www.uibhfhaili.com

Some excellent contributions by people who care about the 'bigger picture' from outside our county.
We all know how hard it is to see 'our future' not looking as secure
or shining as brightly as we would wish.

Leahy out..........................

townman wrote:Leahy out..........................

Rafa is available after today

its gas how when we refer to the great Kk team or a winning team, we constantly talk about the players there and the panel.... and the rest of us runners up talk about managers and county boards!

old yellar wrote:its gas how when we refer to the great Kk team or a winning team, we constantly talk about the players there and the panel.... and the rest of us runners up talk about managers and county boards!

I think the Management ability of Brian Cody and the Real Support given by the Kilkenny Co Board is a major factor in the success of the Kilkenny team.

Ah i know that, but we tend to focus on the managers more often with losing teams. Look at our forum page on hoganstand!

old yellar wrote:Ah i know that, but we tend to focus on the managers more often with losing teams. Look at our forum page on hoganstand!

Perhaps Management and the County Board are the Issue. Much easier not to accept "Dual Players". Offaly Should Not have been able to play Minor Football Championship & Minor Hurling Championship on the One Day. Offaly needs everybody. Good Managers get the best players on the pitch, in their best positions and playing to their potential. It is unfair to place all the blame on minor mentors if the County Board has not ensured that a proper coaching & development squad structure exists for our best under 16 players.
We need to review all our underage coaching & development squad structures. Our Minor Teams should be managed by "People Managers" and not by coaches. They are very different roles. Unless we are able to compete at Minor Level, the standard of our Senior Teams will continue to decline.

"Our Minor Teams should be managed by "People Managers" and not by coaches. They are very different roles.

They should be both, or at least attempt to be both?

Very easy to type in statements like that, and also development squads need to be gotten right, but also the dev squads can only work with the talent that they are given from the clubs too. They have them for an hour and a half a week. But you are right, all along the way the structure needs to be right.Do clubs sit down with Dev squad mgr and discuss what their players need to do to develop, or do they know how their players are getting on? Basic stuff you might say, but are we getting this simple element right, I doubt it!

I'm coming around to a view, and I've aired that in this week's Offaly Indo column, that a big part of the problem behind our underachievement at minor, senior and every level, is that we simply don't know what the problem is. Depending on who you ask, the following aspects are all supposedly causing us difficulty:

(1) Lack of strength and conditioning work
(2) Dual players and managing commitments across clubs/schools/county
(3) Lack of respect for the importance of playing intercounty GAA for Offaly
(4) Poor standard of coaching
(5) Lack of funds to spend on our teams
(6) Too much focus on OCP development, not enough on teams
(7) Lack of a dedicated training facility, such as Hawkfield in Kildare
(8) Where we choose to play our games
(9) Lack of leadership from the county board
(10) Clubs not fully supporting the greater good and instead looking out for themselves
(11) Poor club championship structure which leads to a lot of our players performing at poor standards in Junior or "B" competitions
(12) Low participation rates
(13) Too much emphasis on where lads are from, not enough on what they can do on the field of play
(14) Poor support from schools, particularly on the hurling side.

Let me stress here that I'm not saying I believe it's all of those things, but there is a very real chance this year that all four of our senior and minor teams will be beaten by fifteen points or more in the Leinster championship. If our under-21 footballers had scraped past Laois, as they probably could have done, then they would in all likelihood have been heavily beaten by Kildare, just as Laois were. And our under-21 hurlers are not fancied against Laois and could ship another heavy beating there too.

We have huge problems, and we have hundreds of different opinions when it comes to what those problems are, how to solve them, and what's achievable and what isn't. It'd be great to hire fifty full time coaches as Dublin have done, but we can't do that. It would be great to borrow millions building a training facility, but we can't do that. I'm sure hurling would improve if we treated football as a second class sport, or indeed vice versa, but I'm pretty sure we don't want to do that. We could do like some of the Ulster counties do and run our championships as a straight knockout with no second chance, but club players don't want that. We could do like Kerry and field divisional teams, but then our fixture chaos would get twice as bad.

Somebody somewhere has to grasp the nettle and start by diagnosing what's wrong, and how we can start to change things. Then we have to accept that there is no "political" solution to this. Every solution will come at a price, and we have to either be willing to pay that price, or else accept the consequences. For example if you gave me the choice of doing what Dublin did and essentially punishing the club footballers and hurlers for the success of the county team, I would vote no, we shouldn't do that. I'd prefer not to win anything at senior county level. But we need to make these decisions, and the first step is to look at what the problems really are - not guess what we think they are.

U15 hurlers beaten by Laois by 3-16 to 1-11 yesterday week;
U16 hurlers beaten by Laois by 0-13 to 0-4 last night.

What are the excuses? Other than the usual "Laois kept catching the ball and handpassing it to each other".

Plain of the Herbs wrote:U15 hurlers beaten by Laois by 3-16 to 1-11 yesterday week;
U16 hurlers beaten by Laois by 0-13 to 0-4 last night.

What are the excuses? Other than the usual "Laois kept catching the ball and handpassing it to each other".

Does the Birr excuse work for these games?

whats the footballers one.

townman wrote:whats the footballers one.

What's the Rounders team's excuse?

This may need its own the thread but I wonder what was going through the minds of those charged with the development of hurling in the OY county board from 1994 to 2000 when they watched Clare over the last few weeks - a team who won no more all Irelands that we did in the 90s and started from a much lower base us?

Was anything going through their mind at all …. ?

If they read the match day programmes, they’d have seen no starters from Clarecastle/ Sixmilebridge/ Wolfe Tones / Doora-Barefield on the starting 15 (and I believe only one or two on the panel).

You are left with the clear impression that the Clare CB used the success of the 90’s to foster and develop the game in the right way in non-prime clubs.

Granted the likes of Cratloe, Clonlara and Newmarket sprawled as commuter towns to Limerick in the 90s but its not as if Ger Killally et all weren’t working day and night to keep the obedient taxpayers of Offaly well housed in urban centres in North Offaly too.

To use this year’s starting minor teams of the year as an example:-

Hurling 15 v Leix : 3 Birr, 3 KK, 3 St. Rynaghs, 2 Shinrone, 1 each Belmont, Drumcullen, Shinrone , Lusmagh.

Football v Kildare : 3 Tullamore 3 Raheen 2 Shamrocks 1 each Killurin, Bracknagh, Durrow, Kilclonfert, Gracefield, Ballinamere, Rhode.

Generally, its depressing to see the North / South line the same as it ever was.

Looking at the football side, in all but Kilconfert , Bracknagh, Rhode you had established hurling clubs promoted by hurling people in each of the other clubs on the football team in the 90’s. Even for the three sides highlighted, you had competitive junior outfits in Croghan and Edenderry in the 90s.

The question needs to be asked, was there ever a genuine intention on the part of the OY CB to develop the game at all or in earnest outside of its strongholds and into the developing urban areas of the north of the county?

Paudie Butlers urban hurling project can’t hit this country quick enough ..