Clare GAA discussion thread

pugw

deisefolife wrote: »

I LMFAO at that comment.all day long..

no expense is being spared... after what he done to the Waterford county board..

Yes please enlighten us?

billo.d86

deisefolife wrote: »

I LMFAO at that comment.all day long..

no expense is being spared... after what he done to the Waterford county board..

Sure his dad is chairman of the county board. He is definitely given free reign.
The set-up has become a lot more professional since he started, proper conditioning coaches for a start.

No more jobs for the boyos.

billo.d86

premierstone wrote: »

See IMHO thats the biggest mistake Clare hurling could ever do and that is why it was a mistake to appoint Davy in the first place, forget the 90's its gone, this is a new set of players with completly new set of attributes, and FWIW potentially better hurlers IMO.

I think you have a point, but the mentality of the 90's squad was a winning mentality, like Kilkenny and Tipp have, playing well isnt good enough you need to win games and put teams to the sword.

You cant move forward without bringing along abit of what made you great before.

This team has championships in them with out a doubt.
The future is bright and for the minute I'm delighted with that its a long time since that has been the case.

Royal Legend

Not rubbing salt in the wound, but, when youse needed to change your tactics yesterday and go for it, you couldn't, its very hard to go from a defensive mindset to an offensive one.
For the first time in a couple of years the Waterford team went for it today vs Tipp, we did not have the depth of panel to beat them, but we gave it a go and hurled well against them. It was nice to see Waterford playing freely instead of negatively.

billo.d86

Royal Legend wrote: »

Not rubbing salt in the wound, but, when youse needed to change your tactics yesterday and go for it, you couldn't, its very hard to go from a defensive mindset to an offensive one.
For the first time in a couple of years the Waterford team went for it today vs Tipp, we did not have the depth of panel to beat them, but we gave it a go and hurled well against them. It was nice to see Waterford playing freely instead of negatively.

I think they didnt have it in the legs after the Dublin game, took a lot out of them.
When they needed to go for it against Dublin they showed what they were made of.
Soft goals, killed Clare and Waterford at the weekend.

premierstone

Royal Legend wrote: »

Not rubbing salt in the wound, but, when youse needed to change your tactics yesterday and go for it, you couldn't, its very hard to go from a defensive mindset to an offensive one.

Its going to look like I'm just having another pop at Davy, but I agree 100% that game was lost on the sideline, plain and simple, I mean how to hell could you not make a single change to a full back line that was getting murdered, even a positional one FFS.

marco_polo

Clareman wrote: »

..

More importantly we seriously need to tighten up in defence, for the the first time every (that I can remember) we have no problem with forwards (except for the half forwards giving away soft frees), each of the goals we conceded in the championship this year could have been stopped by a more decisive full back line (I'm including the free conceded against Waterford btw).

...

Unfortunately all three of the players who started there yesterday are probably more comfortable in the half back line. We are very much lacking in natural corner backs/ full backs and I'm not sure any of the more promising youngsters are ready for the step up just yet, so we will likely have to work with what we have next season. Hopefully the a full seasons exposure to top flight hurling in division 1A will stand to them.

Still think the Dillion FB experiment is worth persevering with for another another year, apart from a bad day at the office yesterday he has had a pretty solid season and shown plenty of improvement.

Clareman

Definitely not worth a knee jerk reaction of making mass changes, after all if we were to change after the 93 & 94 Munster finals we wouldn't be anywhere, playing in division 1 should be a brilliant learning curve for a full back line, we conceded more in 3 championship games than in the whole league.

The footballers got the worst draw possible (well could have been worse if it was away I guess), all they can hope for is that Kerry/Tyrone kill each other and take Clare for granted.

Mountainlad

buck65 wrote: »

Absolutely bizarre statement, Clare are having their best season since 2008.
Yes Davy Fitz was on that 90s team but no one hurling for Clare now were, it is a new team completely with a new playing style and training regime.
By all accounts no expense is being spared. County board are doing as their told.

That one game winning streak in the championship was mightily impressive.

I don't think Davy is up to it either to be honest. There was talk of how the players build up a stone in muscle this year and that to me is a very short sighted target that doesn't have any long term thinking behind it. The last few years Waterford have looked sluggish in my eyes, we were kept going by the fact that there were a lot of ordinary teams around and we have a better team than people recognize. There should be an even focus on skills development as there is on strength and conditioning but I don't think Fitzgerald has that capacity as a coach.

Christy O'Connor wrote in about how they climbed Carrauntoohil after a hard day training, having had very little to eat and not had proper hydration in the middle of the night and with terrible underfoot conditions. Not only is that stupidity from the point of view of players safety, it's utter lunacy. In the modern game it's all about speed onto the ball and speed with the ball. Sure, you need to be strong to win the ball and to tackle, but your hurling speed and actual pace are pivotal and Fitzgerald does not nurture that side of things. They were training at 6am and 6pm in January, it wouldn't surprise me if they were tired on Saturday because that kind of slog does not do the body any good.

Henno30

Some of the negativity directed towards the team would make you sick. Unfortunately every county has lots of these apes who do nothing but moan and criticise and such idiots are always the most vocal.

We have an extremely young and physically light team who are one by one starting to find their feet at senior intercounty level. We're giving away a huge amount in size physical strength to every team we meet and yet we are still nicely competitive. When the likes of Galvin and Kelly are more physically solid at this level they are going to be top class players. The same is true of Morey and Cunningham who both look very comfortable on the ball despite giving away at least a stone and a half in weight to most of the opponents they come up against.

Are there issues to be addressed? Of course there are. But in no way are this team at a stage where people can be griping and whinging about them not making All-Ireland semi-finals and finals. You'd like to think anyone with an ounce of hurling knowledge would recognise that. All you can look for with a young team is progress and we got it this year. Maybe next year, with a run of division 1A league games behind them we can think about a real crack at the Munster championship. These lads have time on their side, they're working unbelievably hard, and they've more talent coming after them. A little bit of positivity wouldn't go astray and it wouldn't hurt either.

yohan the great

Who would be clares best u21 players who are up to the age. They cant really rely that heavily on a bunch of 19 year olds

marco_polo

yohan the great wrote: »

Who would be clares best u21 players who are up to the age. They cant really rely that heavily on a bunch of 19 year olds

An awful lot of the minor team of 2009 are not in this years u21 team as they have been been surpassed by the standout players from the 2010 and 2011 Munster winning minor teams. I'd say there could be less than half of the 2009 minor team that take the field tommorrow night + another few on the bench.

The pick of the bunch that are around the 20-21 mark are the surviviors from the 2009 team, and a good chunk of them are in the senior squad already anyway.

edit 1: Oops Just say your post in the Waterford thread you seem to know all this already anyway so I really haven't answered your question at all, sorry.

edit 2: By happy coincidence I have just seen what is supposedly tommorrow nights team is (2009 minors bolded)

1. Ronan Taaffe
2. Killian Ryan
3. David McInerney
4. Paul Flanagan
5. Pat O'Connor
6. Conor Ryan
7. Seadna Morey
8. Colm Galvin
9. Shane Golden
10. Aaron Cunningham
11. Podge Collins
12. Tony Kelly
13. David O'Halloran
14. Conor McGrath
15. Cathal O'Connell.

Another survivor Cathal McInerney would probably have been expected to start instead of O'Connell at 15

Mountainlad

marco_polo wrote: »

An awful lot of the minor team of 2009 are not in this years u21 team as they have been been surpassed by the standout players from the 2010 and 2011 Munster winning minor teams. I'd say there could be less than half of the 2009 minor team that take the field tommorrow night + another few on the bench.

The pick of the bunch that are around the 20-21 mark are the surviviors from the 2009 team, and a good chunk of them are in the senior squad already anyway.

edit 1: Oops Just say your post in the Waterford thread you seem to know all this already anyway so I really haven't answered your question at all, sorry.

edit 2: By happy coincidence I have just seen what is supposedly tommorrow nights team is (2009 minors bolded)



Another survivor Cathal McInerney would probably have been expected to start instead of O'Connell at 15

Had a feeling Conor McGrath was still underage, don't think we've anyone to mark him.

Good all round team. We do to but Fives is a big loss and we've a few notable weak spots/bad selections. Think it'll be Clare again tonight, though obviously I hope I'm wrong.

premierstone

Henno30 wrote: »

Some of the negativity directed towards the team would make you sick. Unfortunately every county has lots of these apes who do nothing but moan and criticise and such idiots are always the most vocal.

We have an extremely young and physically light team who are one by one starting to find their feet at senior intercounty level. We're giving away a huge amount in size physical strength to every team we meet and yet we are still nicely competitive. When the likes of Galvin and Kelly are more physically solid at this level they are going to be top class players. The same is true of Morey and Cunningham who both look very comfortable on the ball despite giving away at least a stone and a half in weight to most of the opponents they come up against.

Are there issues to be addressed? Of course there are. But in no way are this team at a stage where people can be griping and whinging about them not making All-Ireland semi-finals and finals. You'd like to think anyone with an ounce of hurling knowledge would recognise that. All you can look for with a young team is progress and we got it this year. Maybe next year, with a run of division 1A league games behind them we can think about a real crack at the Munster championship. These lads have time on their side, they're working unbelievably hard, and they've more talent coming after them. A little bit of positivity wouldn't go astray and it wouldn't hurt either.

I think anyone with any semblence of knowledge of the game realises the huge talent and potentail Clare have, people haven't been negative towards the team, its that ''manager'' (I use the term lightly) and he's bizzare tactics that people are questioning.

ShamoBuc

yohan the great wrote: »

Who would be clares best u21 players who are up to the age. They cant really rely that heavily on a bunch of 19 year olds

Whatever their age, they are certainly well able to play!

Henno30

premierstone wrote: »

I think anyone with any semblence of knowledge of the game realises the huge talent and potentail Clare have, people haven't been negative towards the team, its that ''manager'' (I use the term lightly) and he's bizzare tactics that people are questioning.

The irrational hatred of some Tipp people towards Davy continues unabated

Firstly, Clare people would in general be aware of Davy's strengths and weaknesses. He doesn't have an outstanding track record as a technical/skills coach but he is very highly regarded for his ability to work with young players. There are plenty of ex-LIT men on the Tipp senior squad who would echo that sentiment.

At this point in time we have a young, physically light squad who need a coach like Davy to bring them up the athletic standard required at senior intercounty level. I don't know if he's the best man for them at this point in time, but I do know he's better than all the alternatives that presented themselves when the vacancy arose. It's easy complain about the man in charge but the onus is then on you to say who should be. It's not as if there are legions of proven IC managers out there.

As far as the tactics go, the 'bizarre' approach you and others seem to be slating him for is what won us the game against Dublin. The Dubs were a far stronger team in physical terms than ours, and as such our half-backline never had the time on the ball to deliver the accurate ball to our FF line that would lead to scores.

In the second half, Davy withdrew our half-forward line and got the team to work the ball out of defence to midfielders like Sean Collins, who would then have the time on the ball to pick passes in the open spaces that the withdrawal of the half-forward line created. It worked extremely well on the night and given that it was our first championship win since 2008, he deserves credit for it.

I'm not going to pretend I think he's tactically brilliant, but the level of criticism he receives is totally unfair and more often than not seems to be motivated personal dislike rather than well thought out arguments.

premierstone

Henno30 wrote: »

The irrational hatred of some Tipp people towards Davy continues unabated

Firstly, Clare people would in general be aware of Davy's strengths and weaknesses. He doesn't have an outstanding track record as a technical/skills coach but he is very highly regarded for his ability to work with young players. There are plenty of ex-LIT men on the Tipp senior squad who would echo that sentiment.

At this point in time we have a young, physically light squad who need a coach like Davy to bring them up the athletic standard required at senior intercounty level. I don't know if he's the best man for them at this point in time, but I do know he's better than all the alternatives that presented themselves when the vacancy arose. It's easy complain about the man in charge but the onus is then on you to say who should be. It's not as if there are legions of proven IC managers out there.

As far as the tactics go, the 'bizarre' approach you and others seem to be slating him for is what won us the game against Dublin. The Dubs were a far stronger team in physical terms than ours, and as such our half-backline never had the time on the ball to deliver the accurate ball to our FF line that would lead to scores.

In the second half, Davy withdrew our half-forward line and got the team to work the ball out of defence to midfielders like Sean Collins, who would then have the time on the ball to pick passes in the open spaces that the withdrawal of the half-forward line created. It worked extremely well on the night and given that it was our first championship win since 2008, he deserves credit for it.

I'm not going to pretend I think he's tactically brilliant, but the level of criticism he receives is totally unfair and more often than not seems to be motivated personal dislike rather than well thought out arguments.

lol Yeah thats what it is the big bad Tipp people been irrational, why dont you ask the Waterford people what they think of him??

I was coached by him at club level btw and he hasn't the foggiest, great trainer, great motivator, but when it comes to analysing a game, not a clue. And during a game he is so worked up he doesnt have any idea what is going on.

Just two of the top of my head so, what was last years tactics in the munster final about?? Or leaving the Clare FB line unchanged against Limerick when they were getting murdered?

Clareman

Oh what a great day to be a sports mad person, great win by the under 21s, not the best first half ever but the end justifies the means, as I heard earlier, better to win a bad match with a last minute goal than lose a classic to one

ollaetta

Really didn't believe we'd do it after 13 wides in the first half. We improved in the second but Tipp kept nosing in front. Felt at best it may have been a draw but to get that goal was dreamworld. Fair dues to the lads for sticking at it to the end. Roll on Antrim and (hopefully) beyond!!

My Congrats to Clare and best of luck in the rest of the competition. You've a very talented young side. Hard to lose a game like that but its invaluable experience for the players going forward at Senior level.

premierstone

premierstone wrote: »

See IMHO thats the biggest mistake Clare hurling could ever do and that is why it was a mistake to appoint Davy in the first place, forget the 90's its gone, this is a new set of players with completly new set of attributes, and FWIW potentially better hurlers IMO.

That's true and as Liam Sheedy said lately those days of banging the hurleys on tables are long gone. With a shrewd approach that Clare team will be hard to beat in the future at senior level. Credit to the county for the underage work they are putting in.

Clareman

I used to think the day of banging hurleys was gone as well, but there is a place for it still, if you don't agree check the video of the dressing room of the Irish rugby team before the game against England in Croke Park, Eddie O'Sullivan was fing and blinding before the game to get the team up, I couldn't believe that a professional sporting team would need something like that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhgt2pnSywI

Reminds me of a time (under 16 I think) in Roslevin when our manager was giving it loads, go out and give it loads lads, beat that shower, I can't play with ye lads but by gawd I can lead ye out, cmon lads, follow me and we'll beat the ****s, then he burst the door open and took a couple of steps, we followed roaring and shouting, he had only gone into the shower room, we were bursting laughing going out on the pitch.

tricialou

premierstone wrote: »

lol Yeah thats what it is the big bad Tipp people been irrational, why dont you ask the Waterford people what they think of him??

I was coached by him at club level btw and he hasn't the foggiest, great trainer, great motivator, but when it comes to analysing a game, not a clue. And during a game he is so worked up he doesnt have any idea what is going on.

Just two of the top of my head so, what was last years tactics in the munster final about?? Or leaving the Clare FB line unchanged against Limerick when they were getting murdered?

Hi think they won the dublin match cos they were down a player and gave up on the short pass! maybe ?

buck65

Jesus we were lucky last night!
If we had left that behind us those lads would have never recovered. Talk about a case of the yips in the first half. Tipp drove on in the second half knowing they should have been at least 6 points down and took confidence from that.
Good to see Niall Arthur get the goal, some balls to go for it, Bubbles kept Tipp in it on his own - definitely MOTM.
Ref was all over the place, Tipp lad threw the ball up and caught it before scoring a point - free out, right in front of us, missed alot of what was going on for both sides.
Roll on Antrim and hopefully another All Ireland final.

premierstone

tricialou wrote: »

Hi think they won the dublin match cos they were down a player and gave up on the short pass! maybe ?

Absolutely, they had no choice but to revert to basics and hurl off the cuff, and they duly won because Clare had the better players than Dublin.

buck65 wrote: »

Jesus we were lucky last night!
If we had left that behind us those lads would have never recovered. Talk about a case of the yips in the first half. Tipp drove on in the second half knowing they should have been at least 6 points down and took confidence from that.
Good to see Niall Arthur get the goal, some balls to go for it, Bubbles kept Tipp in it on his own - definitely MOTM.
Ref was all over the place, Tipp lad threw the ball up and caught it before scoring a point - free out, right in front of us, missed alot of what was going on for both sides.
Roll on Antrim and hopefully another All Ireland final.

Don't know if ye were that lucky, draw maybe would have been a fair result, but if anyone deserves credit it is Tony Kelly and Bubble's O'Dwyer who were both outstanding.

Thought the Ref was very very poor tbh and like you said on both sides, its always a bad sign when the ref blows the whistle and neither player or supporters know which way its going and have to wait for him to point.

Good win for Clare, lack of physicallity might be the biggest problem in the AI series, although the Final is in Semple, which assuming they overcome Antrim, will suit Clares forwards alot better than the tight confines of Cusack Park.

Clareman

As most people know, I wouldn't be Davey's biggest fan, but to give him the benefit of the doubt, I think he's trying to instill the short passing game but also having a backup plan of long balls, having a 2 man full forward line and only playing short passing would be completely idiotic, this was the first year in charge and he has brought through a lot of players, gotten promotion, won a game (lost 2 tight games though), next year we'll have to push on a bit more and be challenging for some kind of silverware, either Munster or the League.

cgpg5

Well done Clare last night. Watched ye on a hospital bed of all places. What a crowd ye brought out too great seeing the younger lads getting great support. They're your future. Would love meet ye in the final for revenge of 09! We have a very strong team this year so would be a cracker I feel, although we have a certain KK to get over first :-D

Deise Tom

I am trying to carry out some research and was wondering if anyone could help. I was wondering at what stages are the Senior Hurling and Football Championships in Clare, and where is the best place to keep up with results and fixtures in these championships, for someone outside the county who cannot get the local papers or to hear the local radio stations.

Clareman

They are both at the quarter final stages, in the hurling
1.The Mills v Clonlara
2. Newmarket v Tubber
3. Crusheen v Inagh/Kilnamona
4. Kilmaley v Cratloe
Semis 1v2 and 3 v 4

In the relegation play-off Josephs v Clooney losers play Broadford

Can't remember the football now, I think Ennisdymon are playing Kilrush

Clareman

They are both at the quarter final stages, in the hurling
1.The Mills v Clonlara
2. Newmarket v Tubber
3. Crusheen v Inagh/Kilnamona
4. Kilmaley v Cratloe
Semis 1v2 and 3 v 4

In the relegation play-off Josephs v Clooney losers play Broadford

Can't remember the football now, I think Ennisdymon are playing Kilrush