Offaly Minor Football 2024

[ah lethimoutwithit]

Best of luck to Colaiste Choilm Tullamorein the A football Semi final in Killucan against St Pats Navan on Friday, throw in 2.30pm. Big task but great strides made at this level in the school in last few years.

[jimbob17]

I'd suggest that if Birr was a school of its size with an all boys population, they would be competing well in A schools hurling. I think it is only breaking even for Colaiste Choilm to be getting to a quarter or semi final of A schools football. They have almost a monopoly on the talent in the area from a strong underage development system in Tullamore GAA and strong clubs like St Vincents, No Fianna, Shamrocks and Balinamere Durrow also feeding in. For a school of their size with all catholic boys and GAA tradition/culture, we should be asking why they weren't competing well in A grade football for the last 30 years. They are where they should be and are far from over exceeding.

If likes of Westmeath can get 3 - 5 teams into College A football through Marist College, Moate CC, and Rochfortbridge consistently annually and Mullingar CBS and Athlone CC sporadically, then Offaly should expect to at least have St Mary's Edenderry and Colaiste Choilm there consistently competing. Maybe this is part of the reason our county senior team standards slipped over last 30 years. As young players in other counties got exposed to higher levels of competition through A colleges as the game moved on, a large amount of our young players did not get such exposure.

If we are to have any ambition at all as a county, we should be expecting Col Choilm, St Mary's and Offaly Combined Schools to be very competitive at this grade and on a good year for Ferbane, they could also show ambition and try compete at this level. There are approx 14 -20 school teams that play in A Colleges most years so getting our main boys school in our county town to be competitive at business end regularly should hopefully become the norm rather than the exception. That said, hoping they can get to the final, and best wishes to all involved.

[jimbob17]

I'd suggest that if Birr was a school of its size with an all boys population, they would be competing well in A schools hurling. I think it is only breaking even for Colaiste Choilm to be getting to a quarter or semi final of A schools football. They have almost a monopoly on the talent in the area from a strong underage development system in Tullamore GAA and strong clubs like St Vincents, No Fianna, Shamrocks and Balinamere Durrow also feeding in. For a school of their size with all catholic boys and GAA tradition/culture, we should be asking why they weren't competing well in A grade football for the last 30 years. They are where they should be and are far from over exceeding.

If likes of Westmeath can get 3 - 5 teams into College A football through Marist College, Moate CC, and Rochfortbridge consistently annually and Mullingar CBS and Athlone CC sporadically, then Offaly should expect to at least have St Mary's Edenderry and Colaiste Choilm there consistently competing. Maybe this is part of the reason our county senior team standards slipped over last 30 years. As young players in other counties got exposed to higher levels of competition through A colleges as the game moved on, a large amount of our young players did not get such exposure.

If we are to have any ambition at all as a county, we should be expecting Col Choilm, St Mary's and Offaly Combined Schools to be very competitive at this grade and on a good year for Ferbane, they could also show ambition and try compete at this level. There are approx 14 -20 school teams that play in A Colleges most years so getting our main boys school in our county town to be competitive at business end regularly should hopefully become the norm rather than the exception. That said, hoping they can get to the final, and best wishes to all involved.

[pigeon house biffo]

Cormac Egan Rory Egan and Cathal Donoghue all sitting on the bench for their respective colleges teams tonight.

[faithfulfanatic]

Cormac Egan Rory Egan and Cathal Donoghue all sitting on the bench for their respective colleges teams tonight.

Rory Egan was in goals for UG.

I'd imagine Egan and Donoghue would be playing if fully fit, both back after long-term injury trouble and 3 games a week would be recipe for disaster

[pigeon house biffo]

Hard luck to tullamore

Kick out went badly wrong in the closing 10, got turned over multiple times and was surprised they didn’t try a couple short to retain possession, Naas would have likely have dropped off once the ball got worked outside the 40m line.

Thought it was odd that so few lads were pushed up the field. Few times the ball got kicked in and the lad who won possession was completely isolated.

Few big men on that tullamore team that’ll hopefully continue to push on through to senior inter county. Great to have a school competing at this level and the games will only benefit all offaly teams going forward.

[ah lethimoutwithit]

Tough one alright, I think Naas more composed around the field. But this is the level that we need our young lads exposed to and looking forward to seeing some of these guys step up. There is huge scope for improvement and fair play for all involved in halping to start unlocking the potential. For countless years it was neglected in the school.

[Muck Savage]

Well done to Gallen CS on their All Ireland win. A lot of the West Offaly clubs represented which bodes well for the future.

In a side note, best of luck to Kate Kenny Ferbane on her contract with AFL Geelong.

[G91]

Only 1 form that all ireland winning Team started vs Longford

And the players who came on off that team all got scores

[Doon Exile]

Very disappointing evening. The two goals in the first half effectively killed off the game. I never like signalling out any players especially minors, so not going to comment about any individual players.

Longford were simply the better team and just got scores that bit easier than us. We seemed to have to work fierce hard for all our scores.

[Anonymous1]

I made my thoughts known on the management after last years drubbing against Dublin and was shot down but best of luck to anybody defending that performance tonight.

[joey1001]

I made my thoughts known on the management after last years drubbing against Dublin and was shot down but best of luck to anybody defending that performance tonight.

Nobody cares what you think mister I told you so, no doubt you were shouting for a Longford win and chomping at the bit to get back on here

[jimbob17]

Very poor display from minors who were totally outclassed by Longford. With the wind, got off to very poor start. It was curtains from there as Offaly had wind in first half, but went in 6 pts down. Not sure how good Longford really are but Offaly didnt look up to much and struggled all over the field. Cian McNamee fought lonely battle up front and was one of very few shining lights even if supply wasnt great.

No more than U20's last night, you'd have to start asking questions around our dev squad systems. Are we really making progress at all for all the money being spent. Results certainly throw this into question. Two bad losses to Louth and Longford. We should bare in mind it wasnt Meath Kildare or Dublin we were playing. There has to be some raw talent there as we have lots of them playing colleges A football through St Marys Edenderry, Colaiste Choilm, Moate Community School and Offaly Schools. As far as I know, only one Longford school plays A schools (St Mels) while I dont think Louth have any school in colleges A level.

These county teams are supposed to be better prepared than groups of the past with S&C and nutrition etc resources going in so where is it going wrong. This was supposed to be a fairly strong minor group going by underage results in U15/16 in recent years.

While the Gallen sucess is good to get, I wouldnt pay too much heed to their success as it was in D grade, which is well below the grade they should be operating at. They beat teams easily at this grade after dropping down a grade and with a good few county U20s and lots of county minors still in school there, they should have shown way more aspirations than competing or winning at D level. One observation from tonight's Offaly team was that St Manchans must be a shoe in to win the club minor championship this year if they are good enough to have 6 players see action tonight.

[del]

Very disappointing result and performance. That clearly is not the best bunch of players available at minor level in Offaly . The 3 best teams at minor this year will be Tullamore Rhode and Ferbane none from Ferbane starting only one from Rhode
How St Manchans have 6 on the pitch tonight was strange at best They aren’t in the top 6/7 teams
When is the penny gonna drop re this development squad work going on the last few yrs . The best Offaly player tonight was Cian Mcnamme was wasn’t allowed on a dev squad a few yrs ago because he played others sports
We need to have serious look at the size of players we are developing . Big young lads are been dropped at dev squad level when they are the ones we need to keep and develop cause they have one thing other players don’t have is size
We can’t afford to be dismissing players cause they player other sports we need to accommodate them and in time they inevitably pick Gaa
This is the first group to come fully through development squads under this administration of Offaly Gaa and it doesn’t bode well

[bracknaghboy]

We go live to Tulamore folks where joey1001 is about address the local media on Offalys recent performances.
Take it away Joey......

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