timber wrote:From what I have seen of Gracefield they are no way as strong as the teams they had through the early to mid 2000's. And they are not on their own. The standard of club football in the county has dropped hugely. Look at Tullamore, Clara and even Rhode. Shadows of the teams they had through the 2000's and they are still the pace setters.
There are a number of teams in the senior football championship no better than than the last 4 of the intermediate teams and maybe even a few more and the intermediate is quiet poor.
And the biggest concern is I genuinely think interest within the county is very low. Id say we all know plenty of people who would never miss a game that rarely attend one these days.
If Gracefield win a county title this year, they'll have beaten Tullamore, Edenderry and one of Rhode or Clara en route to doing so. They've a long way to go, but they'll have earned it. Any club stepping up in class and delivering on that level deserves credit for doing so, even if I would agree that the general standard is not high at the moment.
In terms of interest however, that's a big factor - at the start of the year most people would have agreed that there were four title contenders, with Gracefield a potential dark horse. Ferbane would have been seen as the best of the rest by a whisker, and everything that's happened has borne that out. You could count on one hand the number of competitive games that were worth watching - Tullamore vs Edenderry, Tullamore vs Gracefield, Ferbane vs Ballycumber and maybe one or two others. In a championship where 32 games have been played already, that's disappointing - and it's only going to get worse when we go to a round robin of eight teams. It's no coincidence that most of the better games were the ones where there was something real at stake.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.