Daithi and the heartland

[timber]

I see Daithi Regan giving another outburst on Birr being where hurling should be played in the county. It's not the reason Offaly teams have been whipping boys for the last decade. He claims some children will not see Offaly hurl because parents in south Offaly have their principles and refuse to go to Tullamore.

"That's the hurling heartland in Offaly and the county board for fiscal reasons play our hurling games up in Tullamore despite the fact that our hurling heartland has always been in Birr, where they were played for decades until Birr had to be refurbished.

"There's children who will never see an Offaly hurling team play and that's not an exaggeration. Detractors of myself and others who have been arguing this will say that it's only 25 or 30 miles up the road, why don't they come?

If children don't get to see Offaly hurl, then its not the county board's fault for playing games in Tullamore. Anybody who has such principles should question themselves and how self centred they are.

[Bord na Mona man]

Turn that argument around. If hurling hadn't been kept restricted to Birr for all those decades, maybe the game would have developed better in the rest of the county and we'd have a better pick to work off.

[SearingDrive]

Turn that argument around. If hurling hadn't been kept restricted to Birr for all those decades, maybe the game would have developed better in the rest of the county and we'd have a better pick to work off.

It's a bit elitist to claim Offaly's hurling heartland centres around the Birr area. There are plenty of hurlers in North Offaly, in the Tullamore, Ballinamere, Shamrocks, Clodiagh Gaels area, along with Brosna Gaels, stretching from Tubber to Doon, mostly football areas.
Daithi should think before making a statement like he did. BNM is correct to query the problem in confining hurling to the South Offaly area.

[LooseCannon]

The bring hurling back to Birr thing is a load of BS
1. The pitch
It cuts up the minute a drop of water falls on it. OCP’s surface ain’t perfect, but it holds up well generally.

2. There is no warm up area.
It rules out any big league match ever been played there as the surface is so poor, that it will scarcely hold up.
OCP has a small one, but its surface isn’t really affected by hard running on it. Unless of course it’s exceptionally wet, in which case, it would only start to cut up after two or three consecutive games.

3. Why did Birr do up a terrace, instead of making the pitch be of a reasonable standard?
Common sense. A town of Birr’s size and significance should have a quality main GAA grounds, with training pitches, obviously not beside St Brendan’s Park, but perhaps on the outskirts of the town. And they should have no problem fundraising either, plenty of businesses, and people to raise 10 or 20% required for grant aid.
I could understand clubs with small population pools such as Kilclonfert, Walsh Island, Lusmagh or Clonmore to raise money, but it’s Birr. They’d want to get their gear in order fairly quickly.That would show some intent that they want to host intercounty games.

4. Stand. No need to explain. As cold as it can be in OCP, there’s tea, etc.

5. Media Centre. From a TV POV. Especially built for the likes of RTÉ. Then you’ve where the radio lads and journalists do be in the stand. I’d imagine that they’d prefer OCP. LS might clarify whether my presumption is correct or not.

6. Dressing Rooms. Space in OCP.

7. From an analysis, stats POV. In OCP you could put them on a cloud. There’s internet, other facilities, etc.

This is not an attack on Birr GAA, or south Offaly, I’m merely calling it as I see it, and proposing reasons as to why, I think most matches aren’t played in Birr.

By the way, Birr’s pitch isn’t the worst, although it’s up there. Rahan would be the worst that I’ve ever either played on or witnessed in Offaly. If you’ve never been there, if you think the hill in Mucklagh, is bad, Rahan’s pitch has about twice the gradient. There’s endless amounts of pitches with flaws, however if a club want County games played at its grounds, then everything must be up to scratch.

[greenairfield]

You don't mind people having there speak but some of the rubbish you say loosecannon shows you really don't have a clue about SBP or Birr.

[LooseCannon]

You don't mind people having there speak but some of the rubbish you say loosecannon shows you really don't have a clue about SBP or Birr.

Ok, it may be rubbish, highlight to me the areas where SBP ranks above OCP.

[greenairfield]

How would it rank higher than ocp?


Nobody said it does....

The issue I have it your making false statements...birr has a warm up area straight across the road from the pitch.

Birr ran a very successfull fundraiser two years ago and have no problem raising money from local businesses if needed.

The pitch is in unreal condition and is a btter sod than ocp with no hills or bumps on it (like ocp)

[LooseCannon]

How would it rank higher than ocp?


Nobody said it does....

The issue I have it your making false statements...birr has a warm up area straight across the road from the pitch.

Birr ran a very successfull fundraiser two years ago and have no problem raising money from local businesses if needed.

The pitch is in unreal condition and is a btter sod than ocp with no hills or bumps on it (like ocp)

Are you referring to beside/behind the County arms? It’s a bit out of the way though, having to cross the road in gear, and possibly straight out to the pitch.

I was just saying that I think that Birr should have a number of training pitches. I completely forgot about the school’s grounds. It was a complete brain-fart on my behalf.

I was referring to the drainage of the pitch in SBP. On a fine day, it’s generally as good as any in the county. It’s only on those cold, wet, miserable days that it begins to unearth a bit.

I hope you don’t think I’m attacking Birr.
Particularly when I brought up the Crinkle thing before. I wasn’t in the country at the time and didn’t know.
Hopefully ye’ll be challenging for honours next year, for the betterment of Offaly hurling.

[Truth as i see it]

My mom has a saying which goes a bad tradesmen always blames his tools, and this has been the problem with Offaly Hurling for a long time, as long as people blame O'Connor park for all of the counties hurling ails, we will never improve as a county, no one doubts or should doubt the history and tradition or hurling in south Offaly and in particular Birr GAA but to say that the magic bullet to all of Offaly's ills is to bring hurling back to St Brendan's Park is deluding themselves, Different sport but i always remember watching a short documentary on African Football during a time a few years ago when there was player after player from the African continent coming to the premier league, there was one particular club that they talked about that had seen no less the 6 players make it to the premier league within a five year period but this club didn't have a magic field or expensive buildings to produce these players, they had a dust bowl of a pitch and few of them had football boots but they knowledge the the coaches had gained from coaches visiting the club from different countries looking to expand their scouting network meant that they had developed a coaching reservoir that was second to non, this example is transferable to any sport, to bring it back to the present, what is the present coaching standard at Birr GAA?, are they still teaching ground hurling or have the moved to a more modern approach?

[private joker]

It not that parent's won't travel to watch offaly play in OCP, it's the fact offaly are so poor that they don't want to watch them play anywhere.

[sam88885a]

Daithi reflects a view that a 8 mile radios around Birr is the heart of Offaly hurling and SBP is home but most people that hold that view are late 50 or older .
Most have kids reared.
I was at the quarter finals this year ,2games in Birr a crowd of around 1600 turn up,the next day in OCP brought a crowd of around 1500 which surprise me i would have expected at least twice the crowd in SBP with 4 teams from the heartland playing .
I suspect SBP would be a disavantage to current offaly hurlers as the have never played a big game in SBP. Things have more on.
If the Offaly team start preforming and winning again the crowd will come.

[greenairfield]

I see Birr had a motion to get the county final and semi finals back in Birr every second year defeated last night by just 6 votes, Its clear to say there is a big majority of people wanting hurling to be brought back down south..we need this to happen for Offaly hurling to improve.

[Bord na Mona man]

I see Birr had a motion to get the county final and semi finals back in Birr every second year defeated last night by just 6 votes, Its clear to say there is a big majority of people wanting hurling to be brought back down south..we need this to happen for Offaly hurling to improve.

I have a feeling that couldn't be described as a majority...

[Lone Shark]

The case for bringing some other games to Birr has never been stronger than it is now, but the club is not helping themselves by this sort of divisive nonsense. As long as it's "us vs them", people on both sides will dig their heels in and you'll get nowhere. First of all, this isn't a matter that should have gone to a vote at convention, since even if I was completely in favour of the idea behind a motion like this, it's not right to tie the hands of the CCC when there could be any number of factors at play when these games roll around in ten months' time.

Secondly, Birr cannot ignore the fact that there are questions over their capacity to host the county final - issues such as whether their capacity is sufficient to hold it without the game having to become all ticket, questions over whether moving the game would lead to a sufficient boost in attendances to justify the move, and other matters such as the lack of warm up facilities, the field's ability to take any sort of adverse weather etc.

All that said, it would seem to me to be entirely logical to think about taking one step, which would be to play the 2018 semi-finals in SBP. These usually draw a little over 3,000 people to OCP, so if Birr can beat that number, then we've learned something. I can say without doubt that if Birr were to put together a plan for something like that, and then they got closer to 4,000 people in the door for the game, then they'd have a real strong case for the 2019 final. Equally, they can commit to stepping back from this constant grandstanding, if they don't get those numbers. I firmly believe that a lot of clubs would respond positively to that. However it always seems to me like they want to avoid that step, and instead of moving one step at a time, come up with maneouvres like this, which are ultimately very counterproductive.

[greenairfield]

BNM I ment majority as in delegates...take away the top table vote and Birr I am sure as hell would of won the vote.

Kevin I am totally suprised at your opinion...its not about attendances it's about promoting offaly hurling all across the county.

And I 100% don't like the way you say it's us v them because I know the approach Birr made and they were very conscious of the fact it's not an us v them issue...it's an offaly hurling issue.

If you cant or anybody else for that matter not see that some games need to come back this side of the county to benefit offaly hurling ye lads really don't know anything about hurling.

Now on to the facilities we are aware tullamore have better dressing rooms but Birr are still upgrading there facilties and come semi final time this will be solved ...but the whole warm up area stroke is a bit silly for me plenty of grounds around the country don't have "warm up areas" and there is a pitch just across the road which works just fine if you need one anyway.

The attendance is fine 7,200 is plenty to host matches, yet again u take the side of the CB...They must be paying you at this rate.