Kilkenny GAA Thread

why do you read the treads then Spurs. A sign of madness?

what do you mean by that?

There used to be a good discussion about games here... club & county.

Now its just the same people saying the same things , over and over and over ......

A sign of going senile ?

Is it just me or are Kilkenny too easy to give decisions against in recent times?

Now before lads from other counties get excited and start giving examples of when their teams got rode… I completely understand that every county gets bad calls against them over the season and in no way am I suggesting that we get more than anyone else. But there’s a growing list of controversial incidents or decisions that go against us without any push back .

And that’s my point, not that other teams don’t suffer these things and their supporters will rightly point to examples of when their county suffered…..but how we or our management react to them. You had the very controversial free given to Carlow in the championship game, the bizarre decision to penalise Tom Phelan for throwing the ball away when Carlow won a sideline ball at the end of the game in their own half …. by awarding a close in free to Carlow to draw the game. That rule was implemented to the letter of the law that day but I have never seen that rule enforced in any game subsequent to that.

The very controversial 65 awarded to Offaly on Sunday that the referee absolutely took a guess on and literally decided the result of the game. Go back to the scoreboard absolute farce in the All-Ireland semifinal last year that arguably cost us a place in the final… that was completely unacceptable…. not a word out of us.

Again please don’t choose to miss my point on this, I am not saying referees are biased against Kilkenny . Bad decisions happen in every single game and every team suffers from them. Again my point is are we far too accepting of them ?

For me Derek Lyng is a gentleman but I wonder is he too quite in the aftermath of these incidents. I completely understand the need to respect referee’s and officials … they have the toughest job in the game….but respect goes both ways . Sometimes it feels like Kilkenny just take these things lying down.

You can be sure Brian Cody wouldn’t always have let these moments pass without making his feelings known. And whether people like it or not, strong managers absolutely influence how marginal 50-50 calls are perceived. If a referee knows there will be serious scrutiny afterwards maybe they think twice about giving a tight call against a team. Alex Ferguson is one of the best examples and was an absolute master of it.

I could be wrong and I know not to expect much sympathy from other counties that got so sick of us during our very successful run of All-Irelands ( I get the “sure yeve won enough “ all the time) but I think we’ve gone a bit soft as a county in this regard.

Big mistake letting Fennelly go, he should have been given what he wanted and more.

He could help rebuild the county structure from the roots up.

Good podcast chat with him here:

'As Kilkenny GAA’s former Performance Lead and a Lecturer in Sport Science at Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), he combines elite sporting achievements with cutting-edge academic research to deliver engaging and impactful talks on leadership, performance, and teamwork.

We chatted about the challenges that come with playing and, also managing, at intercounty level in the GAA, the impact coaching can have on players, and how he has developed his career since retiring from the Kilkenny team.'

That comment on Paddy Deegan is aimed at me so I'll address it.

First of all, go back through all my posts and you'll find I've defended Deegans place on the team due to his leadership and how vocal he has been in the past. I haven't really commented on Deegan in the past at all so saying my comment was personal is "without basis in fact".

Second of all, I never said his man scored 4 points off him. I said he was responsible for the concession of 4 points and this was based on turnovers and failure to gain possession of the ball on multiple occasions. The original point I was making was less about Deegan and more about the decision to move him into midfield and subsequently take off Tom Phelan which was, to my eye anyway, a ridiculous decision. I mentioned the 4 points because someone responded to my original comment and said he was our best player. He clearly wasn't.

Deegan is clearly committed, brave and has lots of qualities. He never hides. When he went into midfield he constantly showed for the ball, ran off the shoulder etc. Unfortunately he did **** all with it bar on one occasion from memory where I think he set up a score. But how many times did he get too far ahead of the ball and leave the midfield wide open?

Just because there's a number of posters in here who have been criticising him for years, sometimes without cause, does not mean the rest of us can't comment when we feel he's clearly underperformed and been left on the field whilst less established players get whipped off despite contributing more on that day.

If it makes you feel better I can list all the players I thought were poor on Sunday so its less personal? Spoiler alert, it's not a short list.

Johnny kelly went mad at the ref on Sunday and in my opinion bally ragged the ref into giving the 65.liam cahill criticised the ref v cork and free was given to cork.no consistency or implementation of the new rules

JJ, that's the post I was referring to.

All good points Robbie and I agree with most of what you say.
And please don’t get me wrong, any team I’ve ever been involved with I emphasise to the players how important it is to be sportsmanlike and to be magnanimous in victory or defeat ( in victory often gets forgotten).

I also know Derek Lyng to be a complete sportsman both as a player and now as a manager. But I do think in the modern sports world of marginal gains there’s definitely a balance to be struck here… nobody wants a Davy Fitz type character losing his reason on the sideline over every line ball decision to the point where it becomes counterproductive and referees will give you nothing.

But it would have been okay for Lyng to have said after that game that he was disappointed with Johnny Murphy’s decision as Johnny obviously took a guess on the 65… that wouldn’t have been bad sportsmanship, it would just have been the truth.

I also think there’s an important role to be played by your captain in this regard. There was nobody better than Henry Shefflin during games to remind the referee of his responsibilities to both teams if he thought decisions were going against his team.

TJ like Lyng is far too quiet in that regard too. For example if TJ or any of our players had approached Johnny Murphy and said “ now Johnny you can’t give a 65 here unless you’re absolutely certain “ …. I’m convinced that would put enough doubt in his mind about awarding it.
I completely understand that we shouldn’t have to worry about refereeing decisions against some of these teams and that’s a whole other discussion, but a bad call is still a bad call no matter who the opponent is and all we ask of referees is consistency and fair play.

well then nothing will change. What purpose would it serve going on in third place with our heads hanging with no drive or ambition. Don’t question my loyalty to a county I have followed all my life. We are all entitled to our opinions. And some managers over stay when clearly they are not up to it.and as regards wishing our county beaten something has to happen to move things on. How long are you going to tolerate the decline. I’ll meet you in Parnell Park tomorrow night.

Yes he is gone for the year unfortunately

**** that's the last thing we need and john donnelly out for the foreseeable too apartently

What kind of injury is Jordans?

Here in Clare we lost a lot of games over the years and virtually always blamed the referee. Meanwhile imo tye great Kilkenny teamsthat won so many all Irelands played on the edge and again imo got very favourable treatment from referees. Now Kilkenny are losing and the blame game is gathering momentum.

I agree with you in general Charlie but to be fair to TJ he was up on the stands at that stage, wouldn't have been a good look to go down to talk to the ref!