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Faithfully wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 5:06 pm Happy to see a strong team named for tomorrow. No Cathal King or Dan Ravenhill from the last day.

frankthetank wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 5:15 pm

Faithfully wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 5:06 pm Happy to see a strong team named for tomorrow. No Cathal King or Dan Ravenhill from the last day.

Absolutely meaningless game. Donal Shirley should be rested and if it’s deemed Ter Guinan needs game time due to his extended injury layoff he should be selected at wing back. It’s not as if our 2 wing backs have been outstanding and are undroppable.

I would really love to know the inside story on the working relationship between JK & LOC.

Faithfully wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 5:06 pm Happy to see a strong team named for tomorrow. No Cathal King or Dan Ravenhill from the last day.

Lone Shark wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 8:41 pm I'm not going to get into the whole "rest the U-20s" thing again, because we've done that to death at this stage, there's nothing new to say.

So for the purposes of this argument, let's pretend U-20 hurling doesn't exist, and senior is the only show in town. Even so, I still think this team selection (if true, let's not ignore that we could have plenty of changes by tomorrow afternoon) has the potential to have a hugely destabilising influence on the panel.

So far this year, Offaly have played five league games. In that five league games, just 19 players have started a match. If Ter Guinan starts as selected tomorrow, that number goes to 20.

Out of the rest of the panel, ONE player - Cillian Kiely - has got more than ten minutes on the pitch.

If this was club hurling, and Johnny Kelly was trying to mind the rest of the lads to keep them eligible for the junior team, we'd say he was doing a savage job. But it's not club hurling, it's intercounty hurling, and I don't know the exact number of players on the panel, but I'm going to assume that around a dozen players have effectively got no chance to stake a claim during the league.

Up to now, that was fine. The team was chasing promotion, and with the exception of the Antrim game, there was no situation where you could say with certainty that the game was won with ten minutes to play. Keep your best hurlers on the field, don't switch off, hurl to the final whistle. I understand that, Johnny Kelly understands that, the frontline players understand that and so do the guys on the panel who are in that unused dozen.

But this is completely different. This is a game where Offaly have absolutely nothing to play for, but hurling against a decent opponent. That means that if a springer was to come into the team and show something, you'd have to take it seriously. It's actually the ideal chance to take maybe three or four guys and see how they fare; you couldn't draw it up any better.

Again I stress, this may be a dummy team. But if it's not, then those guys who are outside that 21 will be in pure mental turmoil this evening. We've all seen enough challenge games, club and county, to know they're not the same. We all know that the Offaly panel is not deep enough for the 15 vs 15 training games to be all-out intense affairs. By that I mean, there aren't going to be any better chances than this to put my hand up.

So if I'm one of those guys on the fringes, there's every chance that I'm going to decide that this isn't worth it any more, that I'm just there to make up numbers, and feck that for a game of darts. Okay, if I'm 21 or 22 years old, that's not ideal, but it's manageable. Hurl with the panel for the year, get your S&C work done, come back a stronger and better player next year. But any older than that? I'm looking at the club hurling leagues starting in a fortnight and I'm saying that it's with my club that I need to be right now, not here where I'm not wanted. And if a few walkouts happen, even if they're lads that JK had no intention of using, things can go off the rails very quickly.

frankthetank wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:37 pm I presume the only way Thurles or PUC would be picked is if Tipp and Cork agree to toss for home venue.

The GAA can’t just fix the final for Thurles or Cork considering one of them will have home venue. Both counties would surely have to agree on how the venue will be chosen if it is Thurles or Cork.

This is all dependent on Cork beating Galway of course.

Realistically the easiest course here is to just fix the finals for the Gaelic Grounds. Which I predict will happen. Particularly it Galway beat Cork.

Lone Shark wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 8:41 pm I'm not going to get into the whole "rest the U-20s" thing again, because we've done that to death at this stage, there's nothing new to say.

So for the purposes of this argument, let's pretend U-20 hurling doesn't exist, and senior is the only show in town. Even so, I still think this team selection (if true, let's not ignore that we could have plenty of changes by tomorrow afternoon) has the potential to have a hugely destabilising influence on the panel.

So far this year, Offaly have played five league games. In that five league games, just 19 players have started a match. If Ter Guinan starts as selected tomorrow, that number goes to 20.

Out of the rest of the panel, ONE player - Cillian Kiely - has got more than ten minutes on the pitch.

If this was club hurling, and Johnny Kelly was trying to mind the rest of the lads to keep them eligible for the junior team, we'd say he was doing a savage job. But it's not club hurling, it's intercounty hurling, and I don't know the exact number of players on the panel, but I'm going to assume that around a dozen players have effectively got no chance to stake a claim during the league.

Up to now, that was fine. The team was chasing promotion, and with the exception of the Antrim game, there was no situation where you could say with certainty that the game was won with ten minutes to play. Keep your best hurlers on the field, don't switch off, hurl to the final whistle. I understand that, Johnny Kelly understands that, the frontline players understand that and so do the guys on the panel who are in that unused dozen.

But this is completely different. This is a game where Offaly have absolutely nothing to play for, but hurling against a decent opponent. That means that if a springer was to come into the team and show something, you'd have to take it seriously. It's actually the ideal chance to take maybe three or four guys and see how they fare; you couldn't draw it up any better.

Again I stress, this may be a dummy team. But if it's not, then those guys who are outside that 21 will be in pure mental turmoil this evening. We've all seen enough challenge games, club and county, to know they're not the same. We all know that the Offaly panel is not deep enough for the 15 vs 15 training games to be all-out intense affairs. By that I mean, there aren't going to be any better chances than this to put my hand up.

So if I'm one of those guys on the fringes, there's every chance that I'm going to decide that this isn't worth it any more, that I'm just there to make up numbers, and feck that for a game of darts. Okay, if I'm 21 or 22 years old, that's not ideal, but it's manageable. Hurl with the panel for the year, get your S&C work done, come back a stronger and better player next year. But any older than that? I'm looking at the club hurling leagues starting in a fortnight and I'm saying that it's with my club that I need to be right now, not here where I'm not wanted. And if a few walkouts happen, even if they're lads that JK had no intention of using, things can go off the rails very quickly.

Faithfully wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 5:29 pm

frankthetank wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 5:15 pm

Faithfully wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 5:06 pm Happy to see a strong team named for tomorrow. No Cathal King or Dan Ravenhill from the last day.

Absolutely meaningless game. Donal Shirley should be rested and if it’s deemed Ter Guinan needs game time due to his extended injury layoff he should be selected at wing back. It’s not as if our 2 wing backs have been outstanding and are undroppable.

I would really love to know the inside story on the working relationship between JK & LOC.

By all means let the 20s back to sync up with their teammates ahead of their opener on April 5th, but we should not be making wholesale changes for this game. I'd note that there are none of them (Kelly, Kavanagh etc) named on the bench at least.

Championship is a month out and you can guarantee that they'd be playing challenge matches if we didn't have this one to play. It's not as if we have to play Waterford in a meaningful Championship game in a few weeks so there's nothing to hold back.

We are better off testing ourselves against Munster opposition.