Kilkenny GAA Thread

Well Chaz the county board booklet on the development squad teams and management should be a list of future contenders for management and backroom team positions, but I don’t know if that is the case. Like they should be assessed on performance on whatever team they are over. For example Dessie Walsh is going great with the Celtic challenge team will he rewarded with a bigger job if he happens to win that. I hope I’m not after jinxing him.

imagine if the team on Sunday had a shefflin and a Jj…..they would have won at a canter

The academy players spend approximately 20 weeks post trials together as a group and this would usually be one field session a week as a group. As you can imagine this is very limited time and therefore reinforces the importance of the coaching and resources that needs to be prioritised at club and school levels as these are the coaching groups that has the majority of player access. Michael F did brilliant work in setting up a structure and a ethos that set out the standards expected and playing philosophy and Sean K has now taking on this mantle and trying to progress further. One the key changes that Sean K has made is reducing the number of academy squads at U14, U15 and U16 level which has reduced the size of the academy squads by 100 kids but should effectively improve the overall quality of players.

One the main reasons for this change was because Kilkenny is not producing for instance 60 x players at U15 level that are anyway near the required standard and skills level and alot of these players are better off staying with their clubs to work on the basic skills. The last few years each age group would have maybe have 10 x players that would be considered 'Very strong' and another approx 15 x players that would be considered 'strong hurler' but the rest in the playing groups of squads out of a near total 60 players are only average club hurlers so carrying two squads for each age group meant there was massive tail to each squad and didn’t make practical sense to continue with that approach. The academy players really only reach an intense level training as a group when they get to Minor inter country age where they would be together around 3 times a week. It could be said that the U14, U15 and U16 academy squads really are only currently serving the purpose of filtering out players so that when they groups get to Minor age group…….instead of starting trials with a wide group of 150 x players…………the minor management would probably be able to start off with a core group of 70-90 players for trialing before they could finalise their squads. You will find that if you follow an academy squad right through from U14 -U16, the squad will generally be almost 95% of the same from when it started at U14 together to what players make up and progress to the same U16 squad two years later. This is quite simply for the reason because we have so few standout players at each underage group, so it is very easy to identify the stronger and best players from U14 level and very rarely differs by the time they get to U16 and Minor ages.

They really wouldn't have. Two lads don't overturn such a deficit without a vast improvement in those around them.

A lot of lads we need to step up, likes of Mikey Butler (don't mean to single him out but just an example) were very poor. I know it's hard for a corner back in the conditions he was playing in, but some of his basic skills were just so, so bad.

There's no point saying 'if we had this lad or that lad' etc, the good lads we have are the ones that aren't stepping up.

I read somewhere in the last couple of days (might have been here) but the glaring thing about the defeat was the fitness levels and is part of it down to the physical demands needed to play football, as many of those Dublin lads still do for their clubs?

The fitness levels required to play football nowadays are astronomical compared to hurling, and I'm wondering is Kilkenny starting to suffer for that.

I don't mean to bring up the whole 'why don't Kilkenny play football' thing again because the reasons we don't are obvious and the argument has been done to death, but as I said it was a point that I thought was interesting.

Celtic champions final is on in Abbotstown Saturday the 6 June Tipp blue v KK at 3.00pm

I noticed a lot that Dublin were sliding on their knees and flicking the ball to gather it in open play in their half of the field. It allowed them to turn into the direction they were playing.

Brian Hayes did it a couple of times and Paddy Smyth did once or twice too. I don't recall that being a regular thing in the past?

I noticed a few times players were very slow to get back to help out. Im no expert but its either they are out of steam or they dont believe in what they are trying to do re the style the team are playing.

Not to be dogpiling about your comments on the minor team, because I think there's a lot of truth in what you've been saying generally, but to me the only management team having any (very limited, I admit) success this year was that minor backroom, while the u20 and senior sidelines are stuffed to the gills with guys from the great teams you mentioned, and they've struggled badly. I just don't think "was a great player" is necessarily the best barometer of what makes a great manager or selector.

But I also agree that one good performance against Galway (in which we still lost) does not a successful season make. We will see how they do for the remainder of the year, a win over any munster team right now is going to be welcomed in a major way, if we can get it

I was listening to Tommy Walsh on the off the ball podcast this morning talking about Sundays game ….and he was making a lot of the same points and observations that some of us on here have made about Kilkennys performances this year.

One point he made stuck with me though on how we are clearly struggling with the short passing modern game at the moment and because of that he thinks too much of the training focus is going into fixing that weakness . But in doing so some of the things that were traditionally Kilkenny strengths seem to have slipped as a result.

The high fielding isn’t nearly as dominant, the first touch definitely isn’t as sharp and we’re not working on creating goal chances with the same ruthlessness that we used to. There also seems to be less emphasis on one of the most important basics…. relentless hard work. It’s almost like in trying to modernise one area of the game , we’ve drifted away from the basics and strengths that made Kilkenny so successful for years.

Tommy made the point that you have to be careful trying to play someone else’s game or trying to copy another teams style because they’ll almost always do it better than you. Every great team has its own identity and strengths and Kilkennys success was always built around doing the basics exceptionally well, working like dogs, sharp touch , direct play and high fielding…. and very importantly….making goal chances count . If you do that better than the opposition you’re going to win hurling matches.

I suppose basically he was saying there’s no doubt that every team has to work on its weaknesses and evolve with the game , but you can’t neglect your strengths either. The successful teams improve weaknesses but are always sharpening the things they already do better than anyone else.

I thought it was a very insightful observation from one of our all time greats and one that’s very hard to argue with.

Very good post Charlie. My first post after the game Sunday I noted only creating 2 good goal chances over 75min or so. That's not Kilkenny.

Strange as it seems now the Limerick possession game will look outdated in 10 years time. It really is back to basics.

It reminds me of a rugby team and say their line lineout malfunctions, so much effort is put into that facet of play that the scrum is destroyed the next day or ball isn't protected at the ruck etc.

Cork have pace and that can be used against an aging Limerick. Unfortunately Kilkenny don't have too many fast Eddies, DJs, Colin Fennellys at the moment.

You all know the club scene way better than me, but everyone from Junior up has to be looked at. Sean Boylan was a great man for finding lads back in the day. Granted much easier develop a footballer then.

I can't see it, but here's a question for Kilkenny people. Do ye ever see an outside manager take the senior reins in the near future?

Shefflin, Herrity, Dowling, Mullally, Eddie Brennan etc are often mentioned. But is there anyone from a neighbouring county who could be better (not including Davy).

I imagine it's still unthinkable, like Kerry in football, Cork and Tipp in hurling.

I haven't posted in a long time as to be honest I didn't feel I had much to say, which I haven't already said umpteen times. The whole thing is very depressing to see how far we have been allowed to slide and still there are no alarm 🚨 bells ringing in the county board or if there are, their certainly keeping it to themselves. There are so many things I could write after reading about 20 pages of comments from the last few weeks and so many things that need to be addressed. Most have been mentioned and debated and I agree with loads that has been said on here.

So I'll just throw out a few points I haven't seen made or not in the way I would and to prevent this being a Tolkien length novel, although it'll still be too long🤷‍♂️.

I've made this point before but we have fallen into a terrible trap for 10 years. Unfortunately the man who promulgated this narrative into the ether was none other than the great Brian Cody. When he said that the same level of player was not there. While undoubtedly he was not wrong in that assessment for me this is not something a manager should ever say publicly and if he believes it he should excuse himself from the role. The day he said that he put himself above the players. If you don't believe in the players you are in charge of, you should leave the role to someone else. Anyway from then on the narrative has got louder and louder and is used as a crutch and excuse from supporters, county board, and the media. The narrative is, sure what can "X" do when Kilkenny just aren't producing the players. It's regularly trotted out here as defence of management teams and our set up. My counter is if the players aren't good enough a managements job is to improve players through coaching. Every player can get better at something or lots of things. I have seen very few KK senior players improve.

My second point is 3 words that sum up this managements tenure.

Panic

Confusion

Fear

I like Derek a lot but any manager is responsible to make sure those 3 things are not issues in his setup. He is responsible for selecting his advisers/selectors, coaches etc and he has been through multiple iterations of back room team at this stage. If they are not helping or advising him to minimise or eradicate these issues ultimately that still falls back on Derek as he has assembled this team.

Several times I've ended up behind or near the KK dugout and the sheer panic that goes through it when things go against us, like a goal going in man sent off, etc. It's bewildering. Lads are hopping up, talking to Derek, roaring at players, spinning around, its actually farcical. How anyone could think that wouldn't spread panic to the field is beyond me.

The confusion seems to come initially from what I would suspect is a massive lack in clear communication. Be that communication to players about their role, weaknesses that need work, strengths to be used etc. Be it communication to the squad and backroom team of their goals and the plan to achieve it. Be it communication on game plan/system/tactics. It looks like there has been very little communication because for me the players are playing confused and even at times there seems to be contradictory messages being roared in from the sidelines.

Fear seems to have prevaded the camp this year. Fear to make a decision, is it the right call, the wrong call and I think it has led to a sort of paralysis. We all know that in the last 3 years we've been to an AI and two semi finals with a majority of the same player. How have the same players then gone to crashing out of Leinster with abysmal league and championship displays without there being a serious issues in confidence/belief/leadership call it what you will. I think that leads to an awful lot of the other problems discussed here over the last few days. The "lack of effort", the poor first touch, the inability to win ball, the bad deliveries, no support runners, the "lack of fitness". I think that has been a culmination of experience over the last few years which has come to a head this year and the players have little to no confidence in the management setup and it has lead to them playing with fear for their own reputation, fear of losing, fear of their own belief in their abilities. It leads to heavy legs and lads not running down lost causes that put pressure on the opposition. It leads to lapses in concentration and fumbling messy play poorly executed and the whole thing gathers like one giant snowball of s*** play.

I take no pleasure in writing this and I'm not trying to attack anyone I'm outlining the issues I see. I might be very much wrong and ill informed, I'm just trusting what I see and perhaps I've read too much into some of what I've seen and drawn the wrong conclusions. The results and displays show however that which or whether my interpretation is correct or not our management team has not achieved the basic this year of any management team. Make those in your charge better by providing the environment for them to learn and thrive. Sadly I can't say that has been the case in the Kilkenny senior panel for probably 7-8 years.

Derek was very brave to take on the role and has tried his utmost and I thank him for that and he has been an amazing servant to Kilkenny. I think if he is honest with himself he can't see where the real improvement has been and I would also say he would need the rosiest of rose tinted glasses to see how the panel will react better to his stewardship going forward. In fact I strongly fear that if he were to stay on we could very well struggle to have a lot of our players interested in returning or joining the panel next year and you could end up with a very tough situation to handle.