OFFALY'S MIDFIELD WOE.

[black and red exile]

After watching virtually every senior club as well as a few Intermediate championship matches over the last few months, im in total despair, that apart from being almost divorced, I have not seen one single midfielder in the Jim Grennan mould to partner Super at midfield for 2007. Nobody has even come close. When you consider that the best midfielder in the county final last week was Scott Brady who is a centre back, and there is no way he will make a intercounty midfielder, even if he were to move to the middle section you'de be robbing Peter to pay Paul by leaving a big void at centre back.
I was at the Intermediate final yesterday hoping from an Offaly point of view to see Padraig Brackan turn in a towering performance in the middle but apart from one piece of good fielding he was non existant and there is no way a stranger would believe by watching the game that he was on the Offaly panel this year. Some people believe that Ronan Mooney could be the answer but even if he was to stay at home and not to go back to Mexico, he is not exactly a spring chicken and besides when the pressure was on in the semi final against Clara he did'nt step up to the plate.
So guys it looks like Mr Roe has his work cut out with an impossible job in trying to find a partner for the Rhode captain, and no Ciaran Mcmanus is not the answer because after his superb performance on July 30th last in Portlaoise the is no arguement that centre half forward is definetly Mac's best position.

[Lone Shark]

I think it's one of those things that Offaly will always have to deal with - when you have the smaller pick, you will invariably be patching things up to a certain degree. For years we only had one natural full back line player (Cathal Daly) and he was invariably played alongside converted half backs because we had no one else. Mooney, Brady, Sullivan all got runs back there, and not one of them could really be termed full back line players. Now all of a sudden, we're hardly flush with all star contenders, but we have Rafferty and Grennan that played well in that line, Evans could be on his way back and others such as Mark Cassidy and Sean Casey are waiting in the wings.

For how long did we keep falling back on Basil Malone for corner forward, a decent hard working club player who was never going to make an impact at top level intercounty? Now all of a sudden we have one blue chip corner forward in Niall Mac, with an array of options to play alongside him, albeit with Deehan in pole position. Again, I'm not saying we're leaving Colm Cooper standard players on the bench, but there are plenty of guys who are showing something in the club championship knocking on the door.

And right now big fielders are the missing piece of the puzzle. my gut feeling is that James Keane might be the closest thing to an answer we have, but in truth I'd say what we'll have to do is figure out some tactical solution to compensate, which you would hope Roe would be capable of. I'ts not like the problem hasn't been flagged up enough God knows.