O'Byrne Cup 2023

So the O’Byrne Cup gets the season tomorrow night.

Away to Wexford in Piercestown tomorrow at 20:00. Home to Louth at 14:00 on Saturday, then away to Westmeath in Kinnegad at 20:00 on the 11th.

Winner of our group plays the winner of Group 3 in the semi final so barring a major shock that’ll be Dublin. Coming out of a 4 team group as opposed to a 3 team group should give the winners of our group home advantage in that one.

Team for tomorrow already named as follows;

1 Mark Donnellan
2 Jack Quinn
3 Mike Joyce
4 Darragh Malone
5 Paddy McDermott
6 Jack Sargeant
7 Kevin Flynn
8 Aaron Masterson
9 Alex Beirne
10 David Hyland
11 Barry Coffey
12 Shane O’Sullivan
13 Jack Robinson
14 Darragh Kirwan
15 Paddy Woodgate

Subs; 16 Aaron O’Neill, 17 Mick O’Grady, 18 Tony Archbold, 19 Matt Kelly, 20 Kevin O’Callaghan, 21 Brendan Gibbons, 22 Jimmy Hyland, 23 Rian Teehan, 24 Ronan Fitzsimons, 25 Mark Glynn, 26 Cein McMonagle

Mixture of experience and youth as always for this time of year and even if the starting 15 is unchanged there's bound to be some positional changes before throw in.

No expectations on this really, would imagine given how we approached this competition last year and how we played throughout the league and up to the Leinster final, whatever game plan we see in these 3 games will be what management will stick with for the rest of the season.

I hope this isn’t a sign that they’re going to persist with Kevin Flynn at half-back. I still can’t understand why they moved him back after the league last year. He has great energy in midfield but is clearly lacking defensively.

Good to see Barry Coffey involved. Hopefully his injuries are behind him.

Be good to get a few extra games before the league but the main thing is to play a system that gives us the best chance of winning games and then stick to it.
This is managements second year so you need to see improvement not only in structure but fitness as we were miles off it last year when it counted.

Hard to get excited about this year after the wasted year last year. Let's hope that the blind faith in certain players and tactics are not repeated. Good to see Robinson listed and Beirne at midfield is interesting.

Interesting team. Good to see Coffey & Robinson named to play. David Hyland at no.10 maybe gives an insight into a more defensive game this year. Hopefully management have learnt from the catastrophe of a Leinster final last year. It may be only January, but we have to have eyes on thinking of playing Dublin in Croker in both league & championship this year. An open porous defence will just not cut it at this level.

I was optimistic about 2023 if we could get Mark Dempsey back (and Luke Flynn). If it's true that we don't have either and we're also losing Shea Ryan I can't see us doing much - the loss of a full back who had a really good season will make our weak defence even weaker.

Shea Ryan is not gone for the year, back within two weeks.

Tonight's O Byrne Cup SF game - Wexford v Kildare - will now take place in St Patricks Park Enniscorthy with an 8.00pm throw in time.

It's a thing on every county forum but why are we obsessed with naming lads who are NOT on the panel and hoping they will come back in.
Lads have been in and out of trial games and O'Byrne Cup panels eg Robinson need to leave a manager no choice in terms of staying there.

Let's focus on who we have. For me Doyle and Hyland may as well have not been there last year so they are major players if they are put in. The younger Naas lads have another year of conditioning behind them too.

I'd hope that we have a defensive structure in place this year and not one that just appears v Mayo after we left it all wide open v the Dubs. Murray was slated but he was being picked and getting no real protection. That's on the management.

Also, we expect so much of Dan Flynn and come at him because we know what he can do, but the other lads up front need to step up a lot too when it comes to the big games.

As I said lads who have not been brought in or can't commit are no use chatting about. I think we the system to not be so open is the key, Christ we talk about the Dubs but Westmeath should have beaten us!

It's all geared to two games against dubs leinster semi ,and first league game ,these two games are massive

Thin Blue Line wrote:

Shea Ryan is not gone for the year, back within two weeks.

This is the best news I've heard in a long time, thanks. I think the season would have been almost a write off without him, you can have all the systems you want but it takes good defenders to make them work.

Hard to look too into games at this time of year, but we have excellent scoring potential. Woodgate, Robinson & Kirwan scored at ease tonight. When you add in the quality of Neil Flynn, Jimmy, Ben & Dan Flynn it really shows the forwards we have at our disposal.

Pretty good game of football for the time of year. Fitness looked good first day out and there was decent forward play. Lots of options there. A bit loose in the backs and we still don't seem to have a kickout strategy apart from Kick it to the wings.

Anyway, good to be back at it. Here's to a long year.

Encouraged with how vocal players were throughout. Seemed to be more organised tracking back and covering empty space to limit running areas for Wexford's middle 8. Also pushed up well when they went short with their kickouts, and forced a few turnovers and long balls.

Full forward line were impressive, good movement and took some nice scores. Good to see us work the goal quickly from a free in the middle and be positive trying to create breaks like that.

Plenty to work on but might as well try take some positives from it.

Did david hyland play as a sweeper ??

I will wait to see the league games. Not holding out much hope to be honest. I think we can be 2nd Best team in leinster at most at the minute. But until we get settled and aggressive back 6 we will always struggle.
How did Sargent play last night

https://twitter.com/OfficialWexGAA/status/1610788783301050368?t=RNJqtPsLGZf49bgV5rM1dA&s=19



1. Wexford TV (class, we are so behind)
2. Defense ffrailties again on show
3. Mike Joyce got absoutley burned there again, he is too slow for club football never mins Intermountain.
4. No.2, Jack Quinn with the high ball and should have been a goal.

That's from a 2 min clip!!

Was a good game for 4th Jan, we definitely set up with a more defensive shape getting lots of bodies behind the ball and trying to break quickly, we did it successfully at times and at times early on did not get enough pressure on the ball and in 2nd half got caught out by long ball a couple of times, but it was good to see the intention of what we were trying to implement, Louth & Westmeath will be tougher opponents but that is exactly what we need. Hard to say that any of the backs nailed down a spot, though they all had good moments. We had a lot of bodies dropping back and working around the middle third and the plan seemed to be to move the ball quickly into full forward line which worked, with Robinson 6 excellent points, 5 from play in 1st half, think Kirwan finished with 6 points and Woodgate 1-3, the other scores coming from Daragh Malone. Beirne and McMonagle late on, so 1-15 from full forward line is good any day of the week. The positives for me were Robinsons inclusion and perfomance, Beirne at midfield looks a good option, the transition from defence to attack was good, and the overall energy and attitude that we brought to the game. The big issue going forward will be to find a few quality defenders who can make it at the top level and to cement in a sound defensive system

ClaneLillywhite wrote:

https://twitter.com/OfficialWexGAA/status/1610788783301050368?t=RNJqtPsLGZf49bgV5rM1dA&s=19



1. Wexford TV (class, we are so behind)
2. Defense ffrailties again on show
3. Mike Joyce got absoutley burned there again, he is too slow for club football never mins Intermountain.
4. No.2, Jack Quinn with the high ball and should have been a goal.

That's from a 2 min clip!!

2 Round Towers in the squad, I wonder why. No room for sentiment this year Glen, pick your best players available!

Joyce is baffling. He wouldn’t get on the top club teams in Kildare. I just don’t see it at all.

Any update on Ben McCormack and Eoin Doyle. Not involved again tomorrow

Plenty of changes to tomorrow's team as expected. Would hope we're not going to continue seeing weekly rotation in goals when the league starts up though.

1 Aaron O'Neill
2 Mick O'Gray
3 Mike Joyce
4 Darragh Malone
5 Tony Archbold
6 Ronan Fitzsimons
7 Matt Kelly
8 Brendan Gibbons
9 Alex Beirne
10 Mark Glynn
11 Barry Coffey
12 Cian McMonagle
13 Jimmy Hyland
14 Darragh Kirwan
15 Paddy Woodgate

Subs; 16 Mark Donnellan, 17 Paul Cribbin, 18 Aaron Masterson, 19 Jack Quinn, 20 Rian Teehan, 21 Jack Sargent, 22 Kevin O'Callaghan, 23 David Hyland, 24 Neil Flynn, 25 Jack Robinson, 26 Kevin Flynn

Alex Beirne could be an experiment that works a la Kevin Flynn last year with a bit of luck.

I know you need to look at lots of lads but I hope our defence gets sorted a bit more before the first round of the league...but that is creeping up...

Management seem to think they can experiment a bit more while playing a free scoring full forward line to compensate for defensive failures. Probably a clever move in fairness!