Kildare v Offaly

Feely is back but Flynn and Cribbin are still out.

What changes are we likely to make? I'd start Leper at full forward in the hope that he can make the ball stick inside. We seriously lack ball winning forwards.

I wouldn't have leper ahead of smith on the FF line.

Feely is apparently being lined up to play inside.

I'd go
Donnellan

Fitzpatrick
Kelly
Lyons

Hyland
Doyle
Conway

Moolick
O'Neill

McNally
Kelly
O'Neill

E O'Flaherty
Feely
Healy

SeamusMurphy wrote:

Beat offaly, get cork at home, get tipp in the last 12.. all sorted.

Not that we'll get that far aren't we on the side of the draw that plays the Ulster or Leinster runners up? So Don/Tyr presumably as we've already played WM?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Let's get over Offaly first.

umpireonditch wrote:

Feely is apparently being lined up to play inside.

I'd go
Donnellan

Fitzpatrick
Kelly
Lyons

Hyland
Doyle
Conway

Moolick
O'Neill

McNally
Kelly
O'Neill

E O'Flaherty
Feely
Healy

While we are sadly lacking a more physical option up front I haven't seen much from Feely to suggest he can do a "Kieran Donaghy". But good to have him available. Would have been happier if one of Flynn/Cribbin were back honesty.

Not sure crofter tbh.. all unlikely of course, but could we not meet WM again ?.

OTB not a bad idea re Feely , but I'd have Neill flynn and smithy along side him.. although you have paudie in 2 spots.. Eoin flats at wing forward.

Flamingo wrote:

HauntedGraffiti wrote:

Re the debate on social side of GAA, agree it is out of control.

I know Joe Brolly frequently goes haywire but I think he's dead right when he says that players aren't developing into fully rounded up people.

I was saying to someone recently - the best midfield partnership I ever saw was Liam Hayes and Gerry McEntee for Meath. Hayes was a journalist and McEntee a surgeon; with their working hours and lifestyles they would be told to get lost by all inter-county managers. It has made the overall culture of GAA much poorer. You've seen this with Jack McCaffrey - if you want to have a challenging career, you have to opt out.

I also think this affects leadership in teams, as there is much to life than GAA and what you learn in the course of a proper career makes into a much more rounded person, who can inspire others around them. You saw that on that Meath team with the likes of Hayes, McEntee and O'Rourke on that great Meath team - guys who weren't afraid to speak their minds and take charge.

They actually had one of the greatest managers of all time in Sean Boylan - and they'd still take him to task. Could you imagine any of the Kildare players under McGeeney, for example, really challenging him? They were in awe of him, verging on sycophancy, and that's never a good place to be.

But a lot of the culture now around GAA teams has to do with Ireland's hopelessly dysfunctional attitude to alcohol.

+1 here.
The lads playing county these days are often bored and boring and that shows on the field. They don't play off the cuff and won't take matters into their own hands.
They have no life and never get the chance to live with so much control.
The GPA are all about player welfare and are now talking about life balance but they never come out once and say that the managers are demanding too much of players as they are often founding members.

Why can't one county think outside the box. We are wasting our time trying to do a Dub-lite. The players need to accept that they are not at the level they think they are and need to get the dirty business of clawing their way back up to a better standard.
It's so worrying right now the lack of basic fight in the team that I don't fancy us against an Offaly side who will be up for a derby.

Funny Tyrone, Donegal Galway or Dublin don't look too bored. If the players a bored and not enjoying representing their county they should head out the gate. This county would be better with players that want to play rather than those that don't.

umpireonditch wrote:

Feely is apparently being lined up to play inside.

I'd go
Donnellan

Fitzpatrick
Kelly
Lyons

Hyland
Doyle
Conway

Moolick
O'Neill

McNally
Kelly
O'Neill

E O'Flaherty
Feely
Healy

O Neill is a decent footballer but asking him to play both midfield and wing forward is a bit much!

Given that Cribbin and Flynn are out, I think Feely has to play midfield, the alternatives aren't really there.

In one of his interviews earlier in the year O’Neill said the plan in terms of S&C was to look at what level guys would need to be at come September and work backwards from there.

If the plan was for guys to be on holidays or to wrap up the club championship in September then we’re well on course. Hitting your peak in September on the off chance you get to play Kerry or Dublin isn’t much use if you’re not in a position to get over division 3 and 4 teams a couple of months earlier. Like football and rugby I don’t really think GAA lends itself towards peak training (unless you’re Dublin, Kerry or Kilkenny). You need to have a strong enough base level to carry you through the season and then depending on your schedule tailor things to keep lads fresh.

For the Offaly game I’d go with;

Gk – Donnellan

Man markers – Peter Kelly, Hyland, Fitzpatrick, Doyle

Freeman / sweeper – Morgan Flats

Midfield – Moolick, O’Neill

Runners – Bolton, McNally, Lyons

Linkmen – Eoin Flats, Leper

Inside forwards – Flynn, Niall Kelly

Leaves the likes of Smith and Healy to come off the bench along with Feely if we’re going to try go with a target man. We can talk about how good or how much potential some of the younger players have but without Leper, Bolton and Smith we’d have struggled to beat the likes of Limerick and Clare over the last few years.

If that lad who wore number 7 for Offaly against us in the O’Byrne has managed to find his shooting boots since then we’re in for a bit of a repeat of the Westmeath game with a defender just strolling up the pitch unmarked and taking on shots for fun.

A trip to Clones or Castlebar in the next round isn’t exactly ideal, preferably Mayo just to go on the piss in Westport for a few days I suppose but after that there’s not a lot to be cheery about. If Limerick got past Cork there’s no way they wouldn’t fancy themselves against us.

If we do end up with Feely inside I think we can conclude that Cian O'Neill is seriously over-thinking his selections. Feely's position is midfield. Smith's is full forward. Just play them there, or nowhere at all. I'd go with something like:
Donnellan
Kelly Hyland Lyons
Doyle Conway Byrne
Moolick Feely
Bolton E O'Flaherty O'Neill
Flynn Smith Kelly
Not the greatest team we've ever put out but enough there to beat Offaly if we don't over-think it or go with an overly complicated game plan.
I'm all for blanket defence against the top teams, but you need different approaches depending on the opposition. You don't play the same formation against Barcelona as you do against Stoke.
The reality is that we've gotten far worse since we went with eight defenders in our starting 15. In the spring we were a bit too good for division three level - in summer we've struggled against two teams that will play division four next year.

20 euro in, the county board should pay supporters to go,lol.not worth 20 euro,offaly played galway home and away lost by 3pts and 4 pts,in two challange matches in last 2 weeks.still think we will win by 4 or 5 pts.

spot on wrote:

20 euro in, the county board should pay supporters to go,lol.not worth 20 euro,offaly played galway home and away lost by 3pts and 4 pts,in two challange matches in last 2 weeks.still think we will win by 4 or 5 pts.

Croke park are setting prices not Kildare county board just shows what u know about gaa

fone wrote:

spot on wrote:

20 euro in, the county board should pay supporters to go,lol.not worth 20 euro,offaly played galway home and away lost by 3pts and 4 pts,in two challange matches in last 2 weeks.still think we will win by 4 or 5 pts.

Croke park are setting prices not Kildare county board just shows what u know about gaa

haha meeeeeeow

Regardless of who set the price its a fair bit on the steep side.

Croke Park staying true to themselves by keeping their heads up their arses in regards to all things non blue.

I like ohtoohtobe's team with one change, Morgan instead of Bolton.
Best we can do as far as I can see is beat Offaly and try and give one of the teams in the next round a bloody nose a and go out fighting.

I presume you can pay at the gate, I have not seen all ticket anywhere.

Regardless of the team picked, it doesn't look like cian is going to change the system for this game.
If so I'd play Houli and mcnally as the 2 wing forwards.

Playing a defensive system against the mighty Wexford Westmeath & possibly Offaly I think our manager might be out of his depth playing like that against these teams.

Did Donegal not go with a defensive system against the mighty Antrim in the first round of the Ulster championship in 2011?

if_in_doubt wrote:

Did Donegal not go with a defensive system against the mighty Antrim in the first round of the Ulster championship in 2011?

All very well if it works. . It's clearly not working for us, and yes you might say it takes time, but at what cost.

SeamusMurphy wrote:

if_in_doubt wrote:

Did Donegal not go with a defensive system against the mighty Antrim in the first round of the Ulster championship in 2011?

All very well if it works. . It's clearly not working for us,  and  yes you might say it takes time, but at what cost.

Well that's the thing though, it's bound to take time for people to get used to playing in this sort of system.

I suppose you have to weigh up the effect of going out and playing defensively against division 3 and 4 teams against going out to play Dublin or Kerry and trying to introduce a defensive gameplan that you've only worked on for a couple of weeks in training.

One of the main worries I'd have is the fact we went through the O'Byrne Cup and league without any tactics in place. O'Neill has since said that the gameplan we have now was his plan all along. Not really sure how effectively he can judge players that were training or playing earlier in the year when the role or approach is completely different to what we're working on now.

if_in_doubt wrote:

Did Donegal not go with a defensive system against the mighty Antrim in the first round of the Ulster championship in 2011?

Correct but they went on to win the Ulster Final

jim wrote:

if_in_doubt wrote:

Did Donegal not go with a defensive system against the mighty Antrim in the first round of the Ulster championship in 2011?

Correct but they went on to win the Ulster Final

Donegal also had well established footballers in their ranks like Christy Toye, McFadden, Neil McGee, Kevin Cassidy, Karl Lacey. Coupled with Paddy McBrearty and Michael Murphy they had some fine well established footballers.
These boys were well seasoned footballers in 2011 and also I think Football in Ulster at this time had declined with Armagh and Tyrone going through a phase of rebuilding themselves.

We are a work in progress and I'm more than happy to persist with the defensive system for the time being if we can see an improvement with it's implementation as time goes on.

I would also like to see a massive massive improvement in the commitment of the players themselves on the pitch. Up their work rate. As McGeeney said on off the ball the other night, if you change your mentality, everything else falls into place. I suspect a lot of our lads mentally aren't in a great place.

There won't be any time for improvement if we lose to offaly.
But agree, the time to work on this is pre and during the o Byrne cup.

Was listening to Aaron Kernan talking about the Westmeath game on Newstalk, thought what he had to say was fascinating.
He goes on about how ridiculous it was that we had so many men back and still left James Dolan alone in the square for the goal ("How is that even possible" he said). Then he talks about how there's a huge difference from earlier in the season, here's what he said, make of it what you will:

"Crossmaglen actually played Kildare prior to our All-Ireland club semi-final. We went down to Hawkfield. They beat us well, it was probably a waste of a night for them. We would always be fairly competitive against county teams when we've a big game coming up but they beat us very well. But that night they were playing really well, they were moving the ball really well, they were constantly looking to move it, you could hear Cian O'Neill shouting, you could hear them all shouting to move it to the next line, move it to the next line, and it was all with their foot they were doing it. It was very hard to get tackles in because the ball was always gone, they had runners coming from everywhere. But they had energy, they had confidence, now granted, things were going their way, but since then their style seems to have completely changed. There's an awful lot of energy expended on running, hand-passing, soloing, and the same direct style of football they were playing ... it's not there any more. They're obviously more defensive now. To me, I'm not really sure they know where they're at, it looks like the confidence is draining out of them, possibly because they're not sure of the game that they're trying to implement... they just don't look assured and it was evident in James Dolan's goal, it knocked the stuffing out of them and then how the game just ran away from them. That'll be bitterly disappointing for them."

I listened to that Aaron Kernan piece and when you read through it again, it makes for interesting reading. Fair play for posting it.The players do not know what thay are doing. In fairness to Cian, he had to try something to stop us leaking chances. The Clare game in CP made his mind up. It hasnt helped that Wexford and Westmeath both parked the bus too. I dont think Offaly will so at least we should get a decent game of football.