear definition of what they actual problem is, as you can not measure a solution unless you clearly know what problem you were trying to solve.

My big issue with a seeded group like this or what lots of people call the "Champions League" style groups is that you end up with the same outcome in the end anyway; it just takes 7 matches to get there. The strongest 16 teams play in their own knockout competition and the 2nd tier have their own competition. I could guarantee you that I could name at least 14 of the teams that would make the top tier at the end of 7 weeks.

Even divide that into 8 groups of 4. Say you had 1 team from each current league and the top 2 come out. In 9 out of 10 instances the results of the group stages would see the top 2 teams qualify and the other teams picking up some heavy beatings along the way.

bare biffo
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Re: Offaly vs Longford, Leinster SFC, Saturday 16/05/2015

Post by bare biffo »

I dont buy that the format is the biggest problem. If there was a rational fixture list it would solve a lot of problems. Longford will be 2 weeks out of the leinster championship after playing two games before Wicklow kick a ball. What genius drew that up?

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