Offaly Senior Footballers - Planning for 2025, Mickey Harte onboard

[ah lethimoutwithit]

All well and good for Pat in the tabloid and he may well be right. But tis easy for him below in Kerry.

I think only time will tell as is always the case. For now the key points that I can see from the comments so far here is that the real issue is as I have said before that the standard of coaching in Offaly is not great.
Players are beat into ultra conservative football and creating intelligent players with a bag full of skills and understanding the various positive decisions that can be made on the field should be the priority to 15 years of age with minimal tactics.

Add to the fact that the championship structure has taken some of the edge off the competition, plus the league offers no promotion and relagation and you have a recipe for mediocrity that is on show.

There are some green shoots out there, and improved schools performances, development squads last 2 years at U15 have been decent, not sure about others.
But it's not easy and any underage coaching job takes a lot of effort and time, with extended seasons. These need to be looked at and I believe that each club should try to encourage more coaches with experience to participate in underage and focus on the skills. Emphasise its about the learning and f..k the results until they are 15.
Too many who set up a team around 4 or 5 players, and making heroes out of them. Anyway, thats for another topic I guess.

[ruletheroost]

All well and good for Pat in the tabloid and he may well be right. But tis easy for him below in Kerry.

I think only time will tell as is always the case. For now the key points that I can see from the comments so far here is that the real issue is as I have said before that the standard of coaching in Offaly is not great.
Players are beat into ultra conservative football and creating intelligent players with a bag full of skills and understanding the various positive decisions that can be made on the field should be the priority to 15 years of age with minimal tactics.

Add to the fact that the championship structure has taken some of the edge off the competition, plus the league offers no promotion and relagation and you have a recipe for mediocrity that is on show.

There are some green shoots out there, and improved schools performances, development squads last 2 years at U15 have been decent, not sure about others.
But it's not easy and any underage coaching job takes a lot of effort and time, with extended seasons. These need to be looked at and I believe that each club should try to encourage more coaches with experience to participate in underage and focus on the skills. Emphasise its about the learning and f..k the results until they are 15.
Too many who set up a team around 4 or 5 players, and making heroes out of them. Anyway, thats for another topic I guess.

2 great points there.

No relegation in the league or championship if they go to a 10 team system next year. Too many meaningless games. Can’t create winning environments when there is nothing on the line for nearly the whole season.

Great point about the underage development squads too. They are called development squads and should be exactly that. They are meant to be the best young lads from each club. They should all get equal time in every game if they are to be developed. They won’t develop on the sideline. The results shouldn’t matter. Different story then once they go to minor level. But at least more lads will be developed rather than the same few lads.