Ratings of County football teams

[jimbob17]

http://hoganstand.com/ArticleForm.aspx?ID=173566

While it may not be the fairest or most exact guage, according to Hoganstand, London are rated higher than Offaly at present in senior football. who'd ever have thought.....Just shows how far we have fallen...

[Abercrombie Fitch]

Depressing stuff alright. And its probably not far off the mark, although no doubt we'd beat London. But after that I can't see many teams we'd beat.

A friend of mine was telling me he brought 3 Tipp lads down to minor football training who are in college in Carlow, and enquired who were the 30 young lads in the far field. He was told they're the 15/16 year olds who'll be making up the minor team the following year.

That's why Tipp are minor champions and Offaly are going nowhere fast.

[TheManFromFerbane]

Depressing stuff alright. And its probably not far off the mark, although no doubt we'd beat London. But after that I can't see many teams we'd beat.

Don't know why you would think we'd beat London so easily? Did they not beat Fermanagh last year?

A friend of mine was telling me he brought 3 Tipp lads down to minor football training who are in college in Carlow, and enquired who were the 30 young lads in the far field. He was told they're the 15/16 year olds who'll be making up the minor team the following year.

That's why Tipp are minor champions and Offaly are going nowhere fast.

Offaly have been doing that for at least 14 years, it's what their doing there and what happens after minor that's the problem

[Lone Shark]

This year London lost to Leitrim and Antrim by a point. We lost to Kildare by thirteen and Tipp by five. Their form stacks up ahead of ours.

Of course it's not always that simple, but it might be no harm that everyone in the county stopped just presuming we'd beat anyone, and start realising that this year, we had the worst scoring record in Ireland, with the exception of Kilkenny. That's London included. I've played ball in London and I know the effort that a lot of lads make to train with the county and it's not easy - and neither is there the money there once was commonplace.

Anyway, the name of the game is to be competitive and to win things - debating about whether we're thirtieth or thirty-second hardly changes much.

[timber]

Good post by Loneshark. Alot of people in the county still think we are better than alot of teams based on how good Offaly teams have been down through the years. The bottom line is that this is a completely new team who to date have been one of the worst teams in the country. I think we would struggle to beat London in Tullamore and would not beat them in Ruislip. That is the reality of things at the moment. Offaly would struggle against every team with the exception of Kilkenny and New York.

Offaly had a fairly good reputation in football and through the last decade gave as good as they got against the big teams. There was a good bit of respect there. That reputation has been very much eroded at this stage. Offaly give the odd decent performance and do be delighted with a few points of a loss to opposition. A morale victory. We've beaten Clare, Waterford and Monaghan in qualifiers. Hardly a reason to be jumping through hoops with their records in qualifiers.

I am not knocking the current footballers, but making the point that these ratings are pretty fair for us. As a county we really need to realise that things have to change, and we are not the respected team we once were. I hope Tom Coffey can bring back the pride and like Tommy Lyons did, bring an all or nothing commitment to the cause.