Strong team even without Mullen, Wally and Richie Reid. Are the u20s (Shine and Dunne) not allowed to play?
Also is Conor Heary, Peter Mcdonald and Stephen Donelly still on the panel? I had high hopes this year for Donelly after his club form. Great to see young fogarty on the matchday squad.
Great to See Eoin Cody and Mikey Carey back, Owen Wall a real goal threat also. Strong team 💪
Kilkenny is buzzing after it.
The stands were bursting.
The dinner was only delicious.
No need for fair plays, it was great stuff all round.
Thanks all the same.
Good to see a few lads back
my point was that the very,very few travelling public are certainly not being catered for whereas the TV viewers are catered for as I said earlier very few contribute anything to the GAA, just to reply to another poster about Sean Hunt he was brought into the extended panel after his master display in the U19 final. There is strong rumours going around about the venue that it should have been in Nowlan park if not televised otherwise it was to be in a neutral venue study that,break it down and see what you make of that and look at all the scenarios.
Hon' Jimmy. Senior Club County football final tonight. Thursday night in the middle of the inter county championships 😂😂😂. I'd say Kilkenny is buzzing. I'd say the stands down at Canon Kearns Park were burstin'! I'd say you had the dinner in the stand in case you missed anything. Fair play to ye.
Good win for Dicksboro in the Senior Football Final tonight. Strange time for it, surely a Sunday would have been a better fit for the match.
No we don't. Neary, shine and Murphy I would say are quite good. The rest are no better or no worse than most players at this age in the other hurling counties.
Agree with a lot of this but the mismanagement was the biggest factor in the loss. We all agree it was a talented bunch
Fundamentally disagree with some posts here. This is an excellent crop of Kilkenny players. They made very light work of Laois and Wexford. Offaly beat Laois by the same margin. Dublin only scraped over Wexford. So the form lines stand up and the fact it was a very close game is not surprising. Like one poster earlier said, there were an abundance of experienced players who have won at the grade, have good senior exposure and will no doubt continue to develop. Also, the posters who say this is a bang average Offaly team are codding themselves. They are defending u20 Leinster champions and hurled well but came up short against very strong Cork team in last years All Ireland final at this grade…..I think we are forgetting that. They were robbed of a Minor title 2 years ago in cruel circumstances, and they're amalgamated school team accounted for Keirans aswell. So while KK are disappointed to lose, I think to call them bang average is not only wide of the mark, but factually wrong as they have constantly been in the hunt at Schools, minor and u20 levels the last few years.
On the game itself, I think that KK were very unlucky in a number of aspects as pointed out. Hitting the bar, Missing the penalty, the superb save from the Offaly Keeper from Shine (33mins), just to name the obvious ones. I've not seen anyone mention a few things that really fell our way here yet, but Kilkenny were incredibly lucky that Neary did not to see red (41 mins) in all honesty. Also, on another day incident where was very lucky to stay on the field with a wild swing back that connected with the head of the Offaly man. So while unlucky in many aspects, I think those 2 incidents in particular balanced any aspect that KK could consider unlucky. Everything else was just down to poor execution like the Shine 21 yard free (51min) that went wide. I thought the ref was fine in general for frees with 1 or 2 calls that could go either way. Offaly got some, KK got some as we can see from the frees count.
Shine was excellent and I thought Murphy was KKs next best forward as he did cause problems. The full back line hurled well and while he set up some scores, their main man Screeney was kept quite in general play.
While debating KK approach of route one and our game plan, Offaly also dropped countless shots short into Holland inside letting KK off the hook. So KK weren't the only one hitting aimless balls, but its probably down to the pressure both teams were under when on the ball.
Overall Offaly were the better team and deserved their win. KK scored their final point on 39 mins. But for the 2 goals, they were out hurled in the last 20 mins and can have no sour grapes. The better team won on the day.
Drawing a line through Wexford, and also noting that Offaly beat Dublin I would expect Offaly to win…..however I do note that Dublin improved drastically from their group games against Galway, so their might not be a whole lot in it.
Without going too off topic but your last sentence isn't really correct. Without the TV audience the GAA media rights deals lose their value so there'd be less income from that source.
Why did Joe Fitz leave the panel would anyone care to share ?
Weren't the u19s flying it, would Sean hunt or anyone else have been good in the forwards ?
I agree with this entirely we need to pack out Nowlan park for the Wexford game and make it a fortress like it used to be. Now some people have difficulty getting tickets online etc and have nobody to help them.bring back the plastic card get the county board to register the people get a sponsor for the cards it was done years ago and was a great scheme. Someone mentioned that people don’t know about upcoming games. All the GAA websites have the fixtures. The Leinster GAA offer a season ticket for €40 for all Leinster minor and U20 games which could amount to about ten games now that’s not bad. You could also join the Kilkenny GAA supporters club who send out the KK teams by text.really there is no excuses. TV supporters do nothing for the GAA no contribution whatsoever.
MIdfueld and half back line were far to slow, rigney twice just sailed by them and took his two goals, they looked like boys against men but those boys had speed and skill.we had brawn but no brain.really poor management for 2 years in row.
Im not sure "incredibly unfortunate not to win" would be correct. Did we have the chances to win? Absolutely, but we need cool heads to take chances and we were trying to force it last night. Going direct with the long ball to Marty Murphys paw did cause confusion and chances were created which were not all converted but we didn't have any fluency in our play like Offaly. It wasn't beyond those lads to vary our play but we need the right coaching. Was at a minor club match Monday night against a Carlow team and even though we won what they were trying to do was admirable. We need to keep up here or we will be under pressure moving forward.
Following on from my previous post on our lack of smarts and onfield leadership, from about 27 minutes onwards this going into a good level of detail about how we once again failed to correct things onfield (showing some of the examples I cited) and made a hero out of a sweeper.
one other point on the decision to pick Doyle last week. Regardless of the screw up I would support it - on the grounds that we're sorely lacking players in the half back line who are comfortable carrying the ball out and linking play. A lot of teams (Tipp, Limerick, Wexford) move forwards back to take that role. If Lynn is seeing something in training then I support it. You only have to look at below to know we have some issues and some of our panel members are not able to do that part of the job. The only concerning thing is that if that was the reason - then why the bloody hell did we not play that way for the game even when he went.
To be honest, a lot of it is poor promotion. The dates up on the website and the Kilkenny People.
Half the time you wouldn't know if a games was on. And where's the draw* to get people into the Park? Fair enough, Championship games come and you'd expect a crowd, but where's the buzz coming from? There's no real excitement.
And I think people too are becoming dispirited a bit. Constantly losing final, poor underage results, it does drain.
The lack of leadership in the County Board, and engagement with the Kilkenny hurling public, is telling.
*even something like attend four underage games a year, keep the tickets as proof and get a free weekend pass for the first weekend of the county championship.
I thought we were incredibly unfortunate not to win. The missed frees and penalty, the wides, the cross bar, their keeper had to be outstanding on the night. The fact of the matter is that by going direct we created far more scoring opportunities than Offaly. Our problem was our failure to convert.
Absolutely nothing wrong with going route one, where most goals come from. Kilkenny are victims of there own success at this. Kilkenny were one of the first teams to have 10 players back deep, 6 backs, 2 midfielders and 2 half forwards back deep or "working hard". To counter act this teams played the lines with runners running off the shoulder and playing the ball to half forwards and shooting from distance, e.g limerick. Very hard to sit deep when the half forward line have 6/7 points from play, thus the half back line push back up the pitch and leave space inside that's when teams go long to exploit this.
The u21 last night was like hurling in the 90s. Young Murphy and Shine were on their own with a swarm of defenders and still hurled very well. I was disappointed in G Dunne, Hackett, Walsh, Quelly, Glynn offered little to nothing, but cannot blame them as management were pathetic
It`s gas how people here think that going direct is some kind of malaise or sign of desperation.
Lack of vocal support for Kilkenny has been ongoing for at least a decade. Each Kilkenny player running onto Croke Park get a muffled chear from the crowd while their oponents get a crowd roar. Opponents chant during the match and its not the difficulty in Kilkenny crowds trying to chant three syllables v something like 'Tipp, Tipp, Tipp', when we trashed Waterford in Croke Park the Waterford supporters outchanted Kilkenny.
It is possible there was an air of expentancy of winning in the good days and that attributed to the malaise. It was noticable at All Ireland replays where there was a greater attendance of younger supporters that the noise from Kilkenny supporters was louder. Maybe the Kilkenny supporters club can do what some soccer teams have done over the years and disperse pockets of chanters throught the stands to start a tradition of chanting and at least a roof raising cheer for each player at matches as their name is announced or if they run on.
The most disappointing thing about was the complete lack of game plan. In the previous games they were trying to work the ball out from the backs and played some nice hurling but last night it seemed our only plan was for the keeper to drop bombs down on Marty Murphy and the 2 Dunnes, Offaly coped on to it and just got loads of players around them and crowded them out. We all pinpointed the lack of pace in the half back line and to be fair to Offaly they exploited it very well. That being said we really should have won the game, from the missed penalty, Shines (who I thought played well) missed 65 and free in front of the goals, Murphy hitting the cross bar we missed chances on another day that could have seen us get over the line. This is management's second year in a row that our lack of game plan has cost us.
Just on the support issue for our county teams. It really is pathetic, we can dress it up anyway we want, population wise etc. I was at the League final against Clare and the amount of Kilkenny people that showed up was shocking. Same with regard Leinster and All Ireland semis the last few years. Is there a general malaise in the county? For our last game against Wexford, Nowlan Park would want to be a sell out with an atmosphere as good as it was against Tipp in 2013. Just look at Pairc ui Chaoimh last week. That's what our Seniors need and deserve
Thanks, missed this last night :(
So only one poster on here saying it then….
I did say it was an average Offaly team on the night, especially without Dan Ravenhill, Screeney is a class act but the other 2 inside players were not up to much. Kilkenny showed from the 25th minute to the 40th minute what they can do but were again caught out with the lack of pace for the 2nd goal, that was a real turning point. I was very critical of the management after last years performance but for this to happen again is criminal. They have an awful lot to answer for, Kilkenny have players on the bench, extended panel, ineligible due to management failure and players who dropped themselves off the panel that would have done better than the midfield and half back line selected. With all this Kilkenny should have still won and with proper selection and coaching would be 7/8 points a better team imo. What a calamity
I remember posters on here (i dont remember who..) going on about how "kk need to beef up ….. " are they doing any S&C at all"……. "too small"… "need to do more work in the gym"… now its the opposite?
Is Joe Fitz the new Tj ??? Sounds like it if you go by some lads on here ?
I hope yee all go to yere clubs and tell them to bring up the points some of yee are making in here at Co board meetings …
you might want to have another look back through the evenings posts.
One poster has deleted and Village87 has said it twice
Where was it said they were average? I don't think anybody in here did
Offaly are far from average and had an excellent goalie and set of backs. Let’s see how they get on in the next few weeks. Someone said about an Offaly bandwagon there is nothing wrong with that. We could all follow Offaly in this regard and encourage young people to attend with free buses from the clubs to the venue it certainly makes it a cauldron and i think we quitened the crowd once or twice, we could have won it with a bit of luck. We will judge this team on Offalys future success.
