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are there tickets still available for this match? or can you purchase them in portlaoise tomorrow.

Surley the lads will put in a big performance against Kildare.The White jersey should rise them big time .
A little suprised to see so many changes .This can only be good however, if the younger lads play well tomorrow and upset the odds in Portlaoise there will be some real competition for places.If not the moral in the camp I feel will be very low ,as we know by now the Offaly footballers wont be too pushed on the qualifiers.
The young lads have a real chance to make a name for themselfs .The game being telivised, please dont let us down.
Bring back the pride come on offaly

Best of luck to the lads later today, goin to be atough match but with a bit of luck, we will go through. if we show spirit like the leinster lads in edinburgh earlier today, we will win this match!!!

Lads, the game is there to be won if we play to our potential.
I think too many people have been blinded by the McGeeney factor in the build up.
Kildare got to the Div 1 league final in 2007 and no one felt they were any good, this year they didn' t get out of Div 2 and their league campaign has been heralded.
Last year after they were knocked out by Wicklow the Qualifiers fell nicely for them. Cavan and Limerick aren't great and Kildare were jammed to play Fermanagh a few days after they lost the biggest game in their history.

We shouldn't fear Kildare, they have a few Winter footballers on their team, who I have my doubts about on summer days.
If Offaly hadn't gone through so much turmoil this last while, I'd expect us to win.
I think a bit of pride and determination will go a long way. Maybe a break at the right time will get us over the line!
My hunch is that the game will hinge on who gets the first goal.

gutted . we never showed up for 20 mins and that cost us when kildare faded in last 10 ,although in fairness the best team won on the day , they were very well conditioned and far stronger , we were bouncin off them

Well that was a shambles of a match,went over expecting our lads to put on some sort of a show but I wasn't expecting them to implode like they did in the first 20mins.Tactics were all over the shop,Conor Carroll was trying to take Dermot Earley over the far side for the kick outs but he forgot that Earley has a mind of his own and just tore off and Carroll wasn't paying any attention to this...letting him off,it's as if he didn't give a flying.Mcmanus should have been brought in earlier,he brough a bit of bite and a bit of energy,at least he tried his heart out.I had looked at some of the Monaghan/Derry match before I went in and the defenders were up the forwards arses.... our lads were a mile away.Can't see this team getting much of a run in the qualifiers as we seem to loose interest,hopefully I'm wrong but this was said last year and look what happened.A few small good things that may come out of this are that we have blooded a few new players.Thought Lonergan had a good game at corner back.Actually that's about it

Not as we had hoped.
If Offaly could have held on for the first 10-15 minutes and get up to the pace of serious championship, there was some hope. The game was over after a contest within 10 minutes.
Too many Offaly players weren't switched on at the start and breezed into the game.
Basic stuff like man marking was neglected.

Kildare played simple and effective football at times. They broke quickly and kicked balls in front of their forwards. Offaly's attacks were slow and laboured. Too many times small Offaly players got swallowed up in a swarm of white.

Tom Cribben took gambles on team selections and I don't believe they alone cost us. A lot of players just didn't get out of the blocks. Perhaps there were a couple of switches that could have been made earlier, but the damage was done so quickly. it hardly mattered.

Some of the biggest problems for Offaly are:

- Strength and size. Granted you can't make players taller and there is a historical lack of conditioning in Offaly teams.
Offaly players needs to improve in order to take on slick outfits like Kildare.
Look how Sean Ryan has bulked up in the last couple of years without reducing his speed. He was one of the few Offaly players who could hit hard and break a challenge. I wonder was this achieved down in UL rather than the environs of Offaly football though?
On the other hand Niall McNamee for example still looks light and lacking in power. He is too easily forced off balance by opposition tackles. He seems to stumble into rather than burst past his man. Not meaning to have a go, but a real class act like Niall needs to keep adding to his armoury.
The hand of team selection was forced a little, but we need more height and muscle in the side. Players like PJ Ward and Rory Guinan should be moved up the queue for places in the Qualifiers.

- The lack of a man marking back in the Cathal Daly mould, to pick up a star forward like John Doyle. An in form Karol Slattery maybe, or if we had Nigel Grennan. Conor Evans was never going to be able to play Doyle from the front. Most counties have one class nippy scoring machine, we currently lack a back who could outrun and outfox them.

- Kickout strategy. Too often our kickouts were to the wrong players and areas. There seems to be a breakdown of communication between the keeper and outfield players. Offaly midfielders not claiming their own kickouts is no crime, however it terrible to have no other players nearby for the breaks.
Most big teams have an array of secret signals and moves around such set plays. Offaly need to brush up here.

- Free taking. Again Offaly missed 3 or 4 scorable points from frees. No team in Ireland can afford to pass up on these chances. Again Niall Darby not being fit enough to start may have worsened matters.

- Championship intensity. For the last 2 years, Limerick and Wicklow were stink in the league, yet burst onto the championship scene 3 gears higher. We might dismiss cute Kerry hoors like Micko and Mickey Ned as bluffers, but they have the nack of getting the teams tuned in on the day.
The Leinster championship comes around once a year and some Offaly players only woke up in the second half having hit the "Snooze" button a couple times first.
Granted a lot of players were unsure of their positions, but most of them should be stepping onto the field to kill for Offaly on championship days!

This year, of all years we need to see Offaly give the Qualifiers a lash. By the sounds of it Tom Cribben seems committed to building an Offaly team for the next couple of years. He should be given every chance to do so.

If Offaly played Kildare next Sunday the match would be a lot closer. Its just a pity we nearly really gave ourselves a fighting chance today.

Kevin Egan wrote an article in the June 6th edition of the Offaly Independent which should be reproduced into contract form by the County Board. They in turn should request that every coach/manager and player from U14 up-(in both codes) sign same as their first vow in their quest to wear the county jersey, only then can we look foward to achieving meaningful silverware!

Overview wrote:Kevin Egan

He prefers to be called the Lone Shark.

Good article though.

http://www.offalyindependent.ie/sport/r ... er-offaly/

This one?

I still think a lot of the problems in the senior panel come from the high turnover of managers in the last few years.
No manager has warmed the seat long long enough to even begin thinking about planning for 2 or 3 years ahead.
At least Tom Cribbin seems interested in medium and long term team development.

It appears my cover is blown....


There's nothing new in it that I haven't said before - I'm just very conscious of the good generation of young players that is in the county at the moment and how it mightn't always be the case that we have good minor teams to work with. There is a real opportunity here to improve the overall standard of football in the county if we can finally drum home the message that this is a physical game and a player needs to be at his physical peak to perform to the full of his potential. However there is a resistance to this, since physical preparation costs money, whereas running lads up and down Croghan hill and then doing some shooting drills doesn't.

Nonetheless, there are ways of doing this cheaper if people were so inclined. Unfortunately no-one wants to address this since it's a problem issue that will take hard work to get right. Until we do though, we are quite simply not at the races. We are dependent on individual players knowing themselves what will need to be done rather than having it drilled into them and having their progress measured all the way along, and that just can't end well.

Bord na Mona man wrote:http://www.offalyindependent.ie/sport/r ... er-offaly/

This one?

Good article, yes, but a bit too dismissive of any talent Kildare have. To say Offaly were beaten just on size & conditioning is a laugh.
Strategy, player performance, selection were key issues, and also in opposition the the article, I hold that Kildare do have some footballing talent. Offaly has to look at new approaches and not be relying on 'natural talent' or 'Offalys never say die attitude'. It's not going to be fixed overnight.

Obviously Kildare have some footballing talent, I would never suggest otherwise. However I disagree that they have more talent than us, any more than I think they had better tactics than us. John Doyle is a fine footballer, but I wouldn't pick him over Niall McNamee, neither would I have Alan Smith over Thomas Deehan or Dermot Earley over Karol Slattery.

Equally, their tactics looked better, but that was because we had to have contrived tactics in order to negate Kildare's advantage in size and conditioning.

Of course there were other factors at play, but to my mind the physical advantage was the difference between the sides. Other things would have helped of course, but I don't think that there is a long term future in just accepting that we're going to be weaker than every team we play against.

I agree that Kildare aren't better than Offaly in talent /skill terms, but in relation to that game they ticked more boxes than us.
The physical conditional and strength issue is one that is going to have to be addressed right now, not some time in the future. Just looked at Meath V Dublin yesterday, and they were mostly all in prime condition, but the match was dire and the football limited.
Is the the future of Gaelic????? It probably is, and if Offaly don't adapt, I fear for the future.
It's not the football I like, but it's the football we got!