Kemo Sabe wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2026 7:41 pm
Tullamore won that in 2nd gear, went as i expected, as for Tullamore dominating,
That's a result of good club structures,put in place, it's just a very run club from top to bottom,
Population never came into it when rhode we're winning all around them!!
It's up to the other clubs to improve their own house before begrudgeing Tullamore,
Well done the To the town
I have huge respect for Tullamore as a club. They do what looks like everything perfectly, they have unbelievable coaches from within the club and then go and get a top class coach for their seniors to take them to the next step. Their underage is dominant and their facilities are starting to come on leaps and bounds too.
But I do get the feeling that the other clubs could do everything right and still not be able to get over them. They are a juggernaut and with the endless supply of top level underage footballers coming through, they will eventually get to a stage where the will contest all major championships.
And it’s only going to get worse - you go into Tullamore academy any weekend and you will see top footballers/hurlers from neighbouring clubs whose children are now playing with Tullamore.
To be fair this is a national crisis, and they are an extremely well run club. It helps having all the power though.
Tullamore dominating at every level even junior b all thought they were poor in the first half made a great comeback against ballyfore playing against a Gael force wind all though were lucky to win the game by ballyfore conceding a breach in the last minute
Curious if anyone else streaming the SFC final on clubber experienced no sound for the pre-game and first several minutes of the game?
Wasn’t sure if it was just me but I tried on laptop, phone, stream to tv and had the same issue. Then it magically just came on.
Yeah, there were issues there for around five minutes I believe. Everything was fine in OCP, but there was a problem at central level, which took a few minutes to be addressed.
Apologies for that, unless of course you took the quite reasonable decision to mute your laptop any time I'm on so you didn't notice anything different, in which case all I can say is ..... fair.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
Offaly senior football feels like it's stuck in a stasis of mediocrity. Tullamore are better than Ferbane who are better than the rest. The problem is Tullamore aren't better than much of Leinster. So we have a team who are good enough in Offaly to dishearten all the other clubs but who aren't good enough at the provincial level.
This is doing nobody any good. Tullamore - while glad to win Dowling Cup's - never have to stretch themselves too far and can coast their way to titles which would make you wonder if it's all becoming a bit too predictable and boring for their players?
Meanwhile, the chasing pack feel like the gap is too wide and many of those players must be questioning the value of so much effort just to eventually lose to Tullamore.
It's hard to know what the solution is. Tullamore look as likely to win the next four titles as anybody else winning one. Ferbane will continue to challenge but they're just a bit short and it becomes more difficult each time to keep getting back up. If anybody is to come from the pack and make a final over the next few years, it's probably Shamrocks, but again, highly unlikely they'll topple this Tullamore team anytime soon. Beyond those teams looks quite bleak.
One thing is for certain, this Tullamore run of dominance is an entirely different prospect to those that came before, whether it was Rhode, Walsh Island or Ferbane.
Those were clubs with small populations at the time who had golden generations and returned back to the pack afterwards. Tullamore have seen an unprecedented run of success at underage which is now feeding through at senior. All the while, the population of the town continues to balloon at the same time a lot of other clubs struggle to even field teams.
It's not an issue of the GAA's making. It's a function of demographics, a nationwide population shift towards urban centre's but it's likely to have a decimating impact on competitions within many counties for years to come. An answer has yet to be found.
Lone Shark wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 1:14 am
Yeah, there were issues there for around five minutes I believe. Everything was fine in OCP, but there was a problem at central level, which took a few minutes to be addressed.
Apologies for that, unless of course you took the quite reasonable decision to mute your laptop any time I'm on so you didn't notice anything different, in which case all I can say is ..... fair.
Good to know that it wasn’t ’user error’. Thanks for the response and well done on the commentary job.
Tullamore have always had the edge population wise but that never really transformed to dominance at adult level . But 10 yrs ago the work started and the fruits of it now are paying off. It’s up to other clubs now to really put the work in . Edenderry have tbf and in time they will come Ferbane too. Clara have a couple of decent teams underage too just because Tullamore are dominant now dosent mean it will last forever .
Anyway top of the pile NO 32
Like I said above, I have huge respect and admiration for Tullamore and all involved. They have created a winning machine of a club.
But, when people say ‘other clubs need to get their house in order’, I still don’t believe they could be beat. Essentially, what we are waiting for (and part of me hopes it doesn’t happen) is for Tullamore to get complacent and ease off. I don’t think that is a good place to be. Edenderry have a couple of good underage teams, but still they aren’t at Tullamore’s level and their senior team is miles off it. Clara have a decent minor team, but again their senior team is miles off of Tullamore. Ferbane generally have decent underage teams but aren’t at that level. Shamrocks probably should compete more at underage but asides from that, the other senior clubs consist of clubs who are amalgamated at underage and who may only get 2/3 new players each year. Tullamore have a quality supply of minors each year and their toughest job is deciding which team to put them on when they get to adult!
With all that being said, I hope they make a good run in Leinster and represent Offaly well.
In terms of the population thing, it's like the Dublin versus the rest in Leinster situation. You have the other areas that are big, just not that big (Meath, Kildare, Louth), who need a lot to go right to be able to catch them, which in Offaly terms are Edenderry and Clara, and maybe at a push, Shamrocks.
Once you go into the tier below that again (Westmeath, Offaly, Wexford, or Rhode/Ferbane/Gracefield/Daingean), these clubs need a special crew of players, and the top team to be clearly below par, to win once. To win consistently, as teams like Walsh Island, Ferbane, and indeed Offaly did in the 1970s and 1980s, will never happen again.
Arguably however the bigger problem is not how high Tullamore's ceiling goes, it's how low their floor goes, and what that does to the clubs and counties that are even smaller again. Think of 1968, when Longford won the Leinster SFC and Ballycumber won their only Offaly title. Will we ever see either of those things, or their equivalent, happen again? I can't see it, there's a bit of me thinking that Ballycommon doing what they did this year could be as good as it gets.
We've got to the point that for a real minnow, the level that you need to get to in terms of preparing your team to compete, by which I mean the money and human resource needed to make that happen, and indeed the number of capable players you need to make it happen, has gone through the roof.
It's all very well to say that you can only put 15 players on the field, but when the championship was a straight knockout and you had a game every two or three weeks, it was a lot easier to put pretty close to your best 15 out all the time. Now you will almost always have a couple of lads in bother with soft tissue injuries, and you need to be able to bring on three or four difference-making subs.
So that's what strips the good out of it - you go into a senior championship where half the teams are beaten before they start, and that reflects how they go about things. And 40 years ago, when club players weren't building their entire life around training, recovery, gym and all the rest of it, a relatively shorter burst of intensity brought you to more or less where you needed to be. Now, you have to life the life of an elite footballer for 12 months of the year, and it's bloody hard to do that when winning the big prize is not realistic.
The irony of all this is that this is not great for Tullamore either, because the bar is higher for them. Of course the current generation is respected and admired in the town, but even locally, there is an understanding that they're doing what you'd expect them to do, rather than doing something special. For a Tullamore player to go down in local folklore in the same vein as those Ballycumber lads of 1968, or Shannonbridge in 1996, or even to be compared with those Ferbane and Walsh Island teams, they're going to have to do something bigger, outside of Offaly. Otherwise they're just going to be remembered as a really good team who came along at a really bad time for Offaly club football.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
Lone Shark wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 1:14 am
Yeah, there were issues there for around five minutes I believe. Everything was fine in OCP, but there was a problem at central level, which took a few minutes to be addressed.
Apologies for that, unless of course you took the quite reasonable decision to mute your laptop any time I'm on so you didn't notice anything different, in which case all I can say is ..... fair.
Good to know that it wasn’t ’user error’. Thanks for the response and well done on the commentary job.
Cheers my man. Handy gig yesterday, Nigel and Jordan are two great lads, good readers of a game, made my life much easier!
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
Lone Shark wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 10:01 am
In terms of the population thing, it's like the Dublin versus the rest in Leinster situation. You have the other areas that are big, just not that big (Meath, Kildare, Louth), who need a lot to go right to be able to catch them, which in Offaly terms are Edenderry and Clara, and maybe at a push, Shamrocks.
Once you go into the tier below that again (Westmeath, Offaly, Wexford, or Rhode/Ferbane/Gracefield/Daingean), these clubs need a special crew of players, and the top team to be clearly below par, to win once. To win consistently, as teams like Walsh Island, Ferbane, and indeed Offaly did in the 1970s and 1980s, will never happen again.
Arguably however the bigger problem is not how high Tullamore's ceiling goes, it's how low their floor goes, and what that does to the clubs and counties that are even smaller again. Think of 1968, when Longford won the Leinster SFC and Ballycumber won their only Offaly title. Will we ever see either of those things, or their equivalent, happen again? I can't see it, there's a bit of me thinking that Ballycommon doing what they did this year could be as good as it gets.
We've got to the point that for a real minnow, the level that you need to get to in terms of preparing your team to compete, by which I mean the money and human resource needed to make that happen, and indeed the number of capable players you need to make it happen, has gone through the roof.
It's all very well to say that you can only put 15 players on the field, but when the championship was a straight knockout and you had a game every two or three weeks, it was a lot easier to put pretty close to your best 15 out all the time. Now you will almost always have a couple of lads in bother with soft tissue injuries, and you need to be able to bring on three or four difference-making subs.
So that's what strips the good out of it - you go into a senior championship where half the teams are beaten before they start, and that reflects how they go about things. And 40 years ago, when club players weren't building their entire life around training, recovery, gym and all the rest of it, a relatively shorter burst of intensity brought you to more or less where you needed to be. Now, you have to life the life of an elite footballer for 12 months of the year, and it's bloody hard to do that when winning the big prize is not realistic.
The irony of all this is that this is not great for Tullamore either, because the bar is higher for them. Of course the current generation is respected and admired in the town, but even locally, there is an understanding that they're doing what you'd expect them to do, rather than doing something special. For a Tullamore player to go down in local folklore in the same vein as those Ballycumber lads of 1968, or Shannonbridge in 1996, or even to be compared with those Ferbane and Walsh Island teams, they're going to have to do something bigger, outside of Offaly. Otherwise they're just going to be remembered as a really good team who came along at a really bad time for Offaly club football.
Very accurate assessment of where it’s at , if Ferbane had won yesterday in terms of achieving it would have been massive Tullamore have sights on Leinster not Offaly that’s almost a given now
Hurling has big factor on the football you could see it in lads yesterday the legs and intensity just wasn’t there and it would the same scenario if Belmont had managed to overcome ballinamere
Clubs who are genuinely competing at both codes one will suffer , Tullamores hurlers went out early but they will eventually have enough players good at both to have to separate teams if they will be good enough to stop the other hurling only clubs that remains to be seen
Surprisingly easy victory for Tullamore yesterday, As soon as Hogan scored that goal the final nail was in the Ferbane coffin. It knocked the stuffing out of them and Tullamore never let up in their intensity. They were relentless and fully deserving of their win. I feel sorry for Ferbane because they are by a margin the second best team in the county, big gap back to 3rd best. They have just a met a serious Tullamore machine. Tullamore will probably win 7 out of the next 10 championships at least. They have blooded a couple of new players this year and also the success of their second team in the Senior B also bodes well for them as a club. Lots of underage success as well and it really is daunting for the rest of the teams.
Disappointed they play away to the Dublin champions in Leinster, maybe its the right time to get them. I do think Tullamore are in the top 4 in Leinster with Dubs Champs, Kildare Champs and The Downs from Westmeath but maybe I am being bias.
a sad sense of realisation yesterday. the last 3 defeats were maybe excusable due circumstances. but ferbane wont beat tullamore simply because, as stated above they are not as good. egan leavy hogan furlong the plunketts are really top club players. and its a worry for offaly football in general that no one will beat that tullamore team for the next 3 or 4 years i feel. they are just too good in offaly. id love to see them win a leinster. and the best of luck to them in a few weeks.
and while not an excuse in any way the fact that 14 of the ferbane /belmont lads were playing every week for 10 /12 weeks either football or hurling has to have been detrimental to both teams. i dont know what the answer is.
