Joe McDonagh cup

A forum to air your views on Offaly GAA matters and beyond.
SearingDrive
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by SearingDrive »

[quote="private joker"]You have the wrong counties there!!
They more Nicky rackard. Ring cup is Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, roscommon, Derry, London, Down and Donegal. 2017, Carlow won this competition beating antrim, look where they are now.[/quote

Offaly aren't guaranteed to beat those teams. Bottom of Joe McDonagh, yet your previous post said that is our level.
No points after 3 games, doesn't add up.

private joker
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by private joker »

Offaly went well against laois and could've won that match as easily as they lost it. Weatmeath was a disaster and yet yesterday Offaly had chance s to win. They are very competitive at this level.

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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by kingscounty »

private joker wrote:Offaly went well against laois and could've won that match as easily as they lost it. Weatmeath was a disaster and yet yesterday Offaly had chance s to win. They are very competitive at this level.
Hanging on in games more like, we don’t have a plan we don’t have structure to our game. We lack leadership and fight on the field. Christy Ring is our level and that’s a fact and I wouldn’t be overly confident of getting out of that either!

private joker
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by private joker »

Hopefully Kelly will be kept on and bring the fire back to Offaly!!

llkj
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by llkj »

Really disappointing yesterday overall. Not being at the match and watching it online is a nice remove to take the emotion out of the game and try to analyze it. If anyone wants to see the entire match, you can watch it here: https://www.gaa.ie/gaa-now/officialgaa- ... am-131661/

1. Management have to take a long hard look at their decision to use their extra man as an extra full back for much of the first half. This was a really poor decision and was not effective at all. Most of the time the Antrim forward was at least able to prevent the ball from running through to the spare man. Then it was a 1 on 1 battle for secondary ball and Antrim were well able to compete. As a case in point, look at the last point of the first half. The general sequence was: Offaly have the ball, play an aimless ball into the Antrim goal keeper, he works it out with a good short pass, half back looks up and plays a ball to forwards. 50/50 bal. Antrim player breaks it, has time to pick it up turn in and then out and then take a shot and get the score. All the while, the Offaly defender get no help from the extra man and indeed the extra man is standing about 15 yards out from his own goal watching the ball sail over his head. You can talk about passion, etc. but tactical decisions like that have a massive impact and Joachim, Carroll, etc. have to take responsibility for that.
2. Offaly's use of the ball is nowhere near what it needs to be. The odd time they work it well, but they default to an aimless ball so often it is criminal.
3. Offaly gave Antrim the puckout so many times in the first half by simply standing 10 yards off their man. Watch the replay back. It made life so much easier for Antrim than it should have been against the wind and down to 14 players.
4. Credit has to be given for not throwing in the towel with 5 mins to play and getting it back to a couple of points. We had a chance or two (as did Antrim with a goal chance to finish us off) but overall Antrim deserved their win. Hopefully this bit of fight will keep some morale high for the next 2 weeks.
5. Joachim saying that we weren't fit afterwards (I read it on rte.ie) is not helpful and is an easy excuse. If you want to build confidence then you have to instill it into the players that they are good enough, fit enough, etc... Whether they are or not, they need to believe that they are and be told by their new manager that they have what it takes.
6. Spare a thought for the lads that got dropped off the 26 to bring in the new lads to the panel. Not an easy management decision to make I am sure but also a horrible position to be in as a player when you walk back in the door to your family to tell them you got the chop.
7. Hopefully there is still something to fight for in 2 weeks time. If there is, we are still capable of getting a result.

Keyser Soze
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by Keyser Soze »

Not an Offaly man, but gutted to see the position they are in. One thing that needs to change before the trip to Kerry is all reference to the past and/or future. It is entirely irrelevant. The fact that Offaly were the "people's champions" for two decades is irrelevant. The consequences for losing to Kerry are irrelevant.
Offaly are playing Kerry, 15 v 15, 10 minutes at a time.
The last thing ye want is 20 players, already on a losing streak, going out with the weight of the world on their shoulders.
All interested Offaly men, ex players particularly, should entirely refrain from comment in National or Local Media in the build up.
Let the management prepare and the players play.
If it's bloodletting or recriminations or personal scores to settle, let it happen from July onwards.

Best of luck.

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Lone Shark
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by Lone Shark »

llkj wrote:Really disappointing yesterday overall. Not being at the match and watching it online is a nice remove to take the emotion out of the game and try to analyze it. If anyone wants to see the entire match, you can watch it here: https://www.gaa.ie/gaa-now/officialgaa- ... am-131661/

1. Management have to take a long hard look at their decision to use their extra man as an extra full back for much of the first half. This was a really poor decision and was not effective at all. Most of the time the Antrim forward was at least able to prevent the ball from running through to the spare man. Then it was a 1 on 1 battle for secondary ball and Antrim were well able to compete. As a case in point, look at the last point of the first half. The general sequence was: Offaly have the ball, play an aimless ball into the Antrim goal keeper, he works it out with a good short pass, half back looks up and plays a ball to forwards. 50/50 bal. Antrim player breaks it, has time to pick it up turn in and then out and then take a shot and get the score. All the while, the Offaly defender get no help from the extra man and indeed the extra man is standing about 15 yards out from his own goal watching the ball sail over his head. You can talk about passion, etc. but tactical decisions like that have a massive impact and Joachim, Carroll, etc. have to take responsibility for that.
2. Offaly's use of the ball is nowhere near what it needs to be. The odd time they work it well, but they default to an aimless ball so often it is criminal.
3. Offaly gave Antrim the puckout so many times in the first half by simply standing 10 yards off their man. Watch the replay back. It made life so much easier for Antrim than it should have been against the wind and down to 14 players.
4. Credit has to be given for not throwing in the towel with 5 mins to play and getting it back to a couple of points. We had a chance or two (as did Antrim with a goal chance to finish us off) but overall Antrim deserved their win. Hopefully this bit of fight will keep some morale high for the next 2 weeks.
5. Joachim saying that we weren't fit afterwards (I read it on rte.ie) is not helpful and is an easy excuse. If you want to build confidence then you have to instill it into the players that they are good enough, fit enough, etc... Whether they are or not, they need to believe that they are and be told by their new manager that they have what it takes.
6. Spare a thought for the lads that got dropped off the 26 to bring in the new lads to the panel. Not an easy management decision to make I am sure but also a horrible position to be in as a player when you walk back in the door to your family to tell them you got the chop.
7. Hopefully there is still something to fight for in 2 weeks time. If there is, we are still capable of getting a result.
Good post. To take the points one by one.

(1) Yes and no - initially, Mark Egan hoovered up a load of ball as the Antrim half backs and midfielders did what Offaly do, and hit to an area without looking. Antrim adapted, and started working the ball higher up the field and looking for Clarke and Elliot with 40m low balls instead of from 60 metres. That was the time for Offaly to reply with a counter move, and we never did. If the attacking move starts from high enough up the pitch, the extra man becomes far less relevant.
(2) Yup - 100%. This is where years of managers roaring about "win your own ball" has an effect. Of course every forward has to fight for every ball, good and bad, but you need to be careful not to feed the mindset of the midfielder/back who thinks that it's his job to get the ball 60 to 80 metres forward, and it's the job of the forward to do something with it. That is a particularly Offaly thing, at all levels.
(3) Yup again. And it's unforgivable.
(4) This is a double edged sword. Yes there was fight at the end, but we went 14 minutes after Oisín Kelly's goal without scoring. We needed to break Antrim's momentum there, and we couldn't win a ball, couldn't get an attack going, generally suffered for a lack of leadership. The game was lost then, and arguably in the 7 or 8 minutes before half time. I've no doubt this will haunt them just as much as the finish will encourage.
(5) There is oodles of anecdotal evidence and hearsay to say that this group is not as fit as they need to be, however there is also an accepted protocol in sport that you don't make a big issue of this, because it's a quite unsubtle way of attacking the previous manager and shifting blame. I don't know how the lads score on the various fitness tests, so I don't know if it's true or not, though I would say that not making the extra man pay for 44 minutes was criminal, that's the time to up the tempo and simply drain your opponent. I will say that in Joachim's case, not even the most daft Offaly supporters will blame him or his selectors if we lose these two games, coming in at the time he did left him with little or no time to do anything. Even if his comments are correct, and I assume they are since he tends to be an honest man, I take the point that it didn't need to be said.
(6) Never easy at any time - though the contribution of Peter Geraghty proved that there was room for some of the new lads to come in and have an impact.
(7) I hope there is something to fight for too, but I'm running out of hope with regard to whether or not we're capable of getting anything out of Tralee. Nothing we've done for the last year suggests that we are.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

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Bord na Mona man
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by Bord na Mona man »

The sad part is that this was Offaly fired up, at home and with a point a prove. There wasn't any bag of tricks to be unlocked by a change of manager. We are genuinely struggling with many of the fundamentals and this puts a limit on the possibilities. All Joachim and his selectors could have done was unleash a bit of boot, bike and bollock. I doubt there was enough time to sort out any of the set pieces or make any tactical advances.

Sadly Antrim were far better at finding their man and spreading the ball into decent areas of the pitch. Offaly had a pre-determined plan to launch it big onto the square, therefore weren't ideally set up to take advantage of being a man up.

Possibly fitness and conditioning is an issue. The ease at which Antrim won possession, brushed off tackles and eased away from any pursuers on their solo runs was disappointing. Ok, we haven't got many physical players and competing in the air isn't an Offaly thing, but still.

Other aspects of game management we fall down on. Late on when Offaly had a close in free, it took at least 45 seconds for it to be tapped over the bar. Maybe there was a discussion about going for goal, but you need to decide immediately and act as quickly as possible.
On the other hand, Antrim burned up a lot of the additional 5 minutes with two different players lying down with injuries. You need fellas in the refs ear reminding him what more he needs to add on. These are small and often trivial things, but total up a few dozen of these over 70 minutes and it can swing a game.

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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by Kevin »

Thx for posting the video likj.

The amount of long ball driven in deep to our forwards made parts of the match resemble tennis. The amount of possession we retained from these efforts was minimal.
llkj wrote:Really disappointing yesterday overall. Not being at the match and watching it online is a nice remove to take the emotion out of the game and try to analyze it. If anyone wants to see the entire match, you can watch it here: https://www.gaa.ie/gaa-now/officialgaa- ... am-131661/

1. Management have to take a long hard look at their decision to use their extra man as an extra full back for much of the first half. This was a really poor decision and was not effective at all. Most of the time the Antrim forward was at least able to prevent the ball from running through to the spare man. Then it was a 1 on 1 battle for secondary ball and Antrim were well able to compete. As a case in point, look at the last point of the first half. The general sequence was: Offaly have the ball, play an aimless ball into the Antrim goal keeper, he works it out with a good short pass, half back looks up and plays a ball to forwards. 50/50 bal. Antrim player breaks it, has time to pick it up turn in and then out and then take a shot and get the score. All the while, the Offaly defender get no help from the extra man and indeed the extra man is standing about 15 yards out from his own goal watching the ball sail over his head. You can talk about passion, etc. but tactical decisions like that have a massive impact and Joachim, Carroll, etc. have to take responsibility for that.
2. Offaly's use of the ball is nowhere near what it needs to be. The odd time they work it well, but they default to an aimless ball so often it is criminal.
3. Offaly gave Antrim the puckout so many times in the first half by simply standing 10 yards off their man. Watch the replay back. It made life so much easier for Antrim than it should have been against the wind and down to 14 players.
4. Credit has to be given for not throwing in the towel with 5 mins to play and getting it back to a couple of points. We had a chance or two (as did Antrim with a goal chance to finish us off) but overall Antrim deserved their win. Hopefully this bit of fight will keep some morale high for the next 2 weeks.
5. Joachim saying that we weren't fit afterwards (I read it on rte.ie) is not helpful and is an easy excuse. If you want to build confidence then you have to instill it into the players that they are good enough, fit enough, etc... Whether they are or not, they need to believe that they are and be told by their new manager that they have what it takes.
6. Spare a thought for the lads that got dropped off the 26 to bring in the new lads to the panel. Not an easy management decision to make I am sure but also a horrible position to be in as a player when you walk back in the door to your family to tell them you got the chop.
7. Hopefully there is still something to fight for in 2 weeks time. If there is, we are still capable of getting a result.
Kevin Clancey. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by jimbob17 »

I wasn't at game but watched about 40 mins of game last night incl last 15 mins. One thing obvious to me was how weak we are in the air in comparison to Antrim and how slow we are on to the breaks. We were second best at least 60% of the time. If we cant break even on this type of stuff we are at nothing.

Time after time, an Offaly lad would go up to catch it and the Antrim lad would just break it down to onrushing Antrim lad. Fair enough if we don't catch but where is the Offaly lad in tracking the run of the Antrim lad picking up the break. I am not sure that many of this group of players realise the work ethic that is required to win games at inter county senior level.

There is no doubt that there is a basic skill set there in lots of lads to play this level, but there is a distinct lack of basic understanding among many of the players that if you don't work hard enough and don't do the ugly stuff that nobody will thank you for, then you have zero chance in elite level sport. There are obvious exceptions to this with Shane Kinsella being one who puts his body on the line every time.

I would liken our issue to that of Waterford's for the last few games. If you don't work hard enough in this game, then you have absolutely no chance!

If we get that much right the next day, I think we'll edge home and stay up. If we don't then we are gone and will be ranked outside the top 15 teams in the country for probably the first time in our history!
jimbob

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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by llkj »

If Kerry Win the Joe Mc Donagh cup, then they playoff against the bottom team in Munster to see who is in Munster championship for the following season.

JMcD cup is on June 30th, the following week is the prelim quarter final, then the following week July 13th is the 1/4 final itself, a two week break to the semi final and 3 weeks to the final. Does anyone know if they just pencil in the date for the relegation playoff after Kerry get knocked out or do they already have a set date for the playoff match?

It is a really curious situation. You could have a team (probably Waterford) just sitting around for a couple of months not knowing when they will need to play next to keep their status. Also, you could have a situation where Kerry win the All-Ireland and are still not allowed to play in Munster the following year, if they were to lose the playoff. Crazy stuff.

It looks like the plan is: Kerry won't win the bloody thing so why would we worry about something that won't happen.

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Lone Shark
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by Lone Shark »

The Kerry anomaly pointed out by llkj above is a disgrace, and it always amazes me that it doesn't get more air time. Waterford are currently in freefall, they've given up on their manager entirely, and while they would still be favourites to beat Carlow in a one off game, I would suggest that Carlow wouldn't be entirely without hope - and surely they should be entitled to that chance to prove that they are not the worst team out of the top ten.

In the longer term, the system means that if Waterford (or any other Munster county) were to go into freefall as Offaly have done, they would be insulated into the top tier for as long as Kerry fail to win the Joe McDonagh Cup, and that might never happen.

I genuinely don't understand why it it tolerated, other than I assume Kerry are quite happy with the situation themselves, it ensures that there's no danger of hurling flying too high and interfering with football.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

private joker
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by private joker »

It's a disgrace that this was allowed to happen. But I assume counties voted for it. Offaly included. I stand corrected on this. But like most things in the GAA county delegates get to have a say on these things. I'd say the Kerry hurlers would be very happy to win Joe mcdonagh and stay in that competion the following year. Playing tipp or Limerick would not be a pretty sight.

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bracknaghboy
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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by bracknaghboy »

Lads I'm surprised I have to spell this out to ye but here goes. The whole purpose of the JMcD cup is to keep the lesser teams down and insulate the bigger TV revenue generating teams as much as possible. Some of the crazy scenarios it can potentially throw up are ridiculous:

1. Kerry could finish runners up in the JMcD in 2019. They could then go on to win the Liam McCarthy in 2019. However, they would not be permitted to participate in the 2020 Munster SHC. Imagine the All Ireland champions having no provincial championship to play in!

2. Waterford could lose all their 4 games in Munster by 25 points per game. Carlow could in theory win 1 game in Leinster and lose the other 3 by 1 point but they'd still be relegated if any other team bar Kerry won JMcD. In fact Waterford could lose every game in Munster by 25 points every year for the next 10 years as long as Kerry don't win the JMcD. Even then the'd get another shot at saving their skins in a playoff. Surely the worst team in a competition should be relegated? Well you'd think so unless there was something else at play.........hmmmmm just can't put my finger on it can you?

By the way the Munster teams are absolutely correct here by protecting themselves. Why should they play fair? Whats in it for them? I can imagine Waterford refusing to play any relegation game by telling the GAA to politely "feck off you won't tell us that we can't participate in our own provincial championship" and they'd be feckin right.

If Offaly are relegated this year again it'll be very interesting to see what impact it will have on fellas appetite to commit to county hurling in 2020.
Tiered hurling has failed miserably at preparing teams to compete at the top level. Carlow are about to be spat out back into hurlings gutter come 8:30pm Saturday night with no provision there to help them further develop. Laois or Antrim will probably go up and will be chewed up and sent back whence they came from in 2020.

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Re: Joe McDonagh cup

Post by LooseCannon »

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” - George Orwell in Animal Farm
Good Luck

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