Offaly senior football in general

[the bare biffo]

You can probably also go back to the shenanigans with O'Kelly and Fahy when trying to trace a line to the current state of affairs.

[Truth as i see it]

Actually Lone Shark i think your'e views are always well balanced, so no problems with me.

Sorry don't know how to do the quote thing

Dam Rookie's

I'm not actually having ago at the board myself (at least not the current board) as you say they are making an effort and i am encouraged by the remarks of the chairman at the last AGM when he said its important that they focus more on the development structures.

My beef for what its worth is their lack of creativity when it comes to coming up with alternative sotutions to problems like lack of funding or updating training methods.

As Jimbob17 said running them up and down a hill is a little bit outdated at this stage however it does have its uses.

I know it worked for the '82 side but football has moved on since then

[Bord na Mona man]

You can probably also go back to the shenanigans with O'Kelly and Fahy when trying to trace a line to the current state of affairs.

I suppose it still may be a lingering factor. Also 2007 and 2008 were damaging years. Where you might have expected a bounce from getting to the 2006 Leinster final, the very opposite happened.

In the last decade Offaly teams in both codes have not shown the ability to quickly recovered from set backs.
To me this points to a fragile mindset.

[jimbob17]

that was a full monaghan team we played and that draw secured their status in the top flight. it was a big game both teams needed to win with a fair size crowd in attendance in tullamore. it was also a full strength cork team too at the time, maybe not what started the championship that year but billy morgan got massive criticism after that game. remember we drew with cork the previous year too in the league so billy would not have been taking it lightly given it was the first league game of the season. yea you are correct re the dub mayo games, we were piss poor in both games but they were 2 of the top 5 teams in the country at the time. The Tyrone game was in the melting pot with 10 mins to go when they brought Kevin Hughes in at midfield and he turned it. in fact offaly were leading with fifteen mins left. i know, because i was at it. as for the kerry game, did sean ryan not miss a sitter at the end to level it or put offaly in the lead before kerry got the insurance scores or are we talking about 2 different games. they would also have had a strong side out given offalys performance the previous year where kerry struggled to win by a goal after offaly conceded 2 horror goals in the first ten mens (one from 40 yards??). of course kerry expected to win this comfortably, hence the criticism. but offaly were not that bad a team at the time and results showed that. it was played under light s in tralee the week after offaly beat westmeath (leinster champions) in tullamore. by present standards we were a lot more competitive then than we are now with the majority of that squad still young enough to be playing. we will just have to agree to disagree on this one lone shark and i do enjoy reading your opinions and posts.

agree bord na mona man. the fact is that pat roes reign did untold damage to the squad. it was doomed from the outset. half the county were asked to be selectors and declined and two people (roe and his trainer) were running it for ages where they didnt know the state of play with regards the players in the county. players left and came on whims. many were dining out on the previous years exertions and expecting to be in leinster finals again at their ease without having the necessary discipline. cribbin and his team are trying to pick up the pieces since drafting a lot of the younger players in. some too soon in my opinion but i can see his reasoning. i think there is quality young footballers there at the moment, but you cant rush too many young players in so early at a time and expect to be competitive. these are still only boys really and guys need to be developed physically and built up for championship football over a period of time. it was unfair on roe really from the outset that he was left in such a position, mainly due to the county boards lack of goodwill, as it is perceived as an organisation that is far removed from what it should be. but he wasnt half organised enough in having a team in place before he got the gig and paid the price ultimately when half of his better players declined to play or lost form for whatever reason.

[the Untouchable]

I think the problem is that football at county level has moved on alot in the last 5 years or so and Offaly have failed to move with it!!! While I accept that under Kilmurray we did well to make a Leinster final...that Offaly team was no great shakes and were always capable of playing terrible football too!!! Right now the club scene is as bad as I've ever seen it....Rhode and Clara are both decent sides but not world beaters by any means and the rest are pretty ordinary to say the least, so to start picking stand out county players in Offaly nowadays is virtually impossible. Gone be with the days when you'd watch Sean Grennan, james Grennan, Finbar Cullen, Peter Brady, Tom Coffey, Padraigh Kelly, Ronan Mooney and Vinney Claffey all playing for their clubs, you could tell they were county footballers, nowadays at any club match you couldn't tell a county footballers from an average club footballers!!!
Lone shark mentions about not buying in to the idea that there's no talent out there and that the players are there, just need to be shaped in to a county footballer...which is a fine idea, however firstly everytime an Offaly manager tries to play a lad who may not be county material just yet( i.e Richie Dalton) half the experts on this website write in saying that he should be dropped....not to mention the other problem that Offaly has, in that we're not trying to mould 1 player...we're trying to mould an entire team really....Alan Mulhall is a forward for his club, half the defence play as forwards for their club or are former county half forwards, our midfielders also alternate as half forwards or as a center back....like there the same position!!! That doesn't come from a bad manager. it comes from a manager who is working with limited resources!!!
I'm sure you tried to think of an Offaly team that we should have out there and you rang all the lads on your team sheet to see if they wanted to play for Offaly most of them would say no...because for most of these lads, they've been there before, they know that there is nothing for all the training and all the time and effort you put in to it. Under the county board addresses that issue and makes right all the years of neglect that they have given the players then Offaly football will never take a step forward in the right direction!!! Slan!!!

[Lone Shark]

I agree, and yet don't. Yes, I accept that we start the year with very few footballers who are guaranteed starters barring injury. This year you're probably looking at Alan Mulhall in goals (who does need to do a little work with the kickouts but is a great stopper) Brian Darby somewhere in the full back line due to the lack of alternatives, Karol Slattery on one of the wings, and Niall Mac.

However that is the way of the world any more, even on good teams. Being a Gaelic footballer used to be mostly about skill and partially about training and preparation. Now it's much less about ability and much more about preparation, because systems have been developed that make ball retention a lot easier, and it's better to have a guy that's fit enough and strong enough to get possession even if he's not great at using it, than have a guy who is great on the ball but rarely sees it because he's always second to it.

The upshot of that is that if any player doesn't put in the same level of work each year, they're no use. Of course it's different in Cork, Kerry, Tyrone and Dublin, but that's because in any of those counties, if you have a place on the team in January, as long as you hold on to your place, the medals will come.

The other side of that is that when so much of it is about hard work, only the management can see who's really putting it in. Richie Dalton could be the hardest working guy on the panel, or he could be a complete skiver - only the guys doing his fitness tests and watching him training know the truth.