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The farce this week of Durrow giving a walkover and the Tullamore result vs Clonbollouge today has really emphasised the poor decision by the county board to increase the SFC to 10 teams.

frankthetank wrote: ↑Sat Sep 13, 2025 11:13 pm The farce this week of Durrow giving a walkover and the Tullamore result vs Clonbollouge today has really emphasised the poor decision by the county board to increase the SFC to 10 teams.

4 teams really have a chance to lift the Dowling trophy.

6 team Senior A would make more sense at the minute. Same 4 teams qualifying for business end of championship every year with Shamrocks trying to get up to that level last few years.
6 teams and same format as Senior B is at the minute would at least make it more interesting than it is the last few years.

Payperview1 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 14, 2025 10:12 am 6 team Senior A would make more sense at the minute. Same 4 teams qualifying for business end of championship every year with Shamrocks trying to get up to that level last few years.
6 teams and same format as Senior B is at the minute would at least make it more interesting than it is the last few years.

How would making it smaller be of any use? You’d then have an up and coming team who get promoted and will be straight back down with no chance to gain a foothold.
5-6 teams who could win Sam Maguire next year, therefore let’s make it an 8 team championship.
Same with the premier league, we hardly need more than 6 teams there?

Remind me again how the promoted team to senior got on this year?

The thing about this is that while you might have mismatches, we've seen at national level from the intercounty game what happens if you leave just the very best teams playing each other all the time. I know there are other factors involved, but we've gone from a situation where in the 2000s, intercounty football was wide open and most teams were capable of taking a scalp now and again. Fast forward to now, nearly two decades after the switch from NFL Divisions 1A/1B/2A/2B to 1/2/3/4, and the gap between the haves and the have nots has widened considerably.

Absolutely, if the metric for the Offaly SFC was which teams could win, you'd have just five teams in it. But we don't want a situation either where if you're outside of that top tier, you never get games against the elite clubs and if you do get promoted for a year or two, you get blitzed out of it because you're not ready.

In the long term, this is the way to go for the sake of the county as a whole.

Payperview1 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 14, 2025 5:51 pm Remind me again how the promoted team to senior got on this year?

They didn’t. The usual 4. sides are always in contention for the SFC. The other teams need to get up to senior football standard.

Realistically the big population clubs are going to be in the to 4 bar an odd wobble .
The population aren't there elsewhere
Was travelling through west Offaly early hours of Sunday morning
After midnight not a sinner around
It reminded me of Erris peninsula in mayo
A few big houses .
I think we have to come to the conclusion time has moved on existing smaller clubs are going to go the way of the corncrake
More young people are going to leave
You should go to knock airport on Sunday evening eye opening.
Sorry for being serious but you have to face the facts .
Stay dry

The clubs that come together as brosna gaels should do the same in football. Too many separate clubs in too small an area with too small of a population. The sooner those clubs realise thst the better.

private joker wrote: ↑Mon Sep 15, 2025 10:47 am The clubs that come together as brosna gaels should do the same in football. Too many separate clubs in too small an area with too small of a population. The sooner those clubs realise thst the better.

If you were at any of the games in Clara, Ballycumber or Ferbane yesterday (I was at all 3), then you’d see a different perspective from these clubs. Good crowd at each of the 3 games and great passion to match.

Doon had 29 players togged out yesterday. If we had a parish team, we’d probably have 9-10 players. Where would the others be? At home watching Liverpool, Man Utd and the likes.

And that’s just our club(s). Look at what Clonbullougue, ballycommon, bracknagh, daingean, Ballinagar have all achieved in recent years and hopefully they’ll maintain their progress.

But, if you want to destroy Offaly football, then by all means get them to join up. I just hope the likes of you are never at a decision table on such a topic.

Well clonbullougue wanted to concede the match yesterday, ballycumber have lost all their matches and one of their selectors was been asked to tog. Saw them vs clara and they had two subs I think? Don't think it would destroy senior football, you'd have a good senior team, intermediate and junior A teams.

private joker wrote: ↑Mon Sep 15, 2025 2:17 pm Well clonbullougue wanted to concede the match yesterday, ballycumber have lost all their matches and one of their selectors was been asked to tog. Saw them vs clara and they had two subs I think? Don't think it would destroy senior football, you'd have a good senior team, intermediate and junior A teams.

Clonbullogue never wanted to concede the game, so I don't know where you are getting this information from. They have been decimated by injuries this year so it was always going to be struggle, but they were always 100% fielding against Tullamore despite the foregone conclusion that was ahead of them.

On the structures, I personally think the 8/8/8 split between Senior A/B/Intermediate worked with the 2 groups of 4.

I don't think there is any easy fix, and I think its more down to club's getting their houses in order to bring the standard up across the county.

Cillian Bourke invited to the AFL Grand Final in Australia in a couple of weeks time and will take part in the combine after that. Always thought he would be looked at by the Australians, interesting to see if he misses any of the club season.

Faithfully wrote: ↑Tue Sep 16, 2025 12:08 pm Cillian Bourke invited to the AFL Grand Final in Australia in a couple of weeks time and will take part in the combine after that. Always thought he would be looked at by the Australians, interesting to see if he misses any of the club season.

He did a combine in Dublin and placed 3rd overall. Not sure what attributes are needed for AFL exactly but he's simply outrageous in the air in both football and football.

Wingbackassassin wrote: ↑Tue Sep 16, 2025 8:35 pm

Faithfully wrote: ↑Tue Sep 16, 2025 12:08 pm Cillian Bourke invited to the AFL Grand Final in Australia in a couple of weeks time and will take part in the combine after that. Always thought he would be looked at by the Australians, interesting to see if he misses any of the club season.

He did a combine in Dublin and placed 3rd overall. Not sure what attributes are needed for AFL exactly but he's simply outrageous in the air in both football and football.

Football twice? Aussie plus GAA?