Club football 2025

[Anonymous1]

Poetic justice anonymous says lol . Jealousy and bitterness are awful traits to have and you have it in buckets.

There’s only one person in here bitter that a 3 point margin became 15 despite all of that money being poured into an outside coach…

[del]

Touched a nerve have I ?? No bitterness in anything I have said. You just keep throwing stupid digs
Good luck to ya

[Anonymous1]

No bitterness, just online constantly responding to every half bit of criticism of that calamitous meltdown on Saturday.

Take the beating and move on like everybody else has to.

[SearingDrive]

I was a bit suprised by Ballyboden’s 15 point win last Saturday. I expected Tullamore to be a bit closer in the game. From the local radio report the result was evident by the HT score, 2-12 to 0-4.

No other Offaly SF team would have won last Saturday. Maybe the problem is the SF championship, with 9 teams this year, but only 4, possibly 5 including Shamrocks are realistic contenders. Tullamore are the strongest team, and will be favourites to win again next year, unless another club take on the challenge to dethrone the Blues.

Offaly clubs have won 4 Leinster club titles, Ferbane were the last winners in 1986.
Gracefield were Leinster winners in 1970/71, and Walsh Island won 2 titles.
Dublin clubs lead the way in club provincial titles.
I think Rhode’s loss to Kilmacud Crokes in the 2008 Final was the last time an Offaly club contested the Final. Someone might confirm if that is correct.

[Behindthegoal]

Surely that’s the end of Stephen Rochford what a waste of money if rumours are true what he was on. Surely that could be better spent elsewhere. An all Tullamore management team had them 3 points off Cuala. There’s no need for these star coaches at club level you can only do so much with the players you have and he would’ve had his eyes opened to how far tullamore are off winning a Leinster so I don’t see him making that commute just to win another Offaly title his Cv doesn’t need that, back to mayo with him after sucking thousands out of the club it’s wrong on so many levels. Also heard previous tullamore management were hoping things would go pear shaped this year after Rochfords appointment it divided people within the club too

[hamstrings]

I was a bit suprised by Ballyboden’s 15 point win last Saturday. I expected Tullamore to be a bit closer in the game. From the local radio report the result was evident by the HT score, 2-12 to 0-4.

No other Offaly SF team would have won last Saturday. Maybe the problem is the SF championship, with 9 teams this year, but only 4, possibly 5 including Shamrocks are realistic contenders. Tullamore are the strongest team, and will be favourites to win again next year, unless another club take on the challenge to dethrone the Blues.

Offaly clubs have won 4 Leinster club titles, Ferbane were the last winners in 1986.
Gracefield were Leinster winners in 1970/71, and Walsh Island won 2 titles.
Dublin clubs lead the way in club provincial titles.
I think Rhode’s loss to Kilmacud Crokes in the 2008 Final was the last time an Offaly club contested the Final. Someone might confirm if that is correct.

Rhode contested finals in 2010, 2014 and 2016

[faithfulfanatic]

Stephen Lonergan is most definitely from Birr - it was not an all Tullamore management before Rochford

[Behindthegoal]

Lonergan only got involved this year. 2024 was Tullamore management lost to cuala by 3

[jimbob17]

Surely that’s the end of Stephen Rochford what a waste of money if rumours are true what he was on. Surely that could be better spent elsewhere. An all Tullamore management team had them 3 points off Cuala. There’s no need for these star coaches at club level you can only do so much with the players you have and he would’ve had his eyes opened to how far tullamore are off winning a Leinster so I don’t see him making that commute just to win another Offaly title his Cv doesn’t need that, back to mayo with him after sucking thousands out of the club it’s wrong on so many levels. Also heard previous tullamore management were hoping things would go pear shaped this year after Rochfords appointment it divided people within the club too

I think the last line of this is a bit much. Knowing some of those that were involved last year, they are great club men and will be delighted that Tullamore have done 3 in a row. To suggest otherwise I'd say is stirring it more than a bit. By alI accounts, players were very happy with Rochford involvement but wouldnt be surprised at all however if some club members were a bit put out by the level of spending on the coaching if the figures being thrown around are true.

Niall Smyth from Gracefield was also involved this year as a coach / selector as well as Lonergan who is from Birr.

[Behindthegoal]

I have it from a good source they were hoping for the downfall this year because of the way it was handled. Lads I’m taking about 2024 not 2025. 2024 a Tullamore management team had them within 3 of cuala. 2025 the purse strings were opened only to be hammered by 15

[jimbob17]

To be fair, I am not sure you can equate one with the other. Context also applies. Football people were raving about how much better the team were attacking this year as opposed to previous years - and were affording that to Rochford rightly or wrongly under a more attacking style. The rules have changed things majorly. Last years rules allowed you to play 15 behind the ball and it was death by a thousand cuts last year where Tullamore never looked like beating Cuala - just minimising the Cuala lead really. Yea they were one or two down for a stage but it really wasnt the equivalent of a 3 pt loss in 2025 under new rules and they never really threatened to win the game.

Now i'd be fully on the side of saying there wasn't major need to go spending what they did on the 'coaching upgrade' because I am not sure it was an upgrade worth what they allegedly paid. There are plenty of lads around that club with the football knowledge to bring them where Rochford did imo, albeit without his experience. Sometimes the money spent on these 'gurus' is totally unjustified and unwarranted unless they are bringing something really tangible in terms of expertise to the table - ie S&C etc. Any decent man with a football brain and playing and coaching experience can bring something to table. Tullamore have loads of these lads. Rochford made name doing it with club team. What would be wrong with a Tullamore man getting such opportunities elsewhere because he did it with his club team.... I think in Offaly, we are not invested enough in promoting our own when it comes to coaching. We see that sometimes at club level where Offaly based coaches are often more valued outside the county than they are within their own county.

[Lone Shark]

Folks, I haven't been on a Tullamore training field at any stage this year so I've no idea if Stephen Rochford was worth the money that people are assuming he was paid, or not. I will say this however:

(1) Let's not forget that gaelic football in 2025 is a completely different game to what it was in 2024. Particularly for a defensive, athletic, and fit underdog, which Tullamore were against Cuala, it was a lot easier to pack the backline and be difficult to break down. This is not meant as a dig at Tullamore because every club is entirely right to set up whatever way suits them best within the context of the rules at the time, but it's a statement of fact to say that they were a defensive team for the past few seasons under Niall Stack, and they won a lot of games by virtue of conceding very, very little. As a result, people were unsure of how they would adjust to the new game.

(2) You cannot judge them off one game. Summerhill were an ordinary team in a Leinster context, who got well-beaten by Naas in the quarter-final. Summerhill were able to beat Tullamore in 2023. If one game is enough to draw the conclusion that Tullamore in 2025 was a poorer team than Tullamore in 2024, then the likes of the win over the Downs should be enough to say that the Tullamore team of 2025 is a stronger team than the Tullamore team of 2023, when they were also under Tullamore management. Last Saturday was a bad day, plainly. But losing John Furlong to injury was a huge factor given that he's a huge part of Tullamore's attacking play, and he was also marking Colm Basquel; Corey White had a nightmare of a day from kickouts, he's usually much better than that; and across every one of their Leinster and Offaly championship runs in recent years, Tullamore have never come across a player like Céin Darcy at midfield.

(3) At any AGM, in the stand at any club match, or in any GAA pub, there will always be fellas who love to argue that any amount of expenditure on anything is too much. Physios, coaches, a decent lawnmower, tea for referees and umpires, they'll say all of it was either un-necessary, or there should have been some way of doing it cheaper. Just before Covid I was told of an AGM (not Ferbane, I hasten to add!) where the club, a football club with two adult teams and standalone teams at all underage grades had income and expenditure roughly balanced at less than €30k in and out for the year. That is an absolute pittance, less than half of what would come in and go out to most clubs. Still the AGM was said to me to have been very heated because of old club stalwarts who felt too much was being spent, and that a physio bill of around four grand for the year was a disgrace and the players should be ashamed, etc.

Less money spent is not always better, is what I'm driving at there.

Once again, I have no idea what sort of arrangement there was with Rochford to cover expenses etc., but just because there might have been cheaper alternatives doesn't mean that those alternatives are the best option. Tullamore could well have seen it as an investment in lads like Paul McConway and Kevin O'Brien, good young Tullamore club men who will certainly have learned a lot from this past year. And following on from that....

I think in Offaly, we are not invested enough in promoting our own when it comes to coaching. We see that sometimes at club level where Offaly based coaches are often more valued outside the county than they are within their own county.

I have to say, I think this is an overly simplistic way of looking at it. First of all, no team - club or county - wants to be the guinea pig, the place where a coach that isn't quite ready yet gets to come and make his mistakes, so that he can be better for the next job. I say this as a club secretary currently looking for a manager (DM if you want to apply! ) that nowhere in the thought process is how we want to be a stepping stone. As a junior club, we are, but we still want someone who will do a good job in 2026, not someone who will only be a good coach/manager in about three years.

Secondly, we just had a senior championship this year where the vast, vast majority of coaches were Offaly people. Just for comparison, out of the eight clubs that were in the quarter-finals of the Roscommon SFC, since I'm living over here now, four had managers brought in from another county, three had managers from Roscommon but from a different club, and just one had a home club manager at the helm (Iain Daly in Michael Glaveys, losing quarter-finalist). Contrast that with Offaly where we had mostly Offaly managers and a fair few from that same club. You can say that we should do it more, but I would say that in relative terms, there are more local managers and coaches involved with teams here in Offaly than elsewhere.

Thirdly, in the case of a lot of the younger, more progressive managers, they usually WANT to leave their home county to develop their coaching career. First of all, if you've recently ended a long adult career of playing with a group of players and soldiering with them through thick and thin, you don't want to suddenly be plotting their downfall. I recently interviewed Nigel Dunne for the Offaly Independent, some of ye might have seen it, and I don't think I'm breaking any confidence when I say that at the time I was talking to him, he hadn't finalised his plans for 2026 but he did want to coach and manage, and he was quite clear that he wasn't going to take a team in Offaly and train them to play against Shamrocks. He had got offers in the county, and that wasn't something he was interested in, just because of the natural affection he has for his own club.

Now you could say that you could go to another grade, but that might turn out to just be deferring the problem for the year, and one way or another it can be better for your development to go into a fresh environment with new people, and get different experiences yourself.

[ah lethimoutwithit]

I'll say it again,

There is a lack of quality coaches out there with the expertise that is required by many clubs and certainly that is the case in Offaly.
In my opinion and the view of many, Tullamore had progressed from last year and the influence of Stephen Rochford along with the progression of the players over recent years was a factor. Last Sunday as LS has said can't derail that completely.

McConway, new to the game and taking on his own club, can only have learned a lot from it , along with his coaching team, working alongside Rochford. But thats up to them to assess, plus its a punt that the club took too and not a disastrous investment in funding to develop their own coaching pipeline.

None of this is to downplay the work that Niall Stack has done previous.

As LS has said the demands are increasing from what the clubs are expecting from the managers and (S&C/physio (s), football coach , goalkeeping, nutrition-performance-skills etc) along with stats/video and kit that are now part of many club teams.
Its now at a level of madness that is in a race to try to catch up with county level. So as a result, reasonable coaches that cant come armed with the full ticket with them are no longer relevant out there in the bigger clubs.

Selectors are the next roles that will be impossible to fill as what reasonable chap would give up his year to support this and look at at least 6 others pulling a wedge out of the club and good selectors were often critical to the success of a group.
Anyway, main point is that Tullamore will have to decide how the year has worked out and how they go forward and while they were in a positive situation ahead of last Sunday , there is a lot more to be done but maybe they'll have the tools to ensure that they can progress based on the learnings this year (plus new rules etc).

I just think that nurturing coaches is crucial for the game to develop in the county and why shouldnt internal coaches be developed and compensated by their clubs and go on to be successful?

[biffinbanner]

its a sort of unwritten rule amongst the "gaa mangerial merrygoround" that you dont take money off your own club. thats why u see very few doing it.and its a bit rich as stated above to be a selector of your club team and 5 or 6 people getting paid and you being the good amateur clubman.

[SearingDrive]

I was a bit suprised by Ballyboden’s 15 point win last Saturday. I expected Tullamore to be a bit closer in the game. From the local radio report the result was evident by the HT score, 2-12 to 0-4.

No other Offaly SF team would have won last Saturday. Maybe the problem is the SF championship, with 9 teams this year, but only 4, possibly 5 including Shamrocks are realistic contenders. Tullamore are the strongest team, and will be favourites to win again next year, unless another club take on the challenge to dethrone the Blues.

Offaly clubs have won 4 Leinster club titles, Ferbane were the last winners in 1986.
Gracefield were Leinster winners in 1970/71, and Walsh Island won 2 titles.
Dublin clubs lead the way in club provincial titles.
I think Rhode’s loss to Kilmacud Crokes in the 2008 Final was the last time an Offaly club contested the Final. Someone might confirm if that is correct.

Rhode contested finals in 2010, 2014 and 2016

Thanks for that information.