Offaly Club Hurling 2026

[Jim Troy]

What exactly is happening in Coolderry?!

[Anon444]

From what I heard, their management team were removed/left on their own accord after training on Friday night. It’s baffling as I thought they were going well, but they’ve lost the head to head to Birr now and could find themselves in a relegation fight if they aren’t careful.

[Jim Troy]

Hardly going well losing to Birr by 10 points?!

Seems drastic with one game to go though I suppose.

[Anon444]

Absolutely, a terrible result vs Birr. But before that, they had beaten KK and lost to Rynaghs by 2 points, having contested the Div 1 league final. I would say that was going well. Then the Birr result happened and it seems to have gone downhill from there fast.

[Offaly Hero]

If Coolderry think that not getting out of the group is reason enough to sack a manager, then they're going to go through a lot of managers over the next few years.

[Lone Shark]

Birr had a terrible result against Rynaghs. K-K had a terrible result against Coolderry. Shinrone had a terrible result against Tullamore.

There must be more to it than one bad game if one bad result was enough for the lads to pull the trigger in Coolderry.

[Jim Troy]

What do you think of the local journalist printing a text message that was sent to players LS?
Seems to be a bit overstepping the mark?
Especially when a club officer is named in the article as being the most likely problem.

[greenairfield]

Thought it was awful and needless shows the calibre of journalism we have in our local paper some the person up really.

[frankthetank]

If Coolderry think that not getting out of the group is reason enough to sack a manager, then they're going to go through a lot of managers over the next few years.

Can’t see Cooldery winning a county final in the next 20 years. The current crop probably aren’t county final winning calibre and their underage is now amalgamated and consistently hurling at B level in most grades.

Actually makes me think about this article a lot..
https://www.sportsjoe.ie/gaa/coolderrys ... ons-186390

[Lone Shark]

What do you think of the local journalist printing a text message that was sent to players LS?
Seems to be a bit overstepping the mark?
Especially when a club officer is named in the article as being the most likely problem.

For obvious reasons, I'm not going to come out and comment on the work of another person in what is a very small group of local media here in Offaly.

I will say this - working for any media outlet that is part of the Iconic Media group (which includes the Tullamore and Midland Tribune) is not easy, there's a lot of pressure to drive internet traffic. It's entirely possible that the message came to the attention of someone else who works in the group, and it wasn't a question of whether or not it would be published, but whose name would be on the article. So I don't know the context behind it.

Personally, I'm getting on in years and while I know all too well that controversy comes looking for you in this line of work and there are plenty of times when you can't avoid it. Consequently, you need to have your own set of beliefs as to where the lines are, so you can hold your head up high when the criticism starts flying.

For me in this instance, I probably would have picked up the phone to Paul Cuddy and asked if he'd be happy to put something on the record. And if Paul spoke to me on the phone and called out the chairperson, the secretary, the lotto ticket sellers, then that's fair game from there.

[Lone Shark]

Can’t see Cooldery winning a county final in the next 20 years. The current crop probably aren’t county final winning calibre and their underage is now amalgamated and consistently hurling at B level in most grades.

Actually makes me think about this article a lot..
https://www.sportsjoe.ie/gaa/coolderrys ... ons-186390

For me, Coolderry's secret sauce (except that it's not a secret!) is that they don't ever expect to win underage titles, but they create a strong club identity from an early age, their ethos of not amalgamating means that their players grow up wearing the club colours and also developing a backs-to-the-wall mentality, which means that when the get to adult, they don't shirk in the face of battles with clubs that pull from bigger populations and have deeper pockets.

They don't need a raft of players from any one underage team, they just need to do a good job of retaining players and keeping them hurling, which they do - and then it only takes one or two stars to elevate them and make them competitive.

To win a senior title again, they probably will need another sprinkling of stardust to come through, but that can happen at B level, since the few lads that are miles off the pace but who need to be picked to make up the numbers can drag you down.

[jimbob17]

I'd agree with most of that LS. Also helps that other sports are not so much a factor. For example, in some rural football clubs like Tubber Ballycumber for example, their location - close to Tullamore, Moate and Athlone can have likes of rugby and soccer have interest in their talent.

I'd also say the pool of hurling clubs and talent in Offaly not being so wide, that it has helped likes of Coolderry and Kinnity. In bigger hurling counties, where there is wider depth pool of competing clubs, its highly likely both clubs would have dropped to intermediate at some point over last 10 years. For example, you'd probably say there has been only 3 or 4 proper contenders for Senior champ in any given year in Offaly over last 20 years. You couldn't say that in lots of hurling counties where at least 6 or 8 would have genuine ambition. You might say likes of Ballyhale, Ballygunner and Thomas's in Galway are anomalies, but I'd say behind those in Galway and Kilkenny at least, you'd have 5 or 6 teams at least as good as KK are. In Offaly, KK have been the standout for last few yrs and Rynaghs before that for couple of years. The depth chart in county isn't brilliant and I'd say our teams ranked 7 or below would not be senior level teams in most hurling counties at Liam Macarthy Cup level.

That is the challenge I think for Offaly GAA - to get likes of Clodiagh Gaels and few clubs like that who have the numbers to improve and add more to competition in the hurling championship. That said, likes of Coolderry and others like them who are close to maxing out on their limited playing pool need to be admired.

[Jim Troy]

Yes,
I think that is a fair way of looking at it LS.
Both the club and Paul Cuddy deserved to have been asked to give the go ahead for that message to be published.

[Henry 12]

Were crcc not a thing or has Brian selective memory

[Lone Shark]

By the time you get to U-20 or U-21, sometimes you simply don't have enough lads hurling to field a team. I'd say it's not so much that Coolderry have never been part of a combination team, but that they've only ever done so when there was no alternative. If they can put out a team by themselves, no matter how weak, they'll always choose that - and while you'd say that surely this would be the choice that any club would make, historically it isn't the case across the board.


On Jimbob's point, I think the landscape within Offaly is a microcosm of hurling as a whole. John Meyler is out there swinging timber at the moment, saying that they need to get Joe Mac counties up to Liam MacCarthy level, but aside from vague tropes about coaching and schools (hardly revelatory) he's not clear on what that entails.

But it's the same in Offaly as it is on the national scene. You have clubs that are perennially strong and will never fall too far, you have ones that maybe historically aren't part of the elite but they're going well at the moment, and you have ones that are struggling to keep pace, not because they don't have the culture or the natural talent, because they have such a small pick. For Kinnitty, Drumcullen or Seir Kieran, see Carlow or Laois. Again, there's a limit to how far they'll fall, but there's possibly a ceiling on how high they can go as well.

The more interesting ones are the ones where the cultural and legacy pieces aren't necessarily there to the same extent, but the population gives a much higher potential. In Offaly that might be Tullamore and Edenderry, who would have the national parallels of Dublin and Kildare. It becomes a lot easier to put your focus in those areas since you can get lured in by the possibility of a huge payoff, but on the other hand you know that any investment you make in places like the three rural clubs I mentioned earlier, it'll be matched by enthusiasm on the ground.