Club Football

[Anonymous1]

Not so sure re above. Not sure if I am correct, but I heard that no team will be relegated from Senior A football and 2 teams are coming up from Senior B to make a 10 team competition next year - like the hurling, which will be 2 groups of 5. Was told that both finalists in senior b football will be promoted so essentially the senior b semi finals become really important. Winner of senior B to represent Offaly in Leinster. But like I said, could be totally wrong and stand to be corrected.

Next years format hasn't been debated yet never mind a decision been taken. A 10 team championship seems most likely but for now at least there will be a relegation final with the format i explained.

[Anonymous1]

In the last round of games we have one dead rubber (Shamrocks vs Durrow) where neither can change their position, one game where both will want to lose to get the "easier" QF (Ballycommon vs Bracknagh) and two clashes of the big four where the losers will have to play each other in the QF's (Ferbane vs Edenderry and Tullamore vs Rhode)

A bit of a mixed bag but the county board can count their blessings that Shamrocks bolted from the blue to win two games or we'd be staring down the barrel of 4 meaningless games in the last round.

[Anonymous1]

I know I am jumping ahead but is it an open draw for the semi finals. In one way you would think the two number one seeds should be on separate halves provided they win the quarter finals.

Also how does the relegation go this year, how do they decide that. In theory it should be the teams that finish bottom and seeded 4th, but if that team eg durrow beats tullamore/ rhode in the qf are rhode/ tullamore in a relegation final?

To come back to this, its the winners of the QF's which contain the group winners that are seeded for the semi finals eg. 1st placed team vs 4th placed team winner so you could end up with a scenario where Bracknagh or Ballycommon lose all 3 of their group games but then beat Shamrocks in the QF and end up as seeded semi finalists...

Who in God's name drew up these structures?

[biffinbanner]

the brains trust that is the county board are being discussed nationwide with this set up and how anyone thought it was feasable..people in other countys are struggling to see what they missed. sadly for offaly football they missed nothing.it actually is as bad as it first looks.

[ah lethimoutwithit]

Its fair enough to throw stones at the County Board Competitions Committee for designing such a farce. But what about the clubs for voting for it??? It was not imposed as far as I know and at least 2 clubs had no delegate at the meeting to vote on it.
So either the clubs never discussed it and delegate went in and voted for and against, or did discuss if and agreed to vote for or against, or never turned up at all......the result was more clubs voted for the structure than against it.

Moral of the story is, you get what you vote for .....in a democracy.

[Lone Shark]

Its fair enough to throw stones at the County Board Competitions Committee for designing such a farce. But what about the clubs for voting for it??? It was not imposed as far as I know and at least 2 clubs had no delegate at the meeting to vote on it.
So either the clubs never discussed it and delegate went in and voted for and against, or did discuss if and agreed to vote for or against, or never turned up at all......the result was more clubs voted for the structure than against it.

Moral of the story is, you get what you vote for .....in a democracy.

There absolutely, completely is a wider issue here. The role of club delegate, in terms of feeding information back to the club from the county, and representing the club's interests at CB level, is not one that every club takes seriously. In an ideal world you would have the secretary or the chairperson take on this role as well, and many do - but it's another imposition on an already busy individual. Alternatively, you put in place someone who understands what their function is, and how best to discharge it.

But all too often, you get Mick from down the road in the job. Mick has been involved with the club for donkey's years and he's a dyed in the wool GAA man, but the idea that he would go into a CB meeting and take notes that he would then feed back to the club executive via email or the executive WhatsApp group wouldn't occur to him. The lad owns about three biros and no notepaper, he uses them for writing phone numbers on the back of his hand when he meets a lad at the mart. This year, the Offaly CB has done incredibly well in providing information packs in advance of all county board meetings - they are excellent, really detailed, hugely informative, and if there is a county in Ireland that does a better job of it, then I haven't seen it. Mick doesn't read it, it's too long.

Mick doesn't understand that if there's a vote at CB level, he should already know what he's voting for, based on the discussion of the topic that happened at the last club meeting. Mick thinks he has a personal vote instead.

Most of all, Mick struggles to think beyond whatever is current. So in August, he cares deeply about championship formats, but in November, when the vote happens, that's a problem for another time. The main thing for Mick is a CB meeting is a great chance to catch up with a few lads for a chat, maybe to talk about games from 20 years ago.

I should stress here that this is not an Offaly problem, it's universal.

In every county, club delegates are insular, and they do not think in terms of the wider picture, ever. In every county, you could have anything from 30 to 60 delegates at a meeting, and your local reporter could instantly tell you the five or six that make a meaningful contribution. The rest will either waffle on about nothing, or will sit back and say nothing.

[Anonymous1]

Its fair enough to throw stones at the County Board Competitions Committee for designing such a farce. But what about the clubs for voting for it??? It was not imposed as far as I know and at least 2 clubs had no delegate at the meeting to vote on it.
So either the clubs never discussed it and delegate went in and voted for and against, or did discuss if and agreed to vote for or against, or never turned up at all......the result was more clubs voted for the structure than against it.

Moral of the story is, you get what you vote for .....in a democracy.

There absolutely, completely is a wider issue here. The role of club delegate, in terms of feeding information back to the club from the county, and representing the club's interests at CB level, is not one that every club takes seriously. In an ideal world you would have the secretary or the chairperson take on this role as well, and many do - but it's another imposition on an already busy individual. Alternatively, you put in place someone who understands what their function is, and how best to discharge it.

But all too often, you get Mick from down the road in the job. Mick has been involved with the club for donkey's years and he's a dyed in the wool GAA man, but the idea that he would go into a CB meeting and take notes that he would then feed back to the club executive via email or the executive WhatsApp group wouldn't occur to him. The lad owns about three biros and no notepaper, he uses them for writing phone numbers on the back of his hand when he meets a lad at the mart. This year, the Offaly CB has done incredibly well in providing information packs in advance of all county board meetings - they are excellent, really detailed, hugely informative, and if there is a county in Ireland that does a better job of it, then I haven't seen it. Mick doesn't read it, it's too long.

Mick doesn't understand that if there's a vote at CB level, he should already know what he's voting for, based on the discussion of the topic that happened at the last club meeting. Mick thinks he has a personal vote instead.

Most of all, Mick struggles to think beyond whatever is current. So in August, he cares deeply about championship formats, but in November, when the vote happens, that's a problem for another time. The main thing for Mick is a CB meeting is a great chance to catch up with a few lads for a chat, maybe to talk about games from 20 years ago.

I should stress here that this is not an Offaly problem, it's universal.

In every county, club delegates are insular, and they do not think in terms of the wider picture, ever. In every county, you could have anything from 30 to 60 delegates at a meeting, and your local reporter could instantly tell you the five or six that make a meaningful contribution. The rest will either waffle on about nothing, or will sit back and say nothing.

Isn't another massive issue that given the chance clubs will always nakedly vote in their own self interests despite the best interests of the county a la clubs who flirt with relegation every year wanting to give themselves an extra crack at staying up by getting themselves a QF, relegation SF and final.

The exclusively hurling clubs would always vote in favour of extra football fixtures and vice versa to damage the chances of dual clubs being another example.

Clubs were given a second chance to change this year's structures after the implications were known but didn't. Between the exclusively hurling clubs and relegation flirting football clubs, the votes were there for this new structure unfortunately.

[Lone Shark]

Clubs will always vote in their own self interest, absolutely - but in a county with 40 clubs, that should never carry the day if something is for the greater good. I think a bigger issue is that clubs have a tendency to pay no heed on a topic if it doesn't directly affect them, so what happens is that a delegate will go into a meeting and his own club might not have even discussed a topic, so he's easily swayed by the more passionate contributions from the floor, as opposed to having really considered the implications of a certain decision.

I hadn't realised that there are single code clubs who would go out to actively sabotage the dual clubs in that way, but given the messing I deal with as the underage secretary of a football club in a dual parish here in Roscommon, it doesn't surprise me. The amount of clubs in this county who think that we should pay just as much heed to avoiding clashes with soccer as opposed to avoiding clashes with hurling would break your heart.

And as for the vote on the new football structure, I do think that the majority of the blame has to lie with the initial vote. I know the effort that went into the Ferbane motion to try and turn it around after, but there was a fear there that reversing mid stream could lead to problems down the road, and given what happened last year in the Senior B with Gracefield's appeal to Leinster etc., there was a real wariness on the top table of voting through a switch that may or may not have been accepted by Croke Park.

FWIW, and not because I'm from Ferbane, I'd have voted for the change anyway and taken my chances, but I can see why there would have been a fear factor all the same, and for the clubs to be one-sided enough in their votes to outweigh the executive committee going the other way wasn't goin to be easy.

There were no such excuses first time around, just sheer bone laziness and lack of care and attention.

[Anonymous1]

Clubs will always vote in their own self interest, absolutely - but in a county with 40 clubs, that should never carry the day if something is for the greater good. I think a bigger issue is that clubs have a tendency to pay no heed on a topic if it doesn't directly affect them, so what happens is that a delegate will go into a meeting and his own club might not have even discussed a topic, so he's easily swayed by the more passionate contributions from the floor, as opposed to having really considered the implications of a certain decision.

I hadn't realised that there are single code clubs who would go out to actively sabotage the dual clubs in that way, but given the messing I deal with as the underage secretary of a football club in a dual parish here in Roscommon, it doesn't surprise me. The amount of clubs in this county who think that we should pay just as much heed to avoiding clashes with soccer as opposed to avoiding clashes with hurling would break your heart.

And as for the vote on the new football structure, I do think that the majority of the blame has to lie with the initial vote. I know the effort that went into the Ferbane motion to try and turn it around after, but there was a fear there that reversing mid stream could lead to problems down the road, and given what happened last year in the Senior B with Gracefield's appeal to Leinster etc., there was a real wariness on the top table of voting through a switch that may or may not have been accepted by Croke Park.

FWIW, and not because I'm from Ferbane, I'd have voted for the change anyway and taken my chances, but I can see why there would have been a fear factor all the same, and for the clubs to be one-sided enough in their votes to outweigh the executive committee going the other way wasn't goin to be easy.

There were no such excuses first time around, just sheer bone laziness and lack of care and attention.

I agree with you to a large extent. The majority of the blame lies with the original vote and doubtless there were plenty of delegates who weren't sure what exactly it was they were voting on but I also have no doubt there were delegates who knew exactly what they were voting for.

AFAIK the original vote was 36-18 in favour of adopting the new structures and the second vote 27-16 against reversing the decision. The only real change between the votes was a number of clubs abstaining, the votes against this structure actually reduced.

In the original vote it was Clara, Cappincur, Tubber and Edenderry who spoke against the new structures and Ferbane and Durrow who brought forward the motion seeking to overturn the decision. Notice something about all of those clubs? They're either dual or football only clubs so you then have to ask yourself where the votes in favour of this structure came from and it doesn't take a genius to figure it out.

I think the fear mongering from the county board about reversing the decision was bunkum quite frankly. It wasn't as if a new structure was being proposed in its place, the motion was simply seeking a return to the system that was used in previous years for 2024. After the embarrassment of the Gracefield/DRA fiasco, they simply didn't want to accept they'd gotten it wrong again.

[Plain of the Herbs]

I see from the newspaper report that Alan McNamee came on for Rhode last weekend. That being the case, I want to pay tribute to his longevity.

He made his championship debut in September 1998 when still U16. His recent appearance off the bench against Ballycommon means he has taken part in 27 championship campaigns.

That's just phenomenal. Like, Martin Furlong did 23 campaigns from age 16 to 38 and he was a goalkeeper.

Rhode have played 193 games since his debut off the bench against Shannonbridge in 1998’s semi-final. Alan has definitely played in at least 182, definitely missed six, while the archive is missing five match reports that he might have played in. Meaning he has made between 182 and 187 championship appearances (that includes Leinster club).

That has to be a record, not just in Offaly but everywhere else as well. Super, really.

[frankthetank]

Edenderry 0-02 Ferbane 1-05 at HT.

Ferbane had the aid of a really strong breeze in the 1st and a very questionable penalty decision go their way. Referee seems to be a bit harsh on Edenderry actually.

Edenderry have been pretty poor all told and both their scores have been from frees and unforced errors have contributed to probably all Ferbane’s scores. Even Ferbane’s last point which was a nice scored was created because of a needless free given away by Adam Mahon.

To sum it up so far, Ferbane have been less bad.

[frankthetank]

Draw game in the end. 2-05 to 1-08. Edenderry only managed 0-01 play and that came in the 59th minute.

Highlight of the game was a cracking goal from Cian Farrell direct from a mark.

I’m beginning to think this championship is wide open and we could have a left field winner.

[Burgerball]

ferbane could be dark horses for the championship yet

think it's diangean or clara for senior b

[Anonymous1]

Was at Ferbane vs Edenderry and all I can say is Mickey Harte if you're reading, change your mind asap.

Absolutely horrendous stuff from both teams, there wasn't one player on the field you'd have picked out as county standard and these are meant to be 2 of our 4 best teams...

Both deserved to lose.

0-08 0-05 in the Tullamore vs Rhode game tells its own story.

Offaly football is in a dire dire state.

[Johnny Tightlips]

Was at Ferbane vs Edenderry and all I can say is Mickey Harte if you're reading, change your mind asap.

Absolutely horrendous stuff from both teams, there wasn't one player on the field you'd have picked out as county standard and these are meant to be 2 of our 4 best teams...

Both deserved to lose.

0-08 0-05 in the Tullamore vs Rhode game tells its own story.

Offaly football is in a dire dire state.

It is hard not to disagree with this. The Tullamore Rhode match was similarly terrible.

However, as opposed to blaming the standard of players I would instead question the standard of coaching at club level in the county. Tullamore and Rhode both the players and resources to produce much better football than what was seen today.