Offaly hurling manager??

[old yellar]

Are ye basing his 8 backs approach on an u21 semi when he was up north as he never set us up like that!! Or the last antrim team that we beat 2 yrs back in relegation match.
He's a huge hurling man and is at matches all year and has his finger on the pulse in most counties. Jayus its easy do that now!
As for Flynn, yeah, I wouldn't be as glowing there alright but I m basing that on a 21 team he was involved with down here a few years back and like players, coaches can improve. But I m not as sure..

[sam88885a]

Glad to hear that he wont set up with 8 defenders.
Can any one tell me was it Kevin Ryan that was Antrim manager when some of their top hurlers refused to hurl , such as Liam Watson.
We need him to get guys back ,lads that walked away over the last few years.

[allstar2010]

The more I think about this appointment the more disgusted I become of this incompetent CB of ours. How in gods name can they justify this appointment ahead of the likes of Danny Owens, Paddy Kirwan, Damien Fox, Kevin Martin, Michael Duignan etc to name just a few from within the county that should have been given this opportunity. Ryan wouldn't even be considered for the position in Waterford, think of that. Another ridiculous appointment by a clueless CB and chairman. Wonder will any of the delegates voice their opinion at next meeting, probably not!

[biffinbanner]

A common theme of a lot of comments and opinions on here seem to blame the county board and padraig boland...one here even saying he's intent on making offaly a christy ring team!!?? Some beauty's on here for sure...over the last 10/15years since things started to get tough in football as well as hurling we seem to blame everyone but the players.first thing was to sack the manager as of that will cure all.ills..remember gary fahy and paul.o kelly??!!?? any success offaly has had has been with outside managers for watever reason?so give this kevin Ryan a chance.hes coming in to try and get offaly hurling improved....ive no ideavwhat style he will.play but im sure hecwill play to our strengths..whether he's up to it or not we will find out ...? The money end of it. is as it is.managers are now being paid as are coaches..get over it.

[Bord na Mona man]

How in gods name can they justify this appointment ahead of the likes of Danny Owens, Paddy Kirwan, Damien Fox, Kevin Martin, Michael Duignan etc

Hmmm, I'm not seeing it.

[jimbob17]

Ryan would have a good rep in coaching circles, dont know about all this negativity. The key here is getting the best lads in. Would be great to see Danny Owens in as selector as he knows the scene. I would be fairly sure that Owens would not be up to senior inter county management coming from KK reports despite their success. You dont hear the KK players looking to push it. There was more than Owens driving that bus and Owens didnt do whole lot with a good Westmeath minor team. That said, he should be asked to be involved along with other knowledgeable people as selectors etc with the team.

As for Paul Flynn, wouldnt know too much, but surely there has to be good people in Offaly. Have we got an inferiority complex about ourselves? Have we forgotten that we won a couple of All Irelands in the 90's and reached final in early naughties. That didnt happen with people who dont know a lot about hurling!

[sam88885a]

Ryan would have a good rep in coaching circles, dont know about all this negativity. The key here is getting the best lads in. Would be great to see Danny Owens in as selector as he knows the scene. I would be fairly sure that Owens would not be up to senior inter county management coming from KK reports despite their success. You dont hear the KK players looking to push it. There was more than Owens driving that bus and Owens didnt do whole lot with a good Westmeath minor team. That said, he should be asked to be involved along with other knowledgeable people as selectors etc with the team.

As for Paul Flynn, wouldnt know too much, but surely there has to be good people in Offaly. Have we got an inferiority complex about ourselves? Have we forgotten that we won a couple of All Irelands in the 90's and reached final in early naughties. That didnt happen with people who dont know a lot about hurling!

I often wonder how we produced 4 all Ireland winning team ,a league winning team and still not one of those guys have excelled as a manager at county level .Why??
Surely guys like Paul Murphy who has lots of experience at club level should be an option as a selector along with Danny Owens M Duignan and k Martain .
Then use that experience as a stepping stone into management.
they way we going we will be never self sufficient in management because we are to Lasy to develop guys .We get our the cheque book and spend money we don't have on blooding guys from other county into managers.
We need to reward club managers with a pathway into county managers in my opinion.
What really worries me is this is the third time that a rabbit has been pulled out of the hat by Boland and it is funny any more

[Lone Shark]

I often wonder how we produced 4 all Ireland winning team ,a league winning team and still not one of those guys have excelled as a manager at county level .Why??
Surely guys like Paul Murphy who has lots of experience at club level should be an option as a selector along with Danny Owens M Duignan and k Martain .
Then use that experience as a stepping stone into management.
they way we going we will be never self sufficient in management because we are too lazy to develop guys. We get our the cheque book and spend money we don't have on blooding guys from other county into managers.
We need to reward club managers with a pathway into county managers in my opinion.
What really worries me is this is the third time that a rabbit has been pulled out of the hat by Boland and it is funny any more

There's a few things here. Firstly, hurling is a very, very different game now to how it was in the 1980's and 1990's. The change between those two decades was minimal enough, as only Ger Loughnane's radical upping of the training intensity occurred - and even then, Clare played largely the same way as most other teams, they were just fitter, stronger and more driven than most. Tactics were broadly similar from one year to the next.

Then you had Cork under Donal O'Grady, who adopted the Newtownshandrum model with a lot of running. Brian Cody's Kilkenny changed the way things were done too - he put a premium on the ability to win your own ball, and to impose yourself physically - and since he was operating out of Kilkenny, with a steady stream of good talented hurlers, he could do this - his dominating six foot three players were always good hurlers as well. It's also up for debate that he was the leading driver in the new way of refereeing the game, with fewer frees and more advantage given to the man in possession in terms of steps, charging, illegal handpasses etc.

Waterford back then had broadly the same approach, as did Tipp under Liam Sheedy, though Sheedy's Tipperary side introduced a lot more mobility in the forward division - players switching roles, moving around constantly, playing centre forward one minute, corner forward the next and edge of the square five minutes later.

Now things have moved on hugely again, a process started by managers like Davie Fitz with Clare and Seamus Plunkett in Laois, but seen to the most obvious effect in Waterford under Derek McGrath. Hurling has transformed immeasurably in the last fifteen years, and it has to be said, native Offaly managers have struggled to keep up. Danny Owens spoke to me after Kilcormac-Killoughey beat Rynaghs in the county final a few years ago and talked about a victory for the traditional Offaly way of hurling, as if Francis Forde was trying to introduce some form of cancer into the game by carrying the ball. Now Owens had a big, powerful team at his disposal and if I had a squad with players like the Leonards, the Healions, Dan Currams, Conor Mahon and James Gorman, I'd probably be happy to play a long ball game too. That's fine.

However at county level, that doesn't always work, and people know this. Moreover, the rest of the players from the 80's and 90's were nowhere to be seen when it came to showing real innovation at any level.

I also think that a lot of the players from that time have to stand indicted as well. In fairness to Danny Owens, I will give him this - he went to Westmeath and took on a county minor team that wasn't expected to do well (their success the previous year was almost entirely down to the Doyle twins, who were now overage) so he tried to stay in the game at a decent level, even if it didn't work out.

The majority of the rest of those players from back then haven't done anything like that in the last ten years. They've taken the handy €100 a night gigs in club jobs in Laois, Tipperary and Galway on occasion all right, but you couldn't say that they've looked to develop themselves. Look at the arenas where innovation and modern hurling is developed, but where the financial rewards are low - top level secondary schools and county development squads, and most of all, Fitzgibbon Cup, or even the higher levels of the Ryan Cup with teams like Athlone IT. Alternatively, you can come into a county management side as a selector under a proven manager and learn your craft that way. In all of these settings, native Offaly managers are hard to find - they seem to want the handy, well paid numbers instead.

Like it or not, going from club hurling to intercounty is a huge step up - and if a manager wants to bridge that gap, he needs to take some steps to prove that he can do so. You use the word pathway - far too many of our past heroes seem to want a direct bus to their destination instead.

[Keyser Soze]

The majority of the rest of those players from back then haven't done anything like that in the last ten years. They've taken the handy €100 a night gigs in club jobs in Laois, Tipperary and Galway on occasion all right, but you couldn't say that they've looked to develop themselves......

I often wondered could Offaly people see that this was happening?
A group from one club in particular were on a right gravy train and certainly were not slow in pushing their pals for various gigs in neighbouring counties.

[sam88885a]

Lone shark good post but those guy did play at the top level and if the were playing now with "better" training "better" coaches and generally a more professional approach they would be even better players and they would be at the top table in my opinion.

There are 3 guys that I forgot that have done well as managers other that Danny Owens .Pat Fleury got us to an all Ireland final in 2000.Padraig Horan led us to league title in 1999 and Aiden Fogerty has won Kilkenny county title with O loughlan Gales.
Maybe we don't give our own enough credit.

finally u clearly don't agree with Danny Owens game plan but its insulting to suggest that KK won 3 county titles in a row , broke birr winning game record by only having big strong hurlers .
U clearly never watch K Grogan ,great hurlers can give long killer passes to forwards from their own half back line.
Id agrue that the reason F Foard played a short passing game because he didn't have players of the quality of Grogan or Leonard out field and he didn't have a goal poacher like D Currams inside.
I think St rynagh don't have one natural forward like D Currams C Slevin b Carroll J Bergin S Dooley.
I think that will stop them becoming a real force in the years ahead.
Lone shark there more than one way to play hurling and it is always evolving but if u have decent forwards give them good early ball as Tip did this year.

[greenairfield]

Sam have you been asleep under a rock for 10 years. All the Offaly managers u mentioned would be incapable of training a county team. That is no disrespect to them but the game has changed none of those guys are up to date with the modern day game and would be lost on what to do if they had to go to training on a Tuesday night with 30 Hurlers in front of them..

[Lone Shark]

I'll break this up into parts, since there are a few elements.

Lone shark good post but those guy did play at the top level and if the were playing now with "better" training "better" coaches and generally a more professional approach they would be even better players and they would be at the top table in my opinion.

Agreed - but this is my point, as a general rule, this was not the route these guys took, by their own choice. You can't force a former Offaly player to take a job he's not interested in.

I'm not going to name names, but if a former elite hurler wanted to develop themselves and add to their skill set, then yes, taking on your own team in the club scene is one way to go. However it would be far better to try and get yourself involved in an elite setup at county senior, county underage, Fitzgibbon Cup, or at a push, work with a really top class manager at the very highest club level. The problem with those gigs is that they tend not to be as lucrative. Athlone IT hurling might be seen as mickey mouse stuff for example, but the standard is not that bad at all - and yet they would kill for an ex-inter county player to come in and get involved with them, last time I was covering them it was still Enda Dowd of Southern Gaels doing the needful - purely voluntary of course. A star ex-player could look for a role as a selector with Davie Fitz at LIT, with Nicky English at UCD, or someone similar - or even try to get involved with a county under-21 side, and they'd learn loads and would be working with a high standard of player. That for me would look great on a CV - but it's not what former Offaly players seem to do. Instead our guys tend to be more interested in getting the few bob from a club in Westmeath or Laois, working with limited club players where 90% of your time is spent taking training sessions with 12-15 players, and chasing the no-shows in order to get them down to the field for the big league derby against the equally ordinary next door neighbours on Saturday evening. That's club management in a lot off cases, and it bears no relation to working with a county team.

There are 3 guys that I forgot that have done well as managers other that Danny Owens .Pat Fleury got us to an all Ireland final in 2000.Padraig Horan led us to league title in 1999 and Aiden Fogerty has won Kilkenny county title with O loughlan Gales.
Maybe we don't give our own enough credit..

If you read my post above, you'd see that I said that there was no problem with Offaly managers until the game of hurling started to change dramatically around 2003. It's from then on that we struggled to move with the times. I'll admit that winning a Kilkenny SHC is no mean feat and Fogarty has done that, but I don't know how much of that is down to him and how much is the talent of the players at his disposal. Neither would I know his situation in terms of whether he'd be keen to take on a county underage role or selector's role, given that he lives in Kilkenny to the best of my knowledge.

Personally I would make an exception for Damien Fox - I think he has a very good understanding of modern hurling and he'd be one I'd like to see involved in some capacity with an Offaly team. I don't know if I'd say he has done enough to warrant taking on the main senior job yet, but if he was announced as a selector, I'd call that very good news.

finally u clearly don't agree with Danny Owens game plan but its insulting to suggest that KK won 3 county titles in a row , broke birr winning game record by only having big strong hurlers .
U clearly never watch K Grogan ,great hurlers can give long killer passes to forwards from their own half back line.
......
Lone shark there more than one way to play hurling and it is always evolving but if u have decent forwards give them good early ball as Tip did this year.

Firstly, as for disagreeing with Owens' game plan, I never said anything of the sort. Kilcormac-Killoughey had (and have) a lot of very good, talented hurlers - but it does so happen that they are big men. I consider Conor Mahon to be an excellent hurler, as I do Colm Coughlan - however from a management perspective, I don't need to think too much about how to feed Mahon - just horse it into him with snow on it and he'll beat most defenders. You can't do that with Coughlan, you need to find a way to work the ball into him in a more appropriate manner. K-K had a full forward line full of players who were good hurlers, but who were also good fielders - so that simple, direct approach suited them. It was horses for courses, and that's exactly what any good club manager would do - look at what's available to him, and formulate a game plan to suit that.

I consider Rynaghs forwards to be good as well, but they're not as physically imposing, so you need to put more thought into how you're going to get the ball into them. Francis Forde did what he had to do to make his team competitive, and while it would have been a waste for Danny Owens to play the same way with K-K, he was both short-sighted and in my view mean-spirited when he was so critical of Forde and Rynaghs in the aftermath of that county final win.

As for Tipperary, well that goes back to the same thing - if I have the best hurlers at my disposal, then I want to play a simple game, with lots of one on one battles - because I'll back my guys to win those battles. If you picked an All Ireland XV now, Tipperary would have six or seven players on it, imo - so of course they want to go with route one, simple hurling.

If Offaly went out and played like that against Tipp next summer, we'd get crucified. Whatever about the forwards, leaving the backs one on one against Bonner Maher, John O'Dwyer, Seamus Calllinan, Noel McGrath and the likes is just asking for trouble - these fellas are pure elite, as good as there is in Ireland anywhere. That's why it's vitally important that we have a manager who understands that the best system to maximise the players' ability is not necessarily the one that he or the players would choose in an ideal world.

Owens has been successful on the club scene, but he hasn't displayed any great level of tactical ingenuity yet, purely because he hasn't had to. That's why he'd be as well to take on a college job or something and then come back with a new case in two or three years' time.

[sam88885a]

Fair enough LS i thought u were saying that kk didnt have the hurlers to play a game other than the "long Game". John Leahy tryed to play a short passing game with KK but it didnt work .
I agree KK under Danny Owens did evolve from the long game but to be fair to him he was not sniping at F Foard after winning the county final rather highlighting the merits of good fast ball into a hard working forward line.
Rember St rynagh had hammered Clareen in the semi final playing a passing game and their lots of talk before that final about what St Rynagh would do to A Big Slow kK team .
10 minutes into that game KK had it won with fast direct hurling , great tackling , KK were at their peak then in my opinion and St Rynagh could live with them.
Danny Owens was highlighting this game plan that lots of " experts" didnt agree ,

[Lone Shark]

KK beating Rynaghs in that final didn't make KK's approach the right one any more than Clare winning the 2013 All Ireland (with more handpasses than strikes with the hurl) proved that short range hurling is optimal. You do the best you can with the players you have - and I'd never blame any manager for trying to implement a strategy that suits his players. I have a huge problem with managers who decide that there is a "right" way to play the game, and impose that on an unsuitable group, but that's another matter, not applicable here.

However I did interview Danny after that game, and I was taken aback by how critical he was of Forde and Rynaghs. He was very forceful in saying that the win for KK was a vindication of their way of hurling, and I thought there was no need for that - and it certainly didn't encourage me to believe that he'd cut his cloth to suit if he was with another team.

Even if bar stool experts got it wrong in the lead up to the game, there was still no need for it. No logic in rising to that kind of talk.

[sam88885a]

LS i heard that interview and i know we all hear what we want but to me Danny was saying that he strongly believed that the more direct style of hurling would reap more rewards for offaly .
When we had big guys like Joe Bergin S Dooley C mahon D Currams C Parlon C Egan J Gorman to pick in a forward line its easy to see where he was coming from.
The huge problem that offaly have had is we are soft at centre back and full back and so we are always on the back foot and our good forwards like Dooley and Bergin are only getting poor slow ball.
Good teams should be able to decide which style is best during a game and if i was to fault Danny was to loyal to the more tradition long ball game and didnt evolve his game plan .
St rynagh game plan worked this year but i think at county level if u dont have an attacking approch u are going to get hammered. Thats My opinion