Whats happening

[Mr Faithful]

I have to say travelling to these matches is breaking me, when are the faithful footballers ever going to give us something to cheer about.Every year its the same old crap, lack of commitment, passion and pride. We pay good money to support these guys and what do we get back - NOTHING. We have gone through the year having player revolt, unhappy with the management, but now the team have to stand up and be counted. When will this team ever envisage themselves playing with pride of offaly teams of old. As for the qualifiers we never do well. As an ardant offaly fan, if any of the team read this give something back to us offaly followers to cheer about.

Mr Faithful.

[GreatDayForTheParish]

I have to say travelling to these matches is breaking me, when are the faithful footballers ever going to give us something to cheer about.Every year its the same old crap, lack of commitment, passion and pride. We pay good money to support these guys and what do we get back - NOTHING. We have gone through the year having player revolt, unhappy with the management, but now the team have to stand up and be counted. When will this team ever envisage themselves playing with pride of offaly teams of old. As for the qualifiers we never do well. As an ardant offaly fan, if any of the team read this give something back to us offaly followers to cheer about.

Mr Faithful.

Completly over the top, but not unexpected from the doom merchants that pervade this site.

Yes, we were well beaten today, however I for one was very impressed by the attitude of the players in the second half. Despite the game being beyond their reach following the first half, they never gave up and fought hard to win the second half. Were it not for a few missed frees we could have been much closer. Although the result was indeed disappointing, the attitude displayed by the players in the second half was very admirable and the resulting performance gives the team something to build on for the qualifers.

The real issue is what caused the collapse in the first half. Inexperience? Kildare just being that good? Probable a bit of both but I don't think for one second it was because we 'lacked pride'. Let us not forget that we have been beaten by a good Kildare side by six points. The true measure of this result will reveal itself when we see how far Kildare progress in the championship.

Lets try and keep the hysterics to a minimum people.

[bracknaghboy]

We had no centre back...I dont blame the chap he was all at sea and was out of his depth. Cribben got this wrong. Evans stood 5 metres off Doyle all game and was allowed to remain on the pitch. I dont blame Evans he played as well as could but just isnt up to it but appears that nobody else (supporters or previous/current managment) see this, so I assume he''ll be starting again and again until he calls it a day himself.........
Our midfield seemed to adopt some sort of "no contest" policy until McManus came in. I can only liken it to rugby where teams choose not to challenge for Line outs. Basically Kildare caught the first 10-12 kick outs uncontested and some of the time they picked off ball with no Offaly man within a 10 metre radius.
We started with 5 corner forwards and esentially no ball winners in the forward line (Niall Mc being an exception). When Niall did get the ball he was crowded out and sometimes it was our forwards that were on top of him. We had far too many players that have not got enough club senior football under their belt never mind intercounty. Yes Cribben is blooding new players but was the team he picked a complete cop out? Did he know we were doomed and put out this very inexperienced team of intermediate players (and lads who have been intermediate in the couple of years) so that he the perfect excuse when the inevitable happened he could claim he was building for the future. I'm not saying he did I'm just raising a point was raised at half time today among a few of us. I was realistic that we were a border line D4 team playing a borderline D1 team but still thought we had an outside chance until I seen that starting 15 thursday night. It was obvious then that a thumping was on the cards. I thought Sean Ryan tried his heart out today. I really enjoyed the Wicklow Longford game. Anyways sleep now as I've 300 mile round trip tomorrow

[Bord na Mona man]

I think paying money a few times a year doesn't really entitle you to anything.
The players are doing it for free after all.

The gap between the teams was bigger than I expected today and it is disappointing.
The players did keep plugging till the end, its just a pity about the bad start.

[bazza]

In all fairness lads anyone who thought we could actually win today is in a 'Faithful Dream Land'. We lined out today without real championship players at 1, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 14. We had no spine in our team, how would could you possibly win a match without decent players in these positions. Not to mention the fact that we didn't have a designated man-marker for their main forward. So we didnt have a spine. But then Kildare were stronger and taller than us, fitter and faster and they had an effective game-plan whereas as the boys on the Sunday Game put it: "Sure typical Offaly we'll go out man for man, ignore Kildare's blanket defence, and give it a good a lash". Realistically Offaly should break up, drop out of the qualifiers, go back to the clubs and give the club championships a right competitiive edge. Finish the club championship by September. Get the 30-40 best players in Offaly back to training in October for conditioning, weights, fitness and basic skills. This is what it will take to get Offaly back into the top 7/8 teams in Leinster and back into Division 2. Any lad who's not interested should be told to go away because he's no good for Offaly anyway. Ideally a man like McGeeney would be in charge of this but Cribben will have to do. This may sound terribly derpressing but I honestlly believe there are enough good players in Offaly to get us into Divsion 2 and competing in Leinster this time next year. We have reached the last 6 Leinster minor semi-finals so there are obviously players there. Just write this year and decade off I guess..

[full2forward]

If I am wrong somebody please tell me BUT I think there was more going on today than met the eye!!!

I think that maybe after the league some sort of 100% attendance and commitment policy was put in place by Cribbin for players to be considered to start against Kildare!! and Obviously some of our "Championship" standard players didn’t meet it!! How else do you explain starting with:

1) Matty Mitchell over Shane Sullivan - Shane showed when he came on that he should have been there from the start, but the damage was already done, I have Not a bad word to say against Matty but it was a step too high too fast.

2) Connor Carroll over McManus (or Alan Mc) - Pure joke!! A championship debutante marking Dermot Early, something clearly going here, he couldn’t even contest the ball!

3) William Mulhall over anyone - Anonymous, actually forgot he was playing towards the end of the first half. If Niall Darby was fit to give at least a half hour of football (he showed when he came on that he was), why not the first half!!

I think Cribbin may have dug himself a hole before the game even started!!! I also had a couple of Issues with his tactics:

1) Slatts marking Alan Smith - This cost us at least 1-2 in the opening 10/15 mins. I was sure that Brian Darby would be on Smith. Slatts isn’t a man marking corner back!! Really Believe Darbs would have done a job on smith.

2) Starting 5 Inside Forwards - It was highlighted by others before the game that we were putting out a team with 5 corner forwards and it showed, we were blocking ourselves whenever we got in shooting range. It seemed as if Reynolds ( of whom i am not a fan ) was the only forward who could get shots away inside 30 yards and did score a couple of smart points.

Okay enough negative talk!! The Positives:

1) Sean Ryan - Showed real heart and top class potential, speed too outpace anyone "one on one" as his goal showed.

2) Niall Smyth - This man can catch a ball with the best of them, the time he and Earley both caught the ball was brilliant!!!

3) Ken Casey and Stephen Lonergan - Both showed well and that they have Potential. I thought the half forward line we started in the second half of 10-Casey 11-Ryan 12-Darby showed real promise for the future and should be what we start with in the Qualifiers.

Probably said enough for now, Had to get all this out of my head after today!! Would like to hear if you agree/disagree or if you know more about the inner workings of Cribbins selection policy!!!

[azoffaly]

Sorry, lads, I posted this in the other thread before I saw this.

I agree with a lot of what's been said there, it seemed strange before the game, and 15 minutes in it seemed even stranger. Slatts was being roasted, Ritchie Dalton was neither contesting the ball, nor winning breaks, nor even running with his man. All over the pitch we were second best. At least in the second half, when Kildare took their foot off the pedal, we still had a bit of fight.

I think there is a more fundemental issue though, and that is size. Not necessarily height, because you can't really do anything about height except pick bigger players, but Tyrone are not exactly giants. I think there is definitely a big difference in body type and strength between the likes of Offaly and even Westmeath, Kildare, even fecking Wicklow yesterday. Inter county teams in this day and age are a much different species to during the 90s, but we are still stuck back in that regime. I don't doubt the lads go out to try their best, of course they do, and I'll support them until I can't physically do it anymore, but I think a new mindset has to come into play.

You can't burst yourself for 2 or 3 months coming into championship, and hope to hit the ground running the same way you could 15 years ago. Essentially, the other teams are years in the gym at this stage, and the 2 or 3 months for them are fitness training. It's this mixture of pace and power that is beating us. Yesterday Kildare were way too strong for us, in addition to other problems, and if that's the case you can imagine what the likes of Armagh, Tyrone and Dublin would do to us.

Even those nominal aristocrats of football, Kerry, have decided that football alone will not win against modern day sides, and have committed themselves to hard work in the gym for a number of years. To stand beside Paul Galvin, Declan O'Sullivan or Killian Young, not naturally big lads, is to see the benefit of that work. I'm afraid Offaly need to commit to that now, and if we do, then in maybe 2-3 years time we'll be serious contenders in Leinster again. Of course it's not just about the body, it's about the head, the skills and the tactics as well, but if you have the latter 3, but not the first one, you'll be limited in what you can achieve.

[black and red exile]

We certainly cannot blame lack of pride yesterday. At half time with the game done and dusted the lads could easily have buried their heads in the sand and ended up with a mother and father of a hiding but credit to the guys they dug deep and at least restored a bit of pride for themselves. Look it, anyone who knows anything about Offaly football could see that the team that was picked to start yesterday didn't stand a chance of winning that game against a battle hardened seasoned team like Kildare. The bottom line is that Tom Cribben fucked up big time with that team selection yesterday, it's well documented where the problems were and it would be easy to go down the old road of roaring and shouting that the manager hasn't a clue but that would be very unfair because the man is only with us for five minutes. I personally believe Tom Cribben is a good decent man who will be hurting as much as the players today and Im also pretty sure he will have learned from his mistakes in Portlaoise. It will be interesting to see if he gets the players heads right for the dreaded qualifers after the disasters of the last number of years and know doubt Offaly will be the dream draw for ninety nine per cent of the teams that will be there. I think, apart from London, none of us would be confident of beating anybody on July 5th. If we can get a home draw against a team worst than ourselves and get over that one at least the interest might creep back into the players and kick start us again to try and get some consolation out of 2009, but it all depends on the draw, If we were to get a draw from hell like Down in Newry, well it's just not worth contemplating.

[bracknaghboy]

I think, apart from London, none of us would be confident of beating anybody on July 5th

Tipp, Carlow and Waterford would all fancy their chances big time against us and why wouldn't they. An away trip to Ruislip would be very difficult as things stand. I'm no fan of these quailifiers....when you're out you should be out. Now is the time to start getting stuck into the club championships.......but whats going to happen? Are club players to wait 2 months before a ball is kicked. We have the other extreme in the hurling with dozens of meaningless senior games being played off at the moment

[black and red exile]

bracknaghboy, as far as I know London will have to travel over here to play whoever they are drawn against[hopefully us] in the qualifers, I think the deal is because every year they get a home draw in the connaught championship that they have to travel no matter who they get in the draw, but I stand to be corrected on that one.

[john locke]

Two Questions Lads
1. How in the name of Jasus did Conor Evans stay on the Pitch beyond the 10th minute
2. How can we build a team for future if we still depend on McManus to come and bail us out .. not his fault we still need him in fairness to him

[Lone Shark]

For what it's worth, I don't think Conor Evans had a good game on Sunday, but I think he seems to be taking a bit more of the rap for this defeat than I would say is fair. Kildare got a steady flow of good, low quick ball into John Doyle all day, with acres of space around Doyle for him to run into. John Doyle remains one of the best forwards in Leinster and there isn't a back in Ireland who could have lived with him in that situation.

Compare that with the other end - I'd say Niall would have had just as much a chance of beating Mick Foley if he got the same level of ball, but he didn't so no-one is giving out about Foley. He didn't get the same amount of ball and when he did get it, Kildare had reinforcements there in numbers.

Secondly, let's not forget the flow of the game, in that bad and all as we were, another goal at any stage and we would have been right back in it - and why was that? Well to my mind that was because bad and all as we were playing, by preventing Kildare from getting a second goal, we kept ourselves in touch. Now you could give out to Evans for not playing more from the front with Doyle, but with thirty yards of open space in behind him, what could he do? People would be giving out twice as much if he attacked the ball, won four in a row and then on the fifth, got caught out and Doyle got in behind for a goal.

Evans was fair from the biggest of our problems to my mind.