www.uibhfhaili.com

with all these players deciding to leave the offaly panel there is bound to be places for kilmurray to fill.

so if you were the offaly senior manager what young 21/22 year old player(s) would you draft in for future years.

i'd have to say diarmuid donoghue from ballycumber. to be honest i'm surprised he's not already in there.

To be honest I wouldn't be too worried about only bringing in young lads - I'd prefer to see players that I'd be happy to call on now if needed. We've a pretty young panel as it is.

Tom Fitzpatrick and James Carroll would be my two.

No-one seems to be asking this, so I'll wade in.

Why are all these lads leaving the panel??? Hunt played a championship game already this year, Grennan and Kenny were on the field when the final whistle blew in Croker, and Rafferty is probably 50/50 with Chop to be first man in if we need a back to go on in Carlow? It would be different if it were lads like David Lowry, Martin Gorman, Ciaran Kiely etc. who seem to be outside of consideration, but it's not.

What the hell is happening that all these lads that are so close to the team feel the need to leave???

because the manager is shite, lets be clear on this...... from what players are saying, he is the worst ever experienced

biffo5 wrote:because the manager is shite, lets be clear on this...... from what players are saying, he is the worst ever experienced

What's the latest on who has left the panel?

I have no "inside knowledge" about the relationship between Kevin Kilmurray and the Football panel, but before biffo5 goes slating him as

the worst ever experienced

can I suggest that we didn't have a great queue of candidates looking for the job after last year's back-stabbing episodes. Who else do you think might have taken the job and done better?

On a separate point, the team news on http://www.irishexaminer.com mentions that James Coughlan ...

misses out due to personal reasons

Interpret that as you wish.

I would imagine it has something to do with the fact that one of his best friends Aaron Egan R.I.P. tradgically passed on lately and the management team might be giving him the chance to get himself together. I am just guessing though

who exactly left the panel?

from what i can gather grennan, kenny and raff have all left, hunt is still there and tom fitzpatrick has been brought in to the training along with mark cassidy. barry malone is out since he done a job on his knee in the rhode-shamrocks match and barry mooney is out because of his shoulder injury. not sure about roy malone though, he could be available.

i can only presume kenny and grennan don't have the interest to see out the year in the qualifiers and don't want to return next year. as for raff i can't offer any explanation to what his thinking is.

from what i can gather grennan, kenny and raff have all left, hunt is still there and tom fitzpatrick has been brought in to the training along with mark cassidy. barry malone is out since he done a job on his knee in the rhode-shamrocks match and barry mooney is out because of his shoulder injury. not sure about roy malone though, he could be available.

i can only presume kenny and grennan don't have the interest to see out the year in the qualifiers and don't want to return next year. as for raff i can't offer any explanation to what his thinking is.

I've said all this before and I stand by it. We have abandoned managers before too quickly, and some stability was needed. It just seems unfortunate that the first guy who has a bit of job security seems to be the one with the most "question marks". We've discussed this at length before, and there are two sides to the argument, but I'm afraid until Kilmurray does something that impresses me as well thought out, or makes a tactical switch early on before damage is done, or comes up with an innovative game plan of some sort, anything to be honest, I'll still remain unconvinced. His manner of speaking would not encourage you to believe that he's a man thinking on his feet and leaving his feelings aside at all times, and I just can't see him as being an intercounty standard manager. I could imagine O'Kelly and Fahey learning and growing into the role. Kilmurray may surprise me yet but I don't see that happening. I'm aware candidates weren't exactly queueing up, but I always thought our county board were very good at identifying good young managing talent, and I'm sure somebody looking to make the break would have been willing to try in the post strike environment.

Regarding the departures, it would have concerned me a lot more if Hunt left. He's the one without any real reason to do so, so it would have been an internal thing. Grennan and Kenny are probably not interested in "a good run in the qualifiers" and to be honest who can blame them. They saw a Leinster medal was there for the taking, which it was, and now that that's off the table it all seems a little like hardship. Rafferty was setting up his business last year, and I've no doubt that still takes up a lot of his time. He probably reckoned bench warming was all he could hope for, so felt his time would be best spent elsewhere. This guy will make a good contribution yet to Offaly senior football though I believe.

To be honest the death of Aaron Egan never really occured to me in this context, but it is a very fair point. It was a shock to all around, and I would assume even more so to his friends. His form wasn't all that it could have been, but you certainly couldn't blame the Paw for not having his head focussed on football.

jimmy grennan has told management to go and f**K themselves, so has kenny. the word is tey told the manager that he couldnt pick flowers and when he is on the sideline he may as well be looking into a field of nettles. to be honest thats what it looks like from the stand also.........

It's still disappointing that Grennan, Kenny etc don't hang on until after we exit/win the championship.
They've come this far, so you'd think a few weeks more wouldn't kill them.
It doesn't send out a good message to younger players, when they see the older guys giving up.

It does seem to send out bad vibes - though a part of me is relieved that we won't see the farce of John Kenny being sent out into an ailing full forward line again.

Damien Hunt is definitely still there though.

Kilmurray goes a long way back (UCD days) with Eugene McGee and spoke about on radio before the Laois match as if they were well acquainted. I presume, given McGee's involvement in "the strike" that he reccommended Kilmurray and the board and players would have gone along with it. Maybe Kilmurray will never be a Heffernan or Boylan, but surely the senior players, if they had Offaly football as their priority, should be taking responsibility on the field and not walking away.