you fancy Clare to do anything this year? would have thought with Donal Og bringing a bit of science and freshness to Davy’s training surely they are primed for a serious assault? they have the players…also with Tipp losing a lot to retirement?..
Skill levels in both football and hurling have always been constantly improving.
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I don’t know in truth.
But for what it is worth we had a novice doing the conditioning training last year and no hurling/skills coach involved in the set up until June. Our hurling was nothing more than pedestrian in any game i saw last year. The addition of Og Cusack, Aenghus O’Brien and Jimmy Payne to the backroom team should help an awful lot in terms of fitness and sharpness which should see them in far better shape come the summer but there are issues in relation to the balance of the side especially in the full backline, midfield and inside forward line that need to be rectified and whether the manager is willing to do this is another question.
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Example of imbalance? Wasn’t Clare’s whole 2013 style built around compensating for their weaknesses, surely with the input of Donal óg they can do so again?
I wouldn’t agree that their style was built around compensating for their weaknesses. Their game in 2013 was built upon a huge workrate and sharpness in their hurling which teams couldn’t contend with. They did use a sweeper v Galway to limit Joe Canning and stuck with it against Limerick as the five forwards were working incredibly hard as a unit and putting savage pressure on the opponents backs when they were on the ball. But aside from the sweeper there to protect the full backline was little else in terms of compensating for weakness. The majority of puckouts were sent long and both short and long ball were utilised to very good effect and neither was overdone and there was excellent movement up front and in their support play.
Since then the sharpness in their hurling hasn’t been there meaning that they are consistently losing out when competing for breaks which in turn leads to a breakdown in support play and Conor McGrath being asked to play 80 yards from goal as management try and compensate for this by commiting as many players as possible to the middle third and Shane O’Donnell isolated on his own inside.
Davy as was evident in his time with Waterford as well is also loyal to certain players to a fault. The likes of Bugler, Honan and Colin Ryan to name a few always seem to be picked when fit regardless of form, the first two in particular do not merit inclusion based on the last two years while Ryan is a solid hurler he is a gadget player and doesn’t have the engine to play in the middle third IMHO. Pat Donnellan is another favourite and while he did drop him for the Wexford replay in 2014 and Cork match last year he should have been dropped based on form long before that.
Until Davy unearths a corner back to partner Dillon and McInerney in the full backline or two if they decide to move McInerney out to the half backline, a ballist to play beside Galvin in midfield and comes up with something better than asking an isolated Shane O’Donnell to run to either corner flag to win the ball we won’t d much. A change in how the manager wants the team to hurl and who we wants to hurl is needed along with what have been positive changes to the backroom team. they don’t need to be drastic changes but changes are needed none the less, but we are dealing with what can be a stubborn man.
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would Donal Og have been brought in to fend off the possibility of a player revolt do you think?..do you think any players would have went to Davy and said change something or go? or would that not be allowed happen in his regime?
The players bottled it IMHO. The likes of Bugler, Donnellan, Ryan, Golden and a few others would have realised that if Davy went their I/C careers would be over while surprisingly enough some big names on the panel like Conlon and O’Donnell would have serious time for Davy. The players simply didn’t have the appetite for it. Some clubs made a small bit of noise but executive swept it under the rug.
Davy mirco managed the shit out of this group and it has eroded completely the leadership within the players to a point where they are completely beholden to the manager and a lack of onfield collective leadership, which was evident in the second half v Cork last year when the game started to turn against us.
Donal Og was brought in as Davy knows it is shit or get off the pot, he approached a number of coaches last year and he could not get any to work under the remit he laid out. I can only assume he has done a u turn this year and has relinquished some control to convince him and Aenghus O’Brien to come on board
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There was a strong emphasis on breaking ball to the ground and hunting breaks in packs to ensure winning it there, and on retaining possession, to make up for perceived lack of ball winners though.
I wouldn’t really agree. I would say that during the league and the first two championship matches in 2013 there was more an emphasis of compensating for weakness with the use of a lot of short passing, puckouts and line balls to retain possession and men moving off the shoulder for passing.
They got the balance right come late July and it was more a case of playing to their strengths as opposed to protecting weaknesses. A lot of players came to form at the right time and their workrate and sharpness meant that they were able to vary their hurling, the emphasis on retaining possession disappeared the longer the year went on and it was very much a case of heads up hurling and relying on players to make the right decisions when on the ball. The movement of Podge and Tony Kelly (&McGrath come September) made it very hard for teams to get a grips with them which also helped
More of these armchair clowns thinking players are robots.
Bar 3-4 counties in either code you are way way better off just playing club these days. The relative rewards are almost the same at this stage. Club game still has fun element and a general approach. Competition structure is ridiculous at county level and the gaa don’t give a fuck.
Are you retarded?
Why do you think they fight tooth and nail to stay in jobs they are clearly not wanted in? Cos its under the table and once its over its over.
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Same in football
So he got the hump cos he was shit and now wants manager out?
I know an intercounty manager who was about to be shown the road for gross incompetence who broke down crying saying how much he needed to 40K that the year was worth to him.
County Boards generally dont pay managers anyway.
Relatively speaking he wasn’t. He won a couple of frees, scored 6 or 7 points from frees and got one from play and set up a goal in the half an hour or so he was on the pitch to put some respectability on the scoreline while there were lads who were miles off the pace and being taken to the cleaners throughout who played the full 70 minutes.
I doubt many would have cared if he was subbed off for playing poorly as this has happened him numerous times in his I/C career, his substitution summed up the terrible decision making and lack of organisation on the line that day and the optics looked terrible. I would say that most if not all adult gaa teams in the country would be collectively pissed off to see a teammate of theirs treated as such and is one of the many reasons the players seem to have little time for Cunningham
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Was it a dual All Ireland winning legend?
@Big_Dan_Campbell - re Paul Ryan
Years ago I was friendly with a selector on the Dublin SF team. He was an early adopter of stats analysis. One of the stats he had done was to analyse the positions most subbed off and a startlingly high proportion of the players subbed off (this was in the days of 3 subs) were corner forwards. Given that a poor performance from a corner forward was more likely to be the symptom rather than the cause of a teams problems your man generally considered managers who subbed off a corner forward to be clowns who didn’t know what they were doing.
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Sure thats almost every manager in hostory of GAA up to about 10 years ago.
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In which code?
Go away out of that you charlatan… bar three or four counties you say… name them so… your some man for the shite talk… by any chance are those three or four counties the only ones with high performance sets ups!! You ape