True Red wrote:You cannot apply logic to the sporting arena.Bookies do.And most of the time they win.But sometimes they lose.Liverpool in this years Champions league final,Greece in Euro 2004,Offaly in 1994 when they were 6 points down,Offaly in 97 when they came from nowhere to win a leinster and a league in 98,Edenderry in 2001 when they came from 8 points down to draw and eventually beat Rhode in a replay.
Of course you can apply logic to these things – logic tells you that there is a statistical chance of everything happening, and the art of bookmaking is estimating that chance. Offaly in 1994 were probably about 12/1 before the free scored by JD was awarded. That means that 93% of runnings they would have lost that game, 7% of runnings they would have won. To our eternal joy the free was given, the ball hit the net and we all know the rest. Equally there is no such thing as “cannot happen” in the sporting world, but clearly there are outcomes more likely than others, or else every team would start the year at the same price to win the All Ireland. The only reasons bookies ever lose in the long run is if they estimate these probabilities incorrectly.
True Red wrote:Any player to puts on any jersey for any club or county believes that he is better than the opponent he is facing. Now he might not be, but if he isnt,its the managers job to instill that belief so that when he crosses that white line he has no doubts.
I won’t lie to you – I find this part difficult to grasp. Players are intelligent human beings – how on earth does Barry Teehan take the field marking Henry Shefflin and genuinely believe that he is a better hurler than him? He might believe that he’ll fight harder for each ball, that he’ll get in the way and not let him obtain possession, that he’ll have trained harder and get to the ball first, and that overall he can come out on top by winning a series of individual battles, but how do you believe that you’re better? Muck and all as I am, with nothing but five a side soccer staving off fatness in my advancing years, I regularly play lads that are much more talented than I am – and often outplay them due to busting a gut, reading the game better and winning more of the little battles for each ball. I don’t think I could ever believe that I’m any good though – and I don’t see how anyone would convince me.
In my underage hurling career (a brief sojourn that didn’t go any further than fifteen years of age due to too much getting outclassed by better and bigger hurlers began to take it’s toll on me) I marked two current intercounty players – Conor Gath and Colm Cassidy. Cassidy in particular made an absolute monkey out of me, needless to say, though at 14 years of age Cassidy was making a monkey out of most of the hurlers in Offaly that year. Now I marked him twice, and no manager could have convinced me going out the second day that I was better than him. I didn’t believe it to begin with, but if he tried it I would have laughed him out of it. Needless to say I was told to run, hook block and harass as much as I could. I think I kept him to about 1-8 from midfield that day.
True Red wrote:As a youngster growing up and playing football in the red of edenderry i always believed we were going to win. Always. Most clubs in offaly are the same.
I always felt the same when playing for Ferbane – but that was because of better players than me. I had things to hold on to – Ferbane’s underage record, some of the talented players that we had playing for us that seemed to me like they were ready for intercounty even then!!
My view is that I don’t see what those things players can believe in are now.
True Red wrote:
Dont want to sound insulting to Lone Shark but is his lack of playing pedigree making him resort to logic and theories when at times in sport both of these go out the window?
Not insulted at all – I was small, timid and useless as a kid, and a sequence of batterings by lads that were growing much faster than me and much more talented to begin with browned me off completely, and as a result I don’t have that GAA player’s mentality. I’ve never pretended otherwise.
Not trying to sound contrary, but this keeps coming back to the same thing. People maintain that you have to believe that you’re going to beat your opponent – I agree. However if you were on the field for that 31 point hammering in June, how on earth can you believe that? It would be very helpful to believe it, but where does McIntyre begin in terms of “convincing” his players? Put simply, if ye were McIntyre, and sitting in a dressing room in November before the first training session of the year in front of 30 lads, what would ye say?
(I’m aware that I’ve been told by many people, including the yungwan, that I think way too much – but how the hell do you tell your brain to stop thinking and ignore the evidence?)
Regarding BnaMman’s comment about the players falling apart – on that you are right – the capitulation we saw this year is unacceptable, and should never happen. But even if we hurled our best throughout the second half, we were still looking at losing by 15+. However that doesn’t change the fact that if next year Kilkenny put in a seven out of ten performance, we could play at full pelt and put every chance over or under the crossbar and I still think we’d fall short. I mightn’t like it, I certainly would exhort them to keep going for the win rather than just perform cosmetic surgery on the scoreline, but deep down I wouldn’t believe it until it happened. That’s not to say that I don’t think this current team couldn’t catch Kilkenny on an offday, and would come on 50% for that result alone, but there you go.
Turk, talking about Clare/Limerick/Wexford/Waterford is different - it's a lot easier convince players for games like that - indeed while results and logic dictate that we are ninth, I'd have a sneak that with a bit of improvement which will come from hurling in division one next year, we'd be well able for any of those. This topic started based on how we're entitled to see encouragement for a possible game against Kilkenny though - and I see none.
I stand by my analysis of OY vs WH last year by the way - O'Se and O'Flaithearta could have done all they liked, but the fact remains that if McManus had even a 4/10 day at the office, or the umpire hadn't suffered from temporary glaucoma, or the forwards hadn't collectively had a nightmare, then we would have won that game. If we had drawn, we would have played them in a replay in Tullamore/Dunnes Stores Mullingar and beat them by seven points. We lost that game, Westmeath did not win it. My point is that I don't see this Kilkenny team extending us that favour.
