club championship in april?

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kaiserchief
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club championship in april?

Post by kaiserchief »

master fixture plan done completed and released in January.

hurlers are now out of league.. fixtures put back a week, final will be a week later.. but we are not in it anyways..

footballers play westmeath on Sunday, this was always the date.. win or loose they are finished up the league on Sunday..

now we hear that there might be only one round of each in the league? depends on county board..!! are these the people that made the master plan? what has changed?

when will a decision be made? who makes this decision?

LooseCannon
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by LooseCannon »

From Brian Lowry on Twitter:
Good Luck

kaiserchief
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by kaiserchief »

i just seen these this morning. thanks loose cannon.

don't know why this wasn't done last week. where they waiting to see if we reached the league final.. :roll:

frankthetank
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by frankthetank »

No senior hurling match in OCP in the first two rounds. Are my eyes deceiving me?

greenairfield
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by greenairfield »

It is called common sense thankfully the CB got some

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Lone Shark
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by Lone Shark »

No senior "A" hurling match in OCP is good to see, though it would be nicer to see all the games spread out a bit more. I'm well aware that some grounds mightn't be in great shape but rather than putting (between all three championships in football and hurling):

10 games in OCP
5 in Kilcormac
4 in Birr
and 3 in Clara, Rath and Banagher,

surely it would be better to spread it around a bit. I appreciate that when we get to knockout stages, you need to use the better venues, and I'm not saying these places shouldn't get games. But Carrig, Moystown, Lusmagh, Coolderry, Edenderry, Ferbane, Gracefield, Walsh Island, these are all perfectly good places to attend a game and they got nothing. I don't understand that at all.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

Plain of the Herbs
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by Plain of the Herbs »

Senior B is still Senior, Frank. Though in fairness, the double header for Bord na Móna Park involves Tullamore, Clodiagh, Brosna Gaels and Shamrocks.
frankthetank wrote:No senior hurling match in OCP in the first two rounds. Are my eyes deceiving me?
Pat Donegan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

"Offaly's hurling is exact and abrasive: full of assurance on the ball, devoid of fumbling and slicing and sod-busting". Kevin Cashman RIP (September 1994).

LooseCannon
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by LooseCannon »

Lone Shark wrote:No senior "A" hurling match in OCP is good to see, though it would be nicer to see all the games spread out a bit more. I'm well aware that some grounds mightn't be in great shape but rather than putting (between all three championships in football and hurling):

10 games in OCP
5 in Kilcormac
4 in Birr
and 3 in Clara, Rath and Banagher,

surely it would be better to spread it around a bit. I appreciate that when we get to knockout stages, you need to use the better venues, and I'm not saying these places shouldn't get games. But Carrig, Moystown, Lusmagh, Coolderry, Edenderry, Ferbane, Gracefield, Walsh Island, these are all perfectly good places to attend a game and they got nothing. I don't understand that at all.
Carrig should get a couple, but then again it’s that bit out of the way.
Moystown will get Lusmagh-Brosna Gaels anyway
Lusmagh should get Rynaghs-Belmont
Coolderry you'd imagine will get Shinrone-Seir Kieran
Edenderry should get St Brigids-Clonbullogue and Ballyfore-Rhode in the junior a anyway.
Ferbane would get Shannonbridge-Doon you’d imagine, yet it could be in Pullough/Pollagh/Pullagh/whatever way you like to spell it. Could also get Erin Rovers v Ballycumber possibly.
Walsh Island could get a Daingean-Clonbullogue match or something similar.
Gracefield, well they can have the under 20 matches of a wet Tuesday/Wednesday night. :lol: :lol: :lol:
Good Luck

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Re: club championship in april?

Post by LooseCannon »

http://www.midlands103.com/sport-centre ... e-to-play/

Contrary to widely held belief, and Lone Shark on twitter :lol: , hurlers are free to play. It’ll be interesting to see how it fares out. Ferbane should hold on even without Kelly and the two Egans. Camon will be needed for Rynaghs as will Dooley with Tullamore. Whether they’ll play or not remains to be seen.

Tom Spain also with Erin Rovers. I’m not sure about Junior Football, but one would imagine that Seán Ryan would play football.
Good Luck

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Lone Shark
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by Lone Shark »

LooseCannon wrote:http://www.midlands103.com/sport-centre ... e-to-play/

Contrary to widely held belief, and Lone Shark on twitter :lol: , hurlers are free to play. It’ll be interesting to see how it fares out. Ferbane should hold on even without Kelly and the two Egans. Camon will be needed for Rynaghs as will Dooley with Tullamore. Whether they’ll play or not remains to be seen.

Tom Spain also with Erin Rovers. I’m not sure about Junior Football, but one would imagine that Seán Ryan would play football.
Have the hurlers been told that they will be cut from the county squad if they play football? No. Have the hurlers been encouraged to go and spend the bulk of the week with their football clubs and to play those two championship games? Also no.

As with most things in life, the truth lies somewhere in the grey area in the middle. However when a group of players join together to try and achieve something as a collective entity, as this county hurling side have done, it's not as simple as saying that there is no outright rule banning you from a certain thing. Yet the peer pressure exists, and within the subset of players who also play football (which is around 9 guys by my count) there are natural leaders and younger players as well. If two or three of the older guys go one way, it's very hard for the younger players to break ranks.

Just to be clear here, just because I don't like this situation doesn't mean that I'm automatically putting the blame on the management, or the players involved either. Offaly play Galway on the 12th of May and while the Galway hurlers will play two championship games in April as well, they won't play football. It's not fair on the Offaly players to ask them to compete on an equal footing on OCP that Saturday night if they've been flogged to death over the month of April, while their opponents haven't. It's natural for management to want some balance, and for players to want to give themselves a chance to be fully right for that game, and the three that follow it in quick succession.

Where I have an issue is that by putting these games on anyway and wedging them in where they plainly don't fit, the Offaly county board are cheapening the value of our adult football championships. A SFC clash between Ferbane and Gracefield should be a really big deal - instead it's going to be played midweek, with lads rushing in from work, and with one club missing their starting midfielders and centre forward due to hurling. Yet we're supposed to believe that this is the same competition that we grew up watching, and looking forward to.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

private joker
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by private joker »

The day of lads playing for 3 or 5 teams is over. Holding up championships for 7 or 8 players has to stop. Clubs need to get with the idea that, if your a dual club, and your county man is a hurler, hurling is what he should focus on. If you star man is on county football then football at club level, football should be his priority. putting off games is not the way to go. The GAA need to start to get on without the " county man". That's the way it's heading, like in rugby. for better or worse.

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Lone Shark
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by Lone Shark »

private joker wrote:The day of lads playing for 3 or 5 teams is over. Holding up championships for 7 or 8 players has to stop. Clubs need to get with the idea that, if your a dual club, and your county man is a hurler, hurling is what he should focus on. If you star man is on county football then football at club level, football should be his priority. putting off games is not the way to go. The GAA need to start to get on without the " county man". That's the way it's heading, like in rugby. for better or worse.
I'm entirely cognisant of the fact that we may in fact be heading this way, and that could be for the greater good. However if we are, then surely it's not unreasonable for it to be stated explicitly, and for clubs to be consulted on that? You have to concede that if we were to adopt this view as a county, it's a huge change in ethos. It's one thing to make a dramatic policy change and have it voted on, but it's another entirely to just let it evolve without actually giving clubs a say over it.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.

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bracknaghboy
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Re: club championship in april?

Post by bracknaghboy »

Lone Shark wrote:the Offaly county board are cheapening the value of our adult football championships. A SFC clash between Ferbane and Gracefield should be a really big deal - instead it's going to be played midweek
To be fair I think the clubs themselves cheapened the championship by voting for the nonsense that is 7 round group with 28 games to eliminate 2 teams.
The SFC will have ten rounds minimum to deliver a winner. More if theres a draw in knockout stages. The same for the hurling, so thats 20 rounds of senior club games in 'A' and 'B' alone meaning involvement for 20 weekends! All this at a time when the county hurlers have 4 championship games this year and the footballers (assuming they take Wicklow) will have at least 3 games to play.
To be honest I wish the group games could be run off mid week and get them out of the way ASAP but obviously it's tough on players making midweek journeys but look the clubs put this daft structure in place.
Serious adjustment is required because this current structure simply isn't sustainable.

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