Another cracking Galway defeat and you have fucktards on about the structures that are in place preventing them from winning a senior All Ireland. They are churning out minor and u21 All Irelands and have a very strong club championships yet itâs the structures that are the problem. One player moaned in some media outlet about the lack of connectivity between schools and clubs. Christ almighty.
Oisin Gough is out of the Tipp match with a broken hand
Great post. âStructuresâ is the biggest GAA cliche of the lot. The catch-all excuse for any defeat. Can see what it means in some counties eg Tyrone hurling or something but as youâve pointed out how the fuck can the structures be the problem for Galway with multiple vocational schools, minor, u21 and club all irelands.
Iâm agreeing with ye lads in the fact that one teams performance isnât just down to structures and this Galway team have shown enough that they have the tools but have no consistancy and lack a bit of balls. But structures do matter and to say anything else is just burying your head in the sand. I donât know about the structures in Galway per say, but i know they are affecting Cork hurling. That doesnât excuse inept performances like both teams had this year, but certainly in Corks case it is part of the issue.
I think the point being made though is that the âstructureâ is being used as an easy excuse, when all the evidence of underage and especially club success points to a structure that is actually working. Galway hurling remains a mystery to me, they always have at least some excellent players but are the eternal chokers.
McIntyre future with Tribesmen hinges on âroot and branchâ review by board
Galway hurling officials have decided to carry out a âroot and branchâ review before they decide whether John McIntyre remains as manager for a fourth year.
Galwayâs dreadful Leinster semi-final loss to Dublin and the subsequent championship exit when they collapsed against Waterford, has caused widespread anger among clubs and followers.
It looks as if it will be at least the end of September before McIntyreâs fate will be decided after Galway hurling board decided to carry out an investigation after the countyâs worst performance for years.
Galway have not won the All-Ireland title since 1988 â they have not got past the quarter-final stage since 2005 â and McIntyre said after the Waterford defeat they were further away than ever.
âWe are going to take a serious look into hurling in the county,â said board chairman Joe Byrne.
âWe have not been in hiding since last Sunday week. We are all gutted, but there is no point rushing into a decision. When we decide where we want to go we will put that in place and then decide who our manager will be.â
The hurling board will present their proposed review strategy to club delegates at a meeting next Thursday, but the entire process is unlikely to be completed until late in September.
âThe opinions of clubs are fundamental to this review,â said Byrne. "We will be looking for feedback from people who have a lot to offer Galway hurling.
vital
âBut a manager can only manage the strategy that we put in place and it is vital we have that right. It might be October before we decide who our next manager will be, but it may be September.â
As well as reviewing the state of inter-county hurling, the board will also ask clubs their opinions on the structure of the hurling championship in Galway.
A Galway football club, meanwhile, is taking an objection to the Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA) in a bid to be re-instated to the senior football championship.
Mountbellew/Moylough, who were knocked out of the Galway SFC when they were beaten by 1-10 to 0-12 by Micheal Breathnach, believe the Connemara side fielded an ineligible player.
They contend sub Tommy Conneely, whose home club is Na Piarsaigh in Connemara, was not eligible to play senior for his neighbouring club and only had clearance to play at U-21 level.
The matter has been dealt with at Galway County Board and Connacht Council levels, with Mountbellew/Moylough being reinstated at one stage before that decision was reversed. This weekendâs clash between Micheal Breathnach and Cortoon Shamrocks has been called off pending the outcome.
Irish Independent
No one lines an aul root and brach sub committee quite like the GAA.
- David Herity Dunnamaggin
2, Paul Murphy Danesfort - Noel Hickey Dunnamaggin
- Jackie Tyrrell James Stephens
- Tommy Walsh Tullaroan
- Brian Hogan OâLoughlin Gaels (Captain)
- J.J. Delaney Fenians
- Michael Fennelly Ballyhale Shamrocks
- Michael Rice Carrickshock
- T.J. Reid Ballyhale Shamrocks
- Richie Power Carrickshock
- Eoin Larkin James Stephens
- Colin Fennelly Ballyhale Shamrocks
- Henry Shefflin Ballyhale Shamrocks
- Richie Hogan Danesfort
Subs;P.J. Ryan, Michael Kavanagh, John Dalton, Paddy Hogan, James âChaâ Fitzpatrick, Eddie Brennan , Conor Fogarty ,Kieran Joyce, Richie Doyle, John Mulhall , Mathew Ruth
H Shefflin can be ruled out anyway. Slipped with his studs on inside in the dressing room of Nowlan park this evening. The âgoodâ knee apparently is like a balloon. He was sent directly to Wexford for cryotherapy but the signs are not good.
Looks like a break for Waterford, Iâd be lumping on at this stage. M Rice doubtful also, looking like a late fitness test for him.
Cody it seems has truly disregard his mantra of playing the fit players in form. Waterford by 5 I reckon.
Bench doesnâtlook very strong, Brennan the only outstanding forward option. I think Hickey is past his best at FB too though Shane Walsh may suit him. Still think KK will win but donât see it being as easy as many think it will be.
The Shefflin rumour was dismissed by people on kkcats who claim to have direct connections to Henry. Also the price Kilkenny are has not changed. You would expect it would if it was the case as itâs paddypowerâs business to know these things. Might be something in it but Iâm skeptical.
Itâs probably completely nuts but I have a sneaky Waterford could sneak this, sneakily. This isnât based on much more than a hunch that some of Kilkennyâs key players have regressed (Hickey, Tyrrell, Delaney to an extent and possibly Shefflin and Larkin) and that it will take a game like this to expose it. Think the Leinster Final scoreline was a false one, Kilkennyâs used their vast experience to kill Dublin off early but I donât think it was type of dominant Kilkenny performance weâve come to expect over the last few years, Dublin stuck with them all the way even if there was never a realsitic chance of making up the deficit. Thereâs real quality in that Waterford team. Davy may not have it tactically but motivation wise the man deserves serious credit for the way he rose Waterford. Kilkenny wonât bamboozle anybody with tactics anyway. Waterford just need to fight like dogs when they donât have the ball, what they do when they have the ball is the key. There are goals to be had with fast low ball to hand. Prendergast looked a player revitalised the last day, he has a massive role to play. Perhaps Eoin Kelly will pull out a big performance tomorrow?
Last time Tyrone beat Dublin in a quarter final Waterford beat Tipp in the semi the next day. Omens, every little helps.
Waterford 3-18 Kilkenny 2-17
Waterford have no chance. Tipp on the other hand will beat that KK side handy.
Agreed on both counts. If Hickey and Tyrrell line out in the KK full back line against Tipp then I think they will have no chance.
Maybe, but if youâre already writing Kilkenny off against Tipp (presumably on the basis that you also think they have regressed) isnât it a bit premature to say their opponents tomorow have no chance?
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Lyngâs perfect choice
The Kieran Shannon interview
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Derek Lyng won six All-Ireland medals and national acclaim in service of Kilkenny. But the path to becoming one of the greatest midfielders of his generation was an arduous one.
CHOICES. Life tends to hinge on the ones that you make. Derek Lyng knows that and it was probably Brian Cody who taught him just how true that is.
In the spring of 2002, a 24-year-old Lyng had just broken onto the Kilkenny team when his professional career prospects also brightened up. Heâd been offered a coveted sales rep job that heâd missed out on six months earlier. They had given him a brand new Ford Mondeo, the money was twice what he had been on, while on the companyâs three-week induction training course he learned they would also be offering to pay for his hotel for six months.
The only thing was, heâd learned, the hotel and the job would be based in Galway and during the week the job would own him.
The weekend prior to the final week of the course, Lyngâs new Mondeo was one of the first cars parked outside Nowlan Park, not so much to atone for missing the previous few midweek sessions but rather to explain his dilemma to Cody.
The conversation after that was pretty brief.
Do you want to be an inter-county hurler, Derek? Yes, of course. More than anything.
Well, then, Iâll leave it up to yourself, so.
The following Monday Lyng drove the Mondeo back up to Galway, informed the work crowd of his decision before he was then informed to get out of their sight and bring the car to Dublin that instant.
âThey were raging,â recalls Lyng. âThey didnât even meet in the office, I was to just leave the keys at the front desk. The mother had to come up to pick me up.â
Yet the moment Lyng walked out that door and towards his motherâs car, he experienced this feeling of profound clarity. He had made his choice. He was an inter-county hurler.
Last November he had another choice to make about whether to be an inter-county hurler or not, and again Cody had to be involved in the process. At Lyngâs request they met for a coffee in the Hotel Kilkenny. Lyngâs body was telling him it could no longer do what it used do so he was telling Cody the same thing. He was retiring. An empathetic Cody advised him to sleep some more on it, but the following day Lyng called to Codyâs school to shake him by the hand. Nine years and six All-Ireland medals on, it was time to step back across the line theyâd drawn together back that spring of 2002.
It hasnât been as easy living with that decision as leaving back the Mondeo was. For all the pain and injuries heâs suffered, heâs still in good shape and still loves to train, still loves to compete, but the transition of going from playing with one of the most elite teams in Irish sports history to just playing exclusively with the club has been a shock to the system.
Itâs the same as clubs all over the country. You might be hanging around for ages just for teams to be picked in training. There might be no water, no one picking up sliotars, lads just stroll onto the pitch and tap the ball around. With Kilkenny, everything was in place and everything was done at pace and with purpose. You had no lads fooling around wasting their time playing crossbar challenge. Instead youâd be out on the field at least 45 minutes before training and seeing Henry with a set of sliotars trying to slot them over that crossbar, or James McGarry there earlier again inviting you, demanding you, to lash it at him or past him.
That culture is hardly there with the club. "Itâs frustrating. Youâll have lads saying, âAh, the drills are shiteâ and youâre saying to them, âNo, the drills arenât shite; itâs our application to the drills that is shite.â Lyng has found himself stepping on a few toes this year and it hasnât always been appreciated. But, he also realises, hurling doesnât and canât come first to a lot of them, and an intermediate club like the Emeralds in Urlingford canât be expected to be Kilkenny. Besides, the club has been good to him. It was always there for him when no one else would have him.
Everywhere Paudie Butler goes, spreading the hurling gospel, he mentions the story of Derek Lyng.
How a player who was constantly told he was just a plodder and a junior club player became a six-time All-Ireland winner; how a player who for years was boxed in at corner back or corner forward blossomed into becoming the second coming of Frank Cummins and one of the finest midfielders of his generation.
And itâs only right Butler does, because itâs a story every player and coach should know.
Choices. Back when Lyng was a fresher in Waterford IT, every prospective member of the GAA club was asked to fill in a sheet and there was one particular question that Lyng mulled over.
Have you played minor for your county? For a moment he considered answering in the affirmative but ultimately honesty got the better of him. No, he hadnât. Truth be told, he couldnât even make the teams in St Kieranâs.
Sure enough, that first year in Waterford, Lyng was nowhere near the Fitzgibbon panel and with the freshers found himself on the bench for the All-Ireland final, wondering did he tick the right box to that question.
Because perception counts and he knew that ever before he arrived in Waterford.
When he breezed into St Kieranâs he did so with great ambitions but after a poor game at corner back found himself a sub with the U14s for the rest of first year. He didnât make the U16 squad either and only made the senior colleges panel in his Leaving Cert year. Even then he was only a sub when they lost the Leinster colleges final.
"The finest of people were involved with those teams but I do remember it being thrown back at me a few times âNow thatâs the difference between playing junior hurling and playing senior colleges.â
âI always felt a guy with the same ability but from a different, more fashionable club was going to be picked over me, no question.â
It became somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy then, meaning Lyng, by his own admission, was also complicit in his own marginalisation. His first three years in Kieranâs were as a boarder and he resented its rigidity and somewhat rebelled against it too.
âJesus, when I look back on it, it was crazy stuff, having first years stuck in a study hall from 6.15 in the evening to 10 at night. You can see why there are no boarders now. Sure half the time youâd be just trying to distract yourself, and then when youâd finally get out, youâd head off to where the smokers were. I would have had the odd drag myself and the teachers and coaches would have spotted that. That might have coloured their perception of me as well. To be fair to them, I probably wasnât the best pupil and I probably didnât fully apply myself in the hurling too.â
It was in his second year in Waterford that he really began knuckling down. His old schoolmate Henry Shefflin was down there as well and at the time was being challenged by his county manager. âIn Kieranâs Henry would have had all the hurling and a great brain but he wouldnât have been the name that Richie Hogan or DJ would have been. He really could have gone either way. He had a couple of brothers who had played underage for the county and for some reason they had drifted away and I suppose back then Henry was a lumpy type of fella who could put on weight easily. But I remember being down in Waterford with him and him saying to me, âFeckinâ Cody is saying to me to watch what I eat and be careful about the beer.â But then after he got a taste for the lifestyle (of an athlete) he just drove on.â
Choices. Lyng began making a few big ones himself. A provisional Fitzgibbon panel were invited to attend the gym at 7.30 one morning, and while a couple of the county stars living with Lyng had enough credit in the bank to forsake it, Lyng knew he didnât have such dispensation and was duly the first person in the gym. That raised some eyebrows and by his final year in college he had made the Fitzgibbon panel and was a peripheral player on the Kilkenny U21 team that won the 1999 All-Ireland.
âMaybe at 18, 19 I was still a bit immature but I suppose I got fed up looking at friends and flatmates making teams and I began thinking, âYou should kick on now.â I suppose I wanted to prove a few people wrong or at least prove myself.â
Then came Noel Skehan and Brian Cody. Good things happen to good people, Butler tells everyone, when the right coaches come into their lives and Lyng was a classic example of that.
Lyng still remembers the excitement and honour of receiving a letter from Skehan inviting him to be a member of the Kilkenny intermediate panel.
"Noel gave me huge confidence. Heâd tell me, âYouâre good enough to be going on (to senior hurling).â
Another time he asked me did I prefer playing wing back or centre back. I said âCentre backâ and he said, âRight, weâre going to put you in there so.â" By the summer of 2000, Lyng was occasionally training with the county seniors and then the following year was drafted in to the panel proper. His playing time would be restricted to just a few leagues and garbage time in the Leinster championship but after Galway unceremoniously dumped his team out of the All-Ireland series, Cody realised he needed a different type of animal for 2002 and a grasseater like Lyng was just the type.
Choices. Lyng remembers that 2001 season driving back from work in Dublin to make every training session and a particular weekend that summer when the whole club headed to Killarney for a good bonding session.
âI was only on the fringes of the county panel at the time and could easily have rang Cody and made some excuse to go, but I remember talking to my father who was over the club team at the time and hearing all the boys in the background enjoying Killarney while at home the place was deserted, except for me, because I wanted to be right for training the next day.â
Chance as well as choice played its part too. Two weeks before the 2002 league, John Power was down to play centre forward in a Waterford Crystal game when he had to cry off and Cody informed Lyng in the dressing room theyâd be playing him there instead. The following week he scored five points from there against Meath. In the opening game of the league he gave Waterfordâs Fergal Hartley a hard enough time of it but then during the teamâs next game he was moved out to midfield and was picked to start there the next day out against Clare in Ennis.
A whole new world had opened up.
"That was a huge day for me, for us. I would have been in awe of Colin Lynch for years and honestly that day I remember just wanting not to be eaten alive. I look back on that day and wonder was God looking down on me?
âA ball broke between the two of us and I just let fly and we got a goal out of it. Another time then he went down the wing and I managed to block him and get the ball back and throw it out to one of our lads. Henry came out to centre forward that day as well and thatâs when things really started to click for us. Looking back that was probably the biggest match we had that year.â
Six months later they had beaten Clare again in the biggest game of them all and Lyng would partner Lynch on that yearâs All Star team. Someone who had only played a couple of games with his school and only one game underage for the county had become an overnight sensation at 24.
"A lot of it, midfield play, is about getting to the breaking ball first and by then I was physical enough to hold my own so I was confident that Iâd win it.
âBut I was still raw too. I wouldnât have taken the right options half the time. If I had the mind then that I have now Iâd have let the ball in more and wouldnât hit nearly as many silly wides.â
In later years though the body began to creak. During the 2007 season he learned his hip was already arthritic and would need to be replaced within 10 years. One specialist said he shouldnât even be hurling at all.
âI would have found it very hard mentally that year. Because naturally you were going, âJesus, am I going to be able to compete with lads?â I remember getting an injection soon after they told me all this and I felt great and was hurling out of my skin but then the pain started to come back and I found it hard to comprehend that I had arthritis in my hip and any day I could be playing my last game.â
The following year he had trouble with ankle ligaments and in 2009 he wasnât fit to start any game up until the All-Ireland final. But he did manage to start that final.
How? Choices. By having the car full of water bottles making sure he was properly hydrated and recovered. By blocking out the pain with some anti-inflammatories. By getting up to take spinning classes at 7am, or get an hour of aqua-jogging in at lunch in either the Watershed in Kilkenny or the national aquatic centre whenever the job as a hospital rep for GlaxoSmithKline took him to Dublin. All those silent choices and quiet hours is how he won so much and played on for so long but after only being a sub most of last year he knew it was time to go.
He still has enough to be doing. His wife Evelyn had little Jack three months back and with Ruth being only a year older the extra time at home has been useful. Funny, though, he can never seem to get away from Henry and the boys even when theyâre nowhere in sight. In weeks like this every sports journalist in the country seems to want a word from him on his old teammates and while heâs too obliging to refuse, itâs something that has surprised as much as amused him.
They still want more, he senses. He doesnât think the five-in-a-row talk affected them last September, they just met a savagely good and hungry Tipp team who got a few breaks while Kilkenny didnât, especially when Shefflin had to hobble off around the time Lar Corbett bagged his first goal (âWhen I saw Henry come off,â he says, âI began thinking, âFeck it, maybe this isnât our day.ââ) But now Henry is back and motoring as well as he was 12 months ago.
Lyng wants more too. Last Friday week the club played Dicksboro in a tournament game in Tullaroan and while they lost by four points it was great to just be out there and already heâs itching for their next championship game.
And the car is still full of water bottles.
Heâs still making the right choices.
Read more: http://examiner.ie/sport/gaa/lyngs-perfect-choice-163378.html#ixzz1UG7ARsT1[/left][/left]
Derek Lyng is a thoroughly alright sort.
I reckon weâll win by 5 tomorrow but Tipp will piss the All-Ireland.
Piles, I was chatting to Ron Jones yesterday evening and he was very critical of you for not being arsed attending the game tomorrow.
Jackie Tyrrell is a savage hurler, i cant agree with that assessment at all.
Iâll be there in spirit mate. Have to make do with hints and tellybox coverage.
Wonât get to see the final at all if we win tomorrow, which is more upsetting.