Expectation from the NHL this year?

[Aweflee]

POTH,

I spotted that on anfearrua. After posting here I sent an e-mail to the Examiner to see if anyone there could tell me more. The posting you see on anfearrua is identical to the my one, with the exception of one word - "writing" was replaced by "checking" in the first line. Is my English that bad?
I see you've tried to bring the anfearrua thread back on track. It'll be interesting to see if anybody has any info on it. The problem here is not that it will be an 8 team div 1, rather that there doesn't seem to have been any major anouncement before Christmas after the great Nickey Brennan said there would be. I do remember reading a piece in the Offaly Independent a few weeks back where Ruth O'Brien stated that two teams would go down but I assumed what she actually meant was a team from 1A and one from 1B. As an occasional contributor to that paper does LS know where she might have gone that info if she in fact meant that two teams from our group are to be relegated?

[Offalys Future]

Main thing tomorrow is get the result. should be well capable of winning by 8 to 15 points.
Not much more to say.

[Aweflee]

Offaly 2-13
Laois 1-17

Shocking. Absolutely shocking.

[Bord na Mona man]

Can't say I'm shocked.
Leix are always a tricky league team, but generally do little in championship.
Even if Offaly had won today, we'd still have to beat Clare to avoid relegation.

The signs aren't good though. 30 points scored in 3 outings is very low.
The only hope we have is that there is the same "bounce back" effect as shown against Galway after the Tipp humiliation in Round 1.

[Bogman]

The team never attacked the game and Laois deserved the victory although Offaly could have stolen it at the end.

I hope that Joe Dooley and the selectors take on board the lessons because a few players are not up to it or are being played out of position.

It wasn't all bad! Joe Bergin stepped up to the mark with a brilliant point from play and some great long-range points from placed balls. When Offaly were down he took on more and more responsibility.

Conor Hernon and Diarmuid Horan did some good things.

The injuries to David Kenny and Daniel Currams did affect the team. Hopefully they'll both be back soon enough.

There was some strange positioning of players. James Rigney and Barry Teehan seemed to be playing in attack some of the time. So we had Ger Oakley, James Rigney, Barry Teehan and David Franks all playing in attack.

Francis Kerrigan and Ger Healion should have been brought in earlier.

[Efan]

At this stage I would grab one win and one draw with both hands. I think we all (mistakenly) had assumed Leix would be a win nad that the hard work had been done in the 2nd half against Galway. I cant see us beating Limerick so Clare is our must win game.

[Plain of the Herbs]

Obviously it’s very disappointing to lose by such a big margin to Limerick. However, the league in its present format is all about momentum and any momentum was lost last week in losing to Laois.

The best thing to be done now is to grin and bear the Easter Sunday visit from Clare and then draw a line under this year’s league and move on from there. The clocks will soon go forward and the serious ballwork training will begin in earnest. A county with Offaly’s pick can ill afford to be without David Kenny as well as the Birr contingent.

While it’s understandable for this year’s league performance to be compared to those of the two previous years, it should be pointed out that John McIntyre had the Birr players at his disposal for each of his three league campaigns.

As bad as the team performance was, there were some decent individual performances today. There were some nice passing moves made, and plenty other good moves that broke down when the final pass didn’t go to hand. T’was a bit like hurling against Kilkenny – they’d work so hard to score two points only to see all the good work undone with a scrambled goal at th’other end.

One alarming feature though was the substitution of Shane O’Connor on about the 45-minute mark. Now I’ve been critical of the Coolderry custodian on this medium before but taking him off in that manner today was wrong. None of the four goals that went past him could be attributed to him and the sideline might have been better advised to replace a forward at that stage.

It was interesting to hear Ronan O’Gara’s interview in the aftermath of his side’s Twickenham defeat on Saturday. When asked about playing in a team with low confidence levels, he remarked that in that situation players tend to look after their own performance solely to the detriment of the team’s performance. Sounds familiar.

It’s only March; it’s still winter time, too soon to panic yet.

[Muck Savage]

Ah POTH, you'd have to say O'Connor should have got three of the goals. Two in the first half goals came from fierce tight angles and the majority of keepers would get them. The first on in the 2nd half from 60 yards out passed him in the middle of the goal. Now I'm not saying I'd have saved them but the line can't sit there and watch that either.
I felt sorry for them as they were trying fierce hard but a lot of them are not up to the standard, don't have that quick wrist etc. I'd fear after the game in Croke part today that the Birr lads won't fill that many of the gaps either. It's fustrating to see the Portumna lads able to pick off scores today from 60 yards out once they got a yard or two space, but when the Birr lads got that bit of space the ball dropped short or went wide.

After attending the two games this weekend I think it's going to be a long road back for Offaly hurling. I hope I'm wrong. A lot will say that the dry ground will help our lads but it'll also help the rest.

[Bogman]

I have to agree that we are off the pace at the moment. Still, as POTH says, some encouraging signs of player development. I wouldn't give up on the year yet!

Is the League format for next year set? I'm thinking that an 8 team Division 2 made up of, say, Offaly, Laois, Wexford, Antrim, Westmeath, Kerry, Carlow, Derry might be no bad thing for our young Offaly players.

[azoffaly]

I came away from Tullamore very worried on Sunday, I have to say. Traditionally we would be expecting Offaly to at least be cute and do the right thing in possession, as well as having the basic skills of the game like catching, rising, ground strokes, etc etc. Our physicallity was always exposed in the past few years against the bigger, stronger teams like Clare, Kilkenny, Limerick etc.

On Sunday I witnessed Offaly players trying to solo out of trouble instead of handpassing to an open colleague, I saw poor striking, I saw poor discipline and I saw at least 6 or 7 lads who were so far off the pace that they made Limerick look like a fast team, which they are not. I also, witnessed criminal lack of effort from a couple of lads, one in particular and POTH and LS will know who I mean because I probably bored them to tears sitting beside me

I hope that the pitch, which was very bobbly, is in some form to blame for the poor rising and ground strokes, although Limerick didn't seem to have as much trouble with it. I also hope that Joe had them training hard or something during the week, which might explain how someone like Shane Dooley was left 10 yards behind Mark Foley in a race, not to mind the painfully slow pace of the likes of Kevin Brady, Ger Healion and Joe Brady.

However, it really worries me when someone like Ger Oakley, who is a genuine good tryer and whose heart I love, is our most natural looking hurler.

There were a few decent performances, but there has been precious little progress as far as I can see. Plus ca change and all that.

**Edit. Best of luck to Lone Shark in his new journalistic role. I hope none of my comments made it into his report, or he'll be shot after day 1

[Offalyhurling07]

Ok I need to vent here because I am totally disillusioned after Sundays performance. Where do you even start.....? It has just been an evolving shambles, which is set to continue.

1. Team is not fit, well not up to the intercounty standard. This is a crazy statement given all our new young players are in their early 20s. What’s going wrong?
2. Not one player, aside from Oakley gives 120% - do or die aggression or passion. Now, my theory on this is simple - the younger players have never really had to contest for their positions, playing for Offaly is no longer a great honour, there is no pride in the jersey! There is no leader on the field and what appears is no respect for the each other.
3. Players are not been played in their best positions, Brady should not be in full back and it was blatant and only on Sunday did they make the call. Bergin had how many games at centre back and only when he was moved to wing has he been making an impression.
4. Basic skill and touch is dismal.
5. Selection and decisions on the sideline is atrocious.
6. There is no clever hurling, no team playing. Each hurler is concerned with only himself. Aimless balls into space are a waste of time. And Portumna proved yesterday that there is always a lad in a better position with better potential for a score.
7. Low morale in the camp.

Right I could go on but I won’t. Joe needs to sit down look at his panel, look at their best positions, look at the previous games and pick with all prejudices aside the best team. That is all that matters and each game is different and each selection should reflect the task ahead. This idea of picking a lad because of who his club is or who he is and not for his ability, his endurance and his decision making has to stop. We not only need to develop we need to adapt and fast to this no wave of professional, high intensity hurling and it won't be done if the right decisions are not made. Finally, if the next step for Offaly is to parachute in the Birr team for some sort of revivalism then we may forget about it. There are players who should be called in but not approached as some sort of mercy mission, they need to want to want it and train hard and contest hard for a position but drafting players in who have no interest and have no passion is a waste of time because at the end of the day Birr don't perform for the county! At this stage if that was to happen the team would fall apart and yes we could possibly witness another Kilkenny massacre!

[Lone Shark]

I walked out of O'Connor Park a very demoralised man, but as with all things, time tempers emotions and even though Birr didn't exactly pull up any trees either, I still think that we're no worse off than we were at the start of the year. Being realistic, we are probably not as good a team as any of the four teams that are likely to fill the division one slots in our division, and while it would have been nice to knock one of them off, failing to beat teams that are better than you is hardly a terrible offence.

Now the manner of the defeat was not good, but having said that, we conceded a lot of goals - two of them at least being freak goals that you wouldn't expect, while we also played nearly 30 minutes with a man down against a side who were in the All Ireland final last year. We conceded goals at heart breaking times, and all in all while the scoreline was not good, ultimately I don't think we found out anything we didn't know already. Now I'm not saying that we have 15 intercounty standard hurlers, but yesterday we were missing around five or six that would be there or thereabouts, while another similar number from yesterday are playing at or near enough the standard required.

A few other random thoughts from the game....

(1) Doffed Cap to Ger Oakley. Nothing we haven't come to expect from him, but it deserves to be said. He was fantastic.
(2) I agree completely with AZ regarding the lack of fitness and pace. Obviously there are several players there who don't get picked on the strength of their nimble feet and wrists, but even so the heavy legs and subsequent pressure when trying to perform basic skills was shocking.
(3) One thing we were lucky for (I thought at least) was the ref, who was very lenient towards a lot of our pulling of the hurl against Limerick players trying to catch the ball. There was a lot of Offaly style tackling - i.e. flicking the hurl in the general area of the ball, but often flicking it at the player. Another referee I thought could have been a lot more harsh.
(4) I hope Niall Moran gets off any suspension - that was a ridiculous double red - Flannery should have walked by himself.
(5) There are several players living in a comfort zone. Whether it is as OH07 put it above, and they don't respect how hard earned the county jersey should be, or some other reason, I would say that Brian Carroll and Kevin Brady are two examples of players who are playing as if they're in America for the summer or some such, and it's time they both pulled the finger out or else Joe sent a lesson. When Ger Oakley is your man of the match and inexperienced guys like Conor Mahon and Diarmuid Horan who played under 21 football the previous day are showing you up there is something wrong.
(6) Harsh on Leonard to be subbed so early. He was hadly the source of the problems.
(7) Conor Hernon needs to do a little less hurling and a little more marking, then he'll be the real deal. On Sunday he got on a lot of ball, but Donie Ryan scored 2-2 all the same. That's not really what you want from your corner back.


That's all - apologies if it's a bit disjointed.....

[jimmyeatworld]

Can anyone post the full panel of players that was listed for Sundays game?

Can anyone confirm or deny the rumours that Shane O' Connor and Barry Teehan have left the panel?

How many Birr lads and who will be called into the panel. Personally I would select Mullins,Claffey,Verney,Watkins,Rory Hanniffy and Sean Ryan as a midfielder,not a forward.Maybe Barry Whelehan and Gary Hanniffy but no one after that. Hopefully these players will be able to add something to the panel.

[green&white]

Now I know we aint setting the world alight at the moment but with the exception ogfthe Laois game has anything gone unaccording to plan yet this year so far? What do ya expect Offaly to do with such limited resources (Birr players unavailabke and some key injuries).For the last couple of weeks there was a feeling that we could brew a good team with the integration of the current crop and the Birr contingent, now after the week-end we're suddenly no-hopers.
Oakley has the heart of a lion, but Christ above what are ye lookin at!! He was on Limericks worst hurler for starters, and if for one second he could look up or look for the players around him we could've potentially had at least another 2-3 on the board. When your 6' 2"and built like a tank its easy for him to throw his weight around.. I'd be askin the same questiuons of Joe Bergin, Derek Molloy, Shane Dooley, Conor Mahon etc.
Conor Mahon is one of the most limited hurlers I've ever seen in an Offaly jersey, ever! Again he'll try hard and seems to get on a lot of ball, but on at least four occassions on Sunday he just hit the ball aimlessly wide or into the keeper without ever looking. From what I've heard Diarmuid Horan turned up once between the G'way and Laois games (thats 3weeks folks!), now I know he's busy with football and college committments, but so are many others on the panel who made the effort! I heard a lot of lads on the panel weren't impressed with him starting against laois! As for Kevin Brady and Brian Carroll (and I would say most of the boys in their at the moment with a couple of exceptions) are two of the most committed young lads ever to hurl with Offaly. Jasus you must know them real well to comment like that on their attitudes!!!

[Lone Shark]

Nobody's saying that we're no hopers. We got a great result against Galway, but the scale of the defeats against Tipp and Limerick mean that barring we put up a 15 point win over Clare, we're down - and it's not that it's a shock that as the 9th best team in Ireland with a lot of men out we didn't make the top 8, but it would have been nice to, that's all that's being said.

The Diarmuid Horan situation I couldn't comment on not being in the know, except to say that it's really for Joe Dooley to decide if his excuses are legitimate. If they are, and he's turning up in a fit state to hurl intercounty, then great. If he's not, then obviously he shouldn't be picked. Based on what I saw last Sunday he's a lot closer to the standard required than many others.

Oakley might not have the vision or dextrous hands to spray around passes all over the field, but that's all the more reason to single him out for praise - everything he has in his locker gets left out on the field. He was by far our most effective player, and while I agree Paudie O'Dwyer is no all star, he's no mug either.

I have no idea how committed and prepared Brian Carroll or Kevin Brady are, except to say that I have reason to believe that they are both generally quite driven individuals. However on Sunday, to take them one at a time...

Kevin Brady got ate alive by Sean O'Connor. He made a pathetic attempt to field against him for the first goal where O'connor caught, turned and passed with Brady getting nowhere. For the second goal he was way out of position when O'Connor had a free strike on goal that turned into a mishit pass to Ollie Moran, and for the third goal O'connor rounded him with ease, absolutely skinning him for pace. If Donie Ryan did that then fair enough - but O'Connor is not quick and Brady still made him look fast. His deliveries forward never seem to be judged, they're always seem to be just hit and hope jobs. Committed he may be but if that's as good as he can be then it's time to say enough is enough - he was the worst of a bad back line by a country mile on Sunday.

Brian Carroll coasted through that match. Unlike Brady, I am a great fan of Carroll and I think that when he's on his game he is a very good forward who plays from the heart and never leaves it behind him. Last Sunday he ambled around the forward line while Seamus Hickey swept up loose ball after loose ball that was broken down by Lucey and Healion. On several occasions he failed to show in support like he should have and he didn't follow in balls into the square like a corner forward should. He also was painfully slow and looked unfit as well. Perhaps he was injured, perhaps he was shaking off a bug or whatever - but he was downright poor and he wasn't doing any of the things that a corner forward should be doing.

I don't know the two lads at all, so I can only comment on their hurling - and you can't have it both ways. Either what we saw last Sunday was the best they had, in which case they shouldn't be picked again, or else it wasn't the best they had in which case you have to ask why. When lads with the natural gifts that those two have are being outshone by the likes of Mahon (who I agree is limited) and Oakley then you have to ask why that is happening.