Kilkenny GAA Thread Part 2 **MOD NOTE POST 1***

Django99

dubcat51 wrote: »

Only cameo we have seen from bolger was last 5 min v clare in last years league semi.2 pts in a few minutes looked promising so I would like to see him given a chance to build on that nothing more.john walsh is young but again has that goal getter streak in him.as for sledging davy firz teams have been at that against us for years(hurts no one)but if your hit like tj was give it back twice as hard.anyone involved with any team would say the same.

Bolger actually did himself no favours that day by the looks of it. One of those points the whole pitch was in front of him and he could have tried to make a goal out of it, but he took the easy point. It was very clear that the other players were not impressed.

brookville

tbiggertycome wrote: »

John Power- not sure what his issue is.
John Walsh- is in the senior training panel and U21's. He has been excellent for the U21's all year when not injured, hes scored 2 goals and a handful of points, in most training or a challenge matchs. Not sure why he's not getting a run yet but all in good time I suppose.
Mick Fennelly- heard he was swinging a hurl (just about) a few weeks ago and is running but he's still a ways off by the sounds of it.
R Lennon- not sure why he's dropped off the radar
K Kelly- as you said he's still struggling with hamstring
G Aylward- was faster and stronger than he'd ever been for us before he did his hamstring again. He was deemed not quiet ready for the Wexford game but very close I would say.

Lennon played for the bridge two weeks ago his on the way back i don't think his the awnser but cody likes him.ger alyward should be back for Glenmore and hopefully walsh will play for the vat.we'll have a fair idea after the first round of Club who we'll have because if the likes of kelly or john walsh aren't fit enough to play club they probably won't make june

brookville

http://www.punditarena.com/gaa/elarkin/eoin-larkin-kilkenny-wexford/

No real suprise here in what larkin is saying,hopefully we'll learn from the other day and have more options on the bench when team injured lads return

unrealtime

The big problem as I see it is that with all the messing that was done management could have learned nought from a highly competitive league. Inability to manage has put us back further than square one.

brookville

unrealtime wrote: »

The big problem as I see it is that with all the messing that was done management could have learned nought from a highly competitive league. Inability to manage has put us back further than square one.

He probably felt the need to try things after the scutching we got in the final.the lads didn't turn into bad players overnight I'm confident we'll be competitive during the summer and the management will have their homework done and learn from the mistakes.it'll be interesting to see will he leave padraig at 3 I think his the best we have so I'd leave him at 3 with murphy at 2 the number 4 probably up for grabs.I'd have cleere,joyce and buckley in the hb line,fogarty and leahy midfield.I think we've enough good forwards to do harm wally,tj,colin,hogan,ger and kevin kelly
Granted the forwards were static during the league and to reliant on tj but but all the others are good proven hurlers

Realt Dearg Sec

unrealtime wrote: »

The big problem as I see it is that with all the messing that was done management could have learned nought from a highly competitive league. Inability to manage has put us back further than square one.

Not sure I follow what you mean by "all the messing that was done". Do you mean trying players in various positions? If they didn't try anything new they'd be rightly slated for that, how could we learn anything if we just persisted with things like Holden in full back that hadn't worked before? We've learned a huge amount from this league. The problem, as you see it, is much simpler I'd imagine: we didn't win enough matches. That's fair enough as it goes but we have learned a vast amount from the defeats.

Some things you could argue we should have known anyway, such as how to feed ball to a full forward line that doesn't have gorta and Henry in it. But we know that Walsh can be a serviceable full back even if it means a loss further out the field. We know Murphy needs a kick up the hole (as do other senior players frankly). We know cleere will become a good quality centre. We know deegan can man the midfield, we know blanchfield struggles to get out in front but we also know he has improved vastly and with the right supply will be a serious threat for points in coming years. We know Richie needs to be played closer in towards goal, we know Buckley is much better at half back than midfield (not the consensus opinion until extremely recently), we know Wally is needed even though we still know what his limitations are. We know that to get back to the top we need about four players from the current u21s to step up and take control of positions in the full back line, midfield, and as a goal hawking forward.

adrian522

Inability to manage? Jesus Wept.

dubcat51

Joey had a bad all ireland so had pender and murphy.for me I would still pick him at 3 with walsh at 5.for me the way wexford played last sunday walsh and cillian would have struck from deep and got 2/3pts which would have kept us right in it and our defence could have sat deeper because we would have been level or ahead.once you go behind against a team with a sweeper space for your forwards is tight while they have space at your end of the pitch.you must make the team with the sweeper change by keeping ahead.

Comerman

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Murphy needs a kick up the hole

Watching him in the last few games he spends a lot of time on his knees and anytime he got ball in hand he seemed to put the head down and drive the ball into the clouds like the big crowd pleasing clearance in the old days instead of finding man which was needed. I'd prefer Padraig at half back surging forward and getting or making scores which he's excellent at. Wally needs to hurl and stop looking for a row, TJ not take the bait and start fighting back instead of beating his marker with his skill and Colin needs to do "something" drastically, his attempt at a pint last Sunday that dropped in front of the keeper was schoolboy stuff. To my "very amateur eye" the whole team was in disarray by the last 10 minutes of the game,most of them didn't seem to know what position they were playing.

1984baby

Comerman wrote: »

Watching him in the last few games he spends a lot of time on his knees and anytime he got ball in hand he seemed to put the head down and drive the ball into the clouds like the big crowd pleasing clearance in the old days instead of finding man which was needed. I'd prefer Padraig at half back surging forward and getting or making scores which he's excellent at. Wally needs to hurl and stop looking for a row, TJ not take the bait and start fighting back instead of beating his marker with his skill and Colin needs to do "something" drastically, his attempt at a pint last Sunday that dropped in front of the keeper was schoolboy stuff. To my "very amateur eye" the whole team was in disarray by the last 10 minutes of the game,most of them didn't seem to know what position they were playing.

Totally agree with the above.
The backs need to start picking out a man and stop just driving it forward aimlessly. Other teams do it at ease, so we should be able to master it.

Comerman

1984baby wrote: »

Totally agree with the above.
The backs need to start picking out a man and stop just driving it forward aimlessly. Other teams do it at ease, so we should be able to master it.

But we were masters of it, very frustrating last Sunday to watch ball after ball drop on the Wexford 21 to be collected by the sweeper and distributed properly.

dubcat51

Sweepers you go around or go over.nowlan pk much tighter than croker also playing against the wind the backs were only landing the ball on the half back line.we needed to get the half backs carrying and scoring pints from outside the blanket.

adrian522

https://twitter.com/BrianCody82/status/849688502971379712

unrealtime

Heads firmly in the clouds. Not far from cloud cuckoo land in fact. The experiments throughout the league have proved worthless and wrong-headed..

dastardly00

dubcat51 wrote: »

Sweepers you go around or go over.nowlan pk much tighter than croker also playing against the wind the backs were only landing the ball on the half back line.we needed to get the half backs carrying and scoring pints from outside the blanket.

Eh... Isn't the pitch in Nowlan Park bigger than the pitch in Croke Park??

Cornerback1

dastardly00 wrote: »

Eh... Isn't the pitch in Nowlan Park bigger than the pitch in Croke Park??

I thought CP would be bigger?

Realt Dearg Sec

unrealtime wrote: »

Heads firmly in the clouds. Not far from cloud cuckoo land in fact. The experiments throughout the league have proved worthless and wrong-headed..

Other than insulting people, what are you suggesting should have been done differently?

Bonniedog

Powerhouse wrote: »

This is interesting. Kerry's last League titles came in 2004, '06 & '09. They won the All Ireland all three years. They now have no League title in eight years and just one All Ireland. It is interesting how their relative lack of success on the All Ireland front is mirrored by a dip in the League success rate.

Kilkenny have won 8 League titles since 2002. Kilkenny have now gone three years without a League final appearance for the first time since pre-2002. It may well be that people will look back on Kilkenny at the current time and see that the same correlation between their League/Championship success is there in reverse.

League titles might not matter to these grand counties you mention, but League titles do appear to matter in the sense that they seem to have a correlation with All Irelands and that matters. With competitions where there are so few counties capable of competing at the very highest level very strong teams who are in the right place re. form, injuries and talent will tend to be competing for everything. I can't imagine too many Dublin footballers will be bragging about their League medals either but they keep finding themselves in League finals all the same.

Meath and Cork footballers haven't won a huge number of League titles but it is interesting that of the last five League finals they won they both played in the All Ireland in three of those five years and won them a few times as well. Neither appears to have even an outside chance of winning the All Ireland this year so it is hardy surprising that they are both in division 2 and failed to get promotion. A big drop from their successful days but reflective of the connection between League and Championship.

Cork hurlers are 12 years without an All Ireland. How many League titles have they won in that time? Zero. Dismiss the lessons of the League reluctantly. If you are good enough you should be going well in it. If you're not it tends to flag problems which emerge down the road.

Good post. There is massive correlation between league and championship success in both games. Might be wrong but off top of head I would say that only Derry footballers and Dublin hurlers did not at least reach an AI semi final after winning a league in last 15 years?


Even 40 years ago, a team like Clare winning hurling league or Roscommon winning football was a pretty rare event given that they weren't particularly successful in championship. Although in fairness Rossies were unfortunate to be good at pinnacle of Kerry/Dubs.

Cornerback1

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Other than insulting people, what are you suggesting should have been done differently?

Management had to try out new players and other players in different positions - that's how they learn what works and what doesn't. A few people said in January it'd be better to sacrifice the league in order to blood new players and try different combinations in different positions. I think it was worthwhile.

brookville

Realt Dearg Sec wrote: »

Other than insulting people, what are you suggesting should have been done differently?

Anyone that watched any hurling last year knew joey is not the awnser full back we needed to try something in that position and padraig has done well bit his badly missed at 5.Murphy at 6 didn't work.fogartys swap with buckley has being up and down they'll probably go back to the way they were
I know it's early but some of the backs look like their confidence has being affected by last year's final.murphy pender and joey have been poor and it's a pity more defenders weren't tried during the league but I don't think it's fair to be always picking on pender or joey some of our fowards have being terrible to date with tj the exception

BredaD

Pretty much agree with everything. I always appreciated Martin Fogarty's role in management team but I'm beginning to think I didn't appreciate it enough. Think his loss is immeasurable.

dastardly00

Cornerback1 wrote: »

I thought CP would be bigger?

No, it's a common misconception that the Croke Park pitch is bigger than everywhere else.

Here's a link to a good article written by LiveGaelic.com a few years ago about it.

Croke Park measures out as being 144m long and 86m wide. Nowlan Park, home of the Kilkenny hurlers (and footballers if they ever return in force) is equal to the size of Croke Park. Semple Stadium in Thurles is actually one metre longer than Croke Park, measuring in at 145 metres, although it is six metres shorter in width.

unrealtime

You can either read what I write or ignore it. But the insults have mostly been against me. I have never insulted anyone who has responded in a reasonable fashion to my posts.

We learned nothing of any value for the championship from the league this year. That is a crucial bmanagement failure. I instances many reasons why I hold this view. These include continuing to play players out of their best position(even All Stars), persisting with players who have been tried (and failed) umpteen times over the years and are not good enough, and failure to play other players like Joyce who have given good service in the past. I will not repeat this again but if you want to respond directly to me (and I don't care as my opinion is as valid as anyone else's is) at least read my posts beforehand.

Realt Dearg Sec

I dunno what you're so upset about, I was just asking a question, there's no need to keep escalating everything like that. For the record though, the people you said we're all in cloud cuckoo land weren't actually responding to you, so it's not true that you only insulted people who didn't respond reasonably to your posts. I don't see what a post like that actually adds to the conversation.

To the point of your post. Playing players out of position is hardly a failure in and of itself. It's often necessary, as in our case where we essentially had no competent full back and needed to find one. Some of the moving of players around was not successful like Murphy and Buckley, but it was hardly a failure just to try them. I agree about trying already failed players, there a few young lads in the county well worth a run who haven't gotten one and plenty on the squad who we know enough to know they won't make it.Regarding not playing others that are established, though, no matter the service someone has provided you need to be trying to unearth new players. So you do seen to be arguing, broadly, that we should not have been trying out so many new things. We should keep playing all stars in their favoured positions (as an aside, did you object when they moved Tommy Walsh or of his position in the forwards? Or out of midfield?) and stick with the players we already know. What would we have learned from that?

Regarding your last sentence, I note the irony that you haven't actually addressed any of the points I made in my post. In future if you want to respond to me directly please read my posts beforehand. And maybe calm down a little, we're all on the same team last I checked.

unrealtime

Watching Tommy as a kid I thought that he was the best right full I ever saw. Later I thought he Jj and Henry were the best I ever saw since first watching hurling in the Fifties.

dubcat51

For me the league has always been about trying things out.we all know what certain players can do in ceryaim positions so know harm moving them about in case one day we might need them somewhere else.we wont know until.june what brians thinking is until we see the team v wexford.then we can some judgements about what the league gave us.

Cornerback1

Management, at any level, has to change things about. Look at JJ at full back and Conor Fogarty at cornerback/midfield. Days are long gone of playing in goals at U-8's and still being goals at Minor level. No more of the wee chubby lad being stuck in corner forward to fill the last name on the team sheet. Players, especially underage, develop at different rates and your full back at U-12 could be the best full forward in the U-16's a few years later.

unrealtime

This management has failed badly then in its messing around. It found out nothing from its experimentations. These were so obviously wrong.

dastardly00

unrealtime wrote: »

This management has failed badly then in its messing around. It found out nothing from its experimentations. These were so obviously wrong.

You're getting a bit mixed up there.

Management has found out a lot of things from the experimentation in the League... It's just that they were not necessarily positive things... Do you follow?
A negative outcome from an experiment does not equal a failure.

Realt Dearg Sec

unrealtime wrote: »

This management has failed badly then in its messing around. It found out nothing from its experimentations. These were so obviously wrong.

Who would you have played in full back?