Georgio1 wrote:Couple of points, Shane Sullivan will never have the pace or concentration to be a man marker. I saw plenty of praise last year for him against Weatmeath, until his sending off. Thats because we had so many men behind the ball. As for Raff, absolutely brutal when he came on. His attempt at picking the ball during the second half when he eventually swiped it clean off the ground summed him up. So far off the pace its scary.
I disagree completely regarding Sullivan - he had a great game against Louth and if the referee had called it fairly, he would have bottled up Grogan too. As I said above, it was only after he had been wrongly given a black card that he had to step off a bit and Grogan got his score from play.
I don't think Rafferty is at his sharpest at the moment either, but the pick up incident you're referring to wasn't his fault - it was an atrocious handpass to him that went over his head, I think from Niall Darby but I can't remember. Okay, he may not have made a good job of recovering it, but it's back to the same thing again - we're blaming an out and out defender for not being comfortable out around the middle of the field. The point is that he shouldn't have been there.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
I'll agree to disagree on Sully. His man may not have gotten scores, but if you look at the amount of possesion he got and laid off then he was a problem. I agree it was a bad pass, but you are trying to make excuses for a man who still had loads of time to recover had when he reached the ball was on his own and fumbled terribly. Whatever part of the pitch he should be able to complete that manouver?Also he came on in the centre back position, so was likely to be find himself in the midfield area. He had time to recover but not the pace,and whether he'll have it by Summer.....I doubt it.
Georgio1 wrote:Couple of points, Shane Sullivan will never have the pace or concentration to be a man marker. I saw plenty of praise last year for him against Weatmeath, until his sending off. Thats because we had so many men behind the ball. As for Raff, absolutely brutal when he came on. His attempt at picking the ball during the second half when he eventually swiped it clean off the ground summed him up. So far off the pace its scary.
I disagree completely regarding Sullivan - he had a great game against Louth and if the referee had called it fairly, he would have bottled up Grogan too. As I said above, it was only after he had been wrongly given a black card that he had to step off a bit and Grogan got his score from play.
I don't think Rafferty is at his sharpest at the moment either, but the pick up incident you're referring to wasn't his fault - it was an atrocious handpass to him that went over his head, I think from Niall Darby but I can't remember. Okay, he may not have made a good job of recovering it, but it's back to the same thing again - we're blaming an out and out defender for not being comfortable out around the middle of the field. The point is that he shouldn't have been there.
I agree wuth Georgio here Sully does not have the pace over 5 yards for the full back line. There is a big difference between having a great game against louth in a league game on a heavy O'Connor Park pitch and championship time. Between him and Evans we must have the slowest full back line in Europe.
Remains to be seen - I still think that he was doing well last year and but for Dessie's playacting, would have come close to man of the match against Westmeath - but time will tell at any rate. A referee who doesn't fall for forwards diving would be a good start.
It doesn't alter the fact either that we don't really have a lot of corner back options in the county. I'm sure Shane would prefer to be playing in the half back line, while we've ended up trying a lot of half backs in the corners over the past few years. Of half forwards, in Nigel Grennan's case.
It'll be interesting to see what changes are made for this weekend's game with Cavan. I'd like to think that we'll manage to come up with a bit more by way of solutions for defensive problems that were very apparent in Thurles.
Kevin Egan. Signed out of respect for players and all involved with Offaly.
