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Very heartening display today from Offaly, despite the loss.
Two bad goals lost the game though.
The turning point was probably the 7-2 wind backed Offaly lead becoming 8 to 1-4 just before half time.
The Wexford goal was completely self inflicted by Offaly. An Offaly possession turned over, bobbling off a few players slapstick style and getting poked to the net.
Offaly played intelligent football in the first half, getting in plenty of good high diagonal balls to PJ Ward and Niall McNamee and exposing the weak Wexford full back line.
This was after a shaky start when Wexford opened with the first two points and had a couple of goal chances.

After half time Wexford came out and scored a series of great points to take command. However Offaly dug in well and managed to get on terms mid way through the half. At this stage it looked like Offaly could go ahead and win it, but the second Wexford goal was another hammer blow.
As the game reached the end Offaly reeled Wexford back from 4 ahead to just the minimum, but just ran out of time.
It wasn't a bad day in the office for a very experimental team.

There were some good displays from Offaly, especially in attack.
PJ Ward had his best game in an Offaly jersey, though he did miss a 20 metre free from a straight enough angle.
Niall Mc stroked over a few nice points and put his marker to the sword.
Tommo Deehan did well on the half forward line and played in good ball.
Ken Casey came on as a sub and put Offaly on the forward foot with his pace.

Around the middle, Offaly didn't really win much clean catches. Niall Smith got his hands on a few but didn't manage to hold them. The workrate was good from Alan McNamee and Brian Connor.

The defence was mostly good apart from the glaring turnover for the first goal. Lyng and Banville took marking, but Offaly generally had things under control.

With all that has gone on, it was a positive end to the year.
There is at least something to build on for next year.
For starters we seem to have an manager who is interested, intelligent and looks committed to staying for the long haul.
A few players have now put themselves into contention.
Hopefully the planning for next year starts soon. Early commencement of training and plenty of eyes on the club championship to spot talent would be a good start.

Leaving Wexford yesterday for our Grand Prix trip back to Tullamore the few Offaly supporters that were there will feel a mixture of disappointment and pride after a game in which we definetly should have won only for 2 poxy goals which came when we were on top. We had the better footballers and for the first time in many a long day there was a decent balance in the team. Everybody put in a very good shift and we had 3 forwards in PJ Ward. Tommo and Niall Mac that caused them trouble for the 70 plus minutes, It was especially good to see PJ in such good form hitting 4 points from play and one free after serving his suspension for the Kildare game. This can only be a good starting point for next year, hopefully Tom Cribben will commit himself for at least another year and the good thing about this situation is that he will know exactly what he has to do to select his panel for 2010.

Offaly not Cribbin over disallowed 'point'

06 July 2009

Offaly football boss Tom Cribbin wasn't making an issue of a controversial umpiring decision that cost his side extra-time in Saturday's All-Ireland qualifier defeat to Wexford.

The small band of Offaly fans in the 2,800 Wexford Park attendance were adamant that a PJ Ward free in the 55th minute, which was waved wide by the umpire, should have been given as a point.

"The TV camera will tell if the ball was over the bar or not," Cribbin said.

"The umpire was looking straight up - how can he not tell? So the referee had no option but to wave it wide. Only for that it was a drawn match.

"But I'm not going to start whinging about umpires. At the end of the day, we kicked 16 points which would be good enough to win any championship match, but we conceded two sloppy goals."

Wexford manager Jason Ryan was just relieved to have secured a first competitive win in 2009.

"We're not delighted to have won, it's more relief," he said.

On the Ward point/wide.
Personally I felt it had just crept over, as I was directly behind it.

He hit the free from about 20 metres and it just started to tail away as it went over.
By the time it hit the netting behind the goal, it was curling back towards the side Ward hit it from.

The umpire on that post was in completely the wrong position though.
He had moved towards the middle of the goal and so had no line of vision from the ball to the post.
From doing umpire myself the odd time, you concentrate on the post at all time and never allow the post not to be in the middle of your line of sight to the ball.

Crucially though, a few minutes earlier Offaly had been awarded a hotly disputed point that the crowd didn't like.
So for this one, the ref went in to consult with the umpire and they gave it wide.
It was clear that neither of them had a notion though.
I'd say the reaction of the crowd swung it, if it was in Tullamore it would have been given.

Mistakes happen and while it is disappointing to hear that we possibly could have won this game and secured a home match against a very average Roscommon team, I'd like to think that players will at least realise that they're not that bad, and that with a little bit of work over the winter, there is enough football in this team to make an impression in division 3 and hopefully have a longer championship summer next year.

Also, we now have a management team who will get to watch the club championship the whole way through - which is long over due as well. Too often the club championship has been going on while the county management has been in limbo - this summer should represent a genuine chance for potential county players to stake a claim.

Two sloppy goals cost us a big win with Roscommon as the next challengers and a home game. The team would have been getting stronger, a pity really.

Yep, a Roscommon team on its knees in Tullamore would have been the perfect opponents for us next Saturday. An opportunity sadly missed