Tyrone 2-15 Offaly 0-12
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:17 am
As backlash goes, that was pretty tame. Granted there was a lot less shame in the way we lost, but we still lost by nine points on our home ground to a team that was played the first half with several of their better players on the bench, even if there are grounds for saying they shouldn’t have been available at all.
It’s sad to say that if we had played like that last week – not outstanding, but just putting effort into doing the basics right – we probably would have beaten Dublin. However we didn’t and so we find ourselves bottom of the table and clear favourites for the drop.
The newspaper articles will no doubt go into the basic chronology of the game, praising us for how we ran the All Ireland champions close for so long, and tackled with such aggression throughout etc. As a result there’s no need to dwell on too much of that here. Not to put too fine a point on it, we took the field very fired up, we started with the wind, and got out of the blocks well, only failing to be ahead at half time on account of some fantastic scores from play from Stephen O’Neill. Tyrone brought out a few more of their big name guys for the start of the second half, and though Offaly continued to be marginally on top for the third quarter, we never looked like getting too far ahead, though with fifteen minutes to go and a two point lead in hand, it became possible to dream.
And the dream was duly extinguished, as with a combination of fluid passing and movement, superior fitness and complete domination in the battle for breaks around the middle of the field, Tyrone completely overwhelmed us, winning the last quarter of the game by 2-6 to 0-1. As a display of footballing cohesion and skill it was very impressive, and certainly the level of play that Tyrone were able to reach was a stark indictment of how far off the All Ireland winning standard we are at the moment. On the other hand, it’s probably not unfair to say that the all round ability and skills of that current Tyrone team are a joy to watch, and probably on a par with anything Gaelic Football has ever seen. It makes it all the more sad that they feel the need to resort to bringing on players who really should have been suspended, because such antics tarnish the county’s achievements, all the more lamentable for the fact that this particular generation of players have been the first in that county’s history to reach the pinnacle of football success.
But enough about Tyrone – this is an Offaly messageboard after all. From our point of view, there were a few points worthy of note from the game as a whole, some good, some bad. Mainly:
(1) Our players reverted to playing much earlier ball into the full forward line, greatly aided by the good running lines of Thomas Deehan. This worked out infinitely better than the slow crossfield handpassing that was engaged in last week, and yielded results. Indeed where we struggled was when we reverted to looking to lay the ball off short in the second half, a policy that usually resulted in our players being crowded out and surrendering possession.
(2) Fitness was again a serious issue – by the end of the game the Tyrone players were flying forward in numbers and our lads looked seriously heavy legged in their attempts to keep pace. As in all matters we were being measured against the best in the land, but the shortfall was still glaring.
(3) High fielding may be a dying art in Gaelic football, but it’s still a great way to lift a team and on a day like today when Alan McNamee is struggling, we really do struggle in this regard. That’s not to say that there are a huge amount of alternatives, indeed we all know there aren’t, but again perhaps it’s something that should we should be working on with 2007 and beyond in mind.
(4) We’ve really got to ask ourselves why we score so few goals, particularly bearing in mind that we have players on board who have proven that they can get them. If we leave out the farce in Dublin last week when the game went mad in the last few minutes, we’ve scored one goal in seven competitive fixtures this year, including a game against Kilkenny. If I’m not mistaken we’ve conceded nine in that time. Are we not creating overlaps? Is the support running not good enough? Personally I think it’s because we’re struggling to really isolate the inside players to give them enough space so that if they do get the ball they have a real goal opportunity. This is another aspect of our forward play that we’ve really got to start addressing.
As for player by player…..
Kevin Meehan: Good kickouts, he’s clearly been working on this part of his game and kudos for doing so – the rewards were obvious there today. However the primary function of a goalie is to stop shots, and the one time he was called on – albeit when the competitiveness was gone from the game – he failed. Cavlan’s shot was very stoppable to a goalie that stood up and made himself big – as Kelly usually does. It’s a pity, because otherwise he did well.
Ger Rafferty: I thought he had a good game. He was aggressive, was never shown up for pace and did well at getting a hand in when he needed to. In a line where we certainly have vacancies, he did his cause no harm at al with today’s display.
Sean Casey: Marking O’Neill on today’s form was a mammoth task, one which Paddy McCormack in his heyday would have struggled with. Casey won a good few balls, went after possession with real hunger, and generally shepherded O’Neill in the right direction, as you would hope your full back would do. O’Neill generally responded by kicking a glorious point from a tight angle off his wrong foot, or some such shenanigans. In general I would say Casey did okay and the experience should stand to him.
Nigel Grennan: Some woeful use of the ball by times, but again he held his own, compensating for his lack of defensive nous with pace and continuous effort as is his modus operandi back there. Colm Cooper next week might expose him on a few occasions, but so far he has at least kept himself between his marker and the goal at all times – if he could just learn to read the incoming ball a bit better he might make a corner back yet.
Neville Coughlan: Had a very poor and ineffective game by his standards, largely due to being out of position. He’s an above average attacker and a middling defender, so playing him here is not utilising him well at all. Needs to get back in the half forwards, and fast.
Scott Brady: Physically strong, but still slow and was given the run around a little bit by McGuigan. Got his customary yellow card, made a few trademark bursts out of thebacks, but overall was not dominant. The case for him to return to the full back line is strong.
Karol Slattery: Looking a lot more like himself this week – he took the game on, ran at Tyrone and caused real havoc in doing so. Restricting him to holding his own half was a very odd idea and thankfully it appears to have been aborted. Should come on even more for getting more games.
Ciaran McManus: All round excellent again. Had a good day with the frees, including one glorious sideline ball, and covered a lot of ground forward and back. Largely used the ball well but still didn’t look to do it all himself and in doing so was twice as effective. Yet again our man of the match.
Alan McNamee: Had a very poor day at the office, failing to match Sean Cavanagh in most aspects. Hit a few good balls in, but largely was second best at winning possession, still slow to deliver ball in and missed one goal chance, albeit a difficult one. His spot would be under real pressure if Keane were to be available again.
John Reynolds: Once more with feeling – an inside forward or nothing. Two years ago under Gerry Fahy we had four inside forwards he wanted to play so Niall got shunted out to half forward just to accommodate them all- the same thing is going on now with Shaper. If we want guys to run at defences we have better options – Slattery or Coughlan for power, Ryan, Grennan or Phelan for pace. Took a good score at the start of the second half to prove that he can, but why play a guy out on the 50 who can’t kick points from range and doesn’t have the strength or speed to stop opposing wing backs charging forward, a la Jordan yesterday? Ten is not the slot for him.
Paschal Kelleghan: Played a few good balls forward in the first half, but for me didn’t do enough to justify his continued selection. He was lucky to even stay on the pitch at one stage when he was on a yellow card and still swung a wild kick at a loose ball when a Tyrone player was going down on it – the ref allowed advantage, but he could easily have ended up walking for it. A forward that concedes judicious frees is not a bad thing, but he’s got to be more careful. It’s a long time since he’s scored more than once in a county game as well if memory serves. Needs to step up.
Leonard Mooney: He’s actually growing into the county role thing. Much like Paudie Mulhare when he used to play, he doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of opposition by way of reputation and it would be easy to look and say he’s a weak link, but after the game he invariably will have made a good few small positive contributions and helped link up the play well. He’s a guy that could really do well if he bulked up and added some upper body strength to his armoury. For the first time this year I consider him now in the front line to start for the championship, albeit on a close call.
Thomas Deehan: He was very lively throughout, took a couple of good scores and always offered himself as an outlet. He’s a live contender for the free taking role too, so in all likelihood I’d say we’ve seen him dropped for the last time this year, barring injury.
Ross Connor: He offers a very different threat in the inside line, but there is a strong case for saying that threat would be best kept in reserve on the bench instead of looked for from the off. The idea of a big full forward to win high ball is good, but in reality there only are a single digit number of those deliveries per game. Against high energy supporting teams like Tyrone as well he causes real problems by not having the pace to track emerging defenders. Perhaps is he becomes an 80% free taker in time there is a place for him – for the moment the big man on the edge of the square thing is probably not a policy we should look to engage in for seventy minutes.
Niall McNamee: I wouldn’t go as far as to say he was back to his best, but he certainly was looking a lot closer to it than he has for some time. His confidence is slowly coming back, so hopefully by the summer he’ll be ready to deliver on his huge potential.
Colm Quinn: Didn’t get on the ball that much and by the time he was on Deehan was gone, which meant the best forward target was no longer. I still like him as an impact sub, but he didn’t make much impact today sadly.
Sean Ryan: I still feel this guy is hard done by – he offers something really different to our team and hasn’t let us down so far. Giving him ten minutes is not enough.
Shane Sullivan: Came on very late as well, but good to see him get the run out. Hopefully he’ll be raring to go in Tralee, where he’ll be a real addition to the backline if so. Still found time to hit some guy a good solid shoulder off the ball to check his run. The hunger is still there then.
James Coughlan: Wasn’t on long enough to really contribute. Got one ball, didn’t collect it cleanly, but won a free.
It’s sad to say that if we had played like that last week – not outstanding, but just putting effort into doing the basics right – we probably would have beaten Dublin. However we didn’t and so we find ourselves bottom of the table and clear favourites for the drop.
The newspaper articles will no doubt go into the basic chronology of the game, praising us for how we ran the All Ireland champions close for so long, and tackled with such aggression throughout etc. As a result there’s no need to dwell on too much of that here. Not to put too fine a point on it, we took the field very fired up, we started with the wind, and got out of the blocks well, only failing to be ahead at half time on account of some fantastic scores from play from Stephen O’Neill. Tyrone brought out a few more of their big name guys for the start of the second half, and though Offaly continued to be marginally on top for the third quarter, we never looked like getting too far ahead, though with fifteen minutes to go and a two point lead in hand, it became possible to dream.
And the dream was duly extinguished, as with a combination of fluid passing and movement, superior fitness and complete domination in the battle for breaks around the middle of the field, Tyrone completely overwhelmed us, winning the last quarter of the game by 2-6 to 0-1. As a display of footballing cohesion and skill it was very impressive, and certainly the level of play that Tyrone were able to reach was a stark indictment of how far off the All Ireland winning standard we are at the moment. On the other hand, it’s probably not unfair to say that the all round ability and skills of that current Tyrone team are a joy to watch, and probably on a par with anything Gaelic Football has ever seen. It makes it all the more sad that they feel the need to resort to bringing on players who really should have been suspended, because such antics tarnish the county’s achievements, all the more lamentable for the fact that this particular generation of players have been the first in that county’s history to reach the pinnacle of football success.
But enough about Tyrone – this is an Offaly messageboard after all. From our point of view, there were a few points worthy of note from the game as a whole, some good, some bad. Mainly:
(1) Our players reverted to playing much earlier ball into the full forward line, greatly aided by the good running lines of Thomas Deehan. This worked out infinitely better than the slow crossfield handpassing that was engaged in last week, and yielded results. Indeed where we struggled was when we reverted to looking to lay the ball off short in the second half, a policy that usually resulted in our players being crowded out and surrendering possession.
(2) Fitness was again a serious issue – by the end of the game the Tyrone players were flying forward in numbers and our lads looked seriously heavy legged in their attempts to keep pace. As in all matters we were being measured against the best in the land, but the shortfall was still glaring.
(3) High fielding may be a dying art in Gaelic football, but it’s still a great way to lift a team and on a day like today when Alan McNamee is struggling, we really do struggle in this regard. That’s not to say that there are a huge amount of alternatives, indeed we all know there aren’t, but again perhaps it’s something that should we should be working on with 2007 and beyond in mind.
(4) We’ve really got to ask ourselves why we score so few goals, particularly bearing in mind that we have players on board who have proven that they can get them. If we leave out the farce in Dublin last week when the game went mad in the last few minutes, we’ve scored one goal in seven competitive fixtures this year, including a game against Kilkenny. If I’m not mistaken we’ve conceded nine in that time. Are we not creating overlaps? Is the support running not good enough? Personally I think it’s because we’re struggling to really isolate the inside players to give them enough space so that if they do get the ball they have a real goal opportunity. This is another aspect of our forward play that we’ve really got to start addressing.
As for player by player…..
Kevin Meehan: Good kickouts, he’s clearly been working on this part of his game and kudos for doing so – the rewards were obvious there today. However the primary function of a goalie is to stop shots, and the one time he was called on – albeit when the competitiveness was gone from the game – he failed. Cavlan’s shot was very stoppable to a goalie that stood up and made himself big – as Kelly usually does. It’s a pity, because otherwise he did well.
Ger Rafferty: I thought he had a good game. He was aggressive, was never shown up for pace and did well at getting a hand in when he needed to. In a line where we certainly have vacancies, he did his cause no harm at al with today’s display.
Sean Casey: Marking O’Neill on today’s form was a mammoth task, one which Paddy McCormack in his heyday would have struggled with. Casey won a good few balls, went after possession with real hunger, and generally shepherded O’Neill in the right direction, as you would hope your full back would do. O’Neill generally responded by kicking a glorious point from a tight angle off his wrong foot, or some such shenanigans. In general I would say Casey did okay and the experience should stand to him.
Nigel Grennan: Some woeful use of the ball by times, but again he held his own, compensating for his lack of defensive nous with pace and continuous effort as is his modus operandi back there. Colm Cooper next week might expose him on a few occasions, but so far he has at least kept himself between his marker and the goal at all times – if he could just learn to read the incoming ball a bit better he might make a corner back yet.
Neville Coughlan: Had a very poor and ineffective game by his standards, largely due to being out of position. He’s an above average attacker and a middling defender, so playing him here is not utilising him well at all. Needs to get back in the half forwards, and fast.
Scott Brady: Physically strong, but still slow and was given the run around a little bit by McGuigan. Got his customary yellow card, made a few trademark bursts out of thebacks, but overall was not dominant. The case for him to return to the full back line is strong.
Karol Slattery: Looking a lot more like himself this week – he took the game on, ran at Tyrone and caused real havoc in doing so. Restricting him to holding his own half was a very odd idea and thankfully it appears to have been aborted. Should come on even more for getting more games.
Ciaran McManus: All round excellent again. Had a good day with the frees, including one glorious sideline ball, and covered a lot of ground forward and back. Largely used the ball well but still didn’t look to do it all himself and in doing so was twice as effective. Yet again our man of the match.
Alan McNamee: Had a very poor day at the office, failing to match Sean Cavanagh in most aspects. Hit a few good balls in, but largely was second best at winning possession, still slow to deliver ball in and missed one goal chance, albeit a difficult one. His spot would be under real pressure if Keane were to be available again.
John Reynolds: Once more with feeling – an inside forward or nothing. Two years ago under Gerry Fahy we had four inside forwards he wanted to play so Niall got shunted out to half forward just to accommodate them all- the same thing is going on now with Shaper. If we want guys to run at defences we have better options – Slattery or Coughlan for power, Ryan, Grennan or Phelan for pace. Took a good score at the start of the second half to prove that he can, but why play a guy out on the 50 who can’t kick points from range and doesn’t have the strength or speed to stop opposing wing backs charging forward, a la Jordan yesterday? Ten is not the slot for him.
Paschal Kelleghan: Played a few good balls forward in the first half, but for me didn’t do enough to justify his continued selection. He was lucky to even stay on the pitch at one stage when he was on a yellow card and still swung a wild kick at a loose ball when a Tyrone player was going down on it – the ref allowed advantage, but he could easily have ended up walking for it. A forward that concedes judicious frees is not a bad thing, but he’s got to be more careful. It’s a long time since he’s scored more than once in a county game as well if memory serves. Needs to step up.
Leonard Mooney: He’s actually growing into the county role thing. Much like Paudie Mulhare when he used to play, he doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of opposition by way of reputation and it would be easy to look and say he’s a weak link, but after the game he invariably will have made a good few small positive contributions and helped link up the play well. He’s a guy that could really do well if he bulked up and added some upper body strength to his armoury. For the first time this year I consider him now in the front line to start for the championship, albeit on a close call.
Thomas Deehan: He was very lively throughout, took a couple of good scores and always offered himself as an outlet. He’s a live contender for the free taking role too, so in all likelihood I’d say we’ve seen him dropped for the last time this year, barring injury.
Ross Connor: He offers a very different threat in the inside line, but there is a strong case for saying that threat would be best kept in reserve on the bench instead of looked for from the off. The idea of a big full forward to win high ball is good, but in reality there only are a single digit number of those deliveries per game. Against high energy supporting teams like Tyrone as well he causes real problems by not having the pace to track emerging defenders. Perhaps is he becomes an 80% free taker in time there is a place for him – for the moment the big man on the edge of the square thing is probably not a policy we should look to engage in for seventy minutes.
Niall McNamee: I wouldn’t go as far as to say he was back to his best, but he certainly was looking a lot closer to it than he has for some time. His confidence is slowly coming back, so hopefully by the summer he’ll be ready to deliver on his huge potential.
Colm Quinn: Didn’t get on the ball that much and by the time he was on Deehan was gone, which meant the best forward target was no longer. I still like him as an impact sub, but he didn’t make much impact today sadly.
Sean Ryan: I still feel this guy is hard done by – he offers something really different to our team and hasn’t let us down so far. Giving him ten minutes is not enough.
Shane Sullivan: Came on very late as well, but good to see him get the run out. Hopefully he’ll be raring to go in Tralee, where he’ll be a real addition to the backline if so. Still found time to hit some guy a good solid shoulder off the ball to check his run. The hunger is still there then.
James Coughlan: Wasn’t on long enough to really contribute. Got one ball, didn’t collect it cleanly, but won a free.