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Post by Kingdomson on Feb 24, 2019 13:15:42 GMT
It's this phrase 'splitting Dublin' that creates a hostile response or outlook and this needs to change. Its should not at all be about splitting, rather this argument should be about giving a fairer opportunity for representation to GAA players in the Dublin city and larger metropolitan area. With a population of 1.8 million and growing, the time has come to ask if one team is enough and if Dublin should be allowed enter an extra team? I believe they should in some shape or form in whatever new format to be discussed. The Munster Championship is a dead rubber and perhaps Kerry too should be allowed enter an extra team - rather than continuing with the inter-county junior competition that too few counties enter in and which is basically just an under 23 development team these days. No one has all the answers yet but the discussion needs to start. You have team A and team B and no player can move up or down from one squad to the other in one season but you get the opportunity to arrange a fresh squad the following year, etc. The teams could be entered in a tiered competition. Team A in the Senior A Championship and Team B in the B Championship. Having Dublin and Kerry teams represented in the tiered competition would raise the value and make counties even more likely to accept a tiered system with the All Ireland B competition given a serious status.
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Post by Mickmack on Feb 24, 2019 14:29:37 GMT
a neutral venue like Thurles is not the answer. the counties should be told go go and make their own home and away arrangements for that round. It'll be a dark day for the GAA if they have to split Dublin. You cant upset the balance of nature so much as they did with Dublin and not expect consequences.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Feb 24, 2019 17:01:47 GMT
Dublin don't even enter the Junior All Ireland.
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Post by Kingdomson on Feb 24, 2019 18:54:49 GMT
Dublin don't even enter the Junior All Ireland. Exactly.
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Post by Mickmack on Feb 24, 2019 20:31:29 GMT
If there was an argument about football in a pub in Kerry and a fella with one all-Ireland medal tried to get involved, they wouldn’t even listen to him. There would be lads with three or four in there.
- Pat Spillane, The Late Late Show, 2015
From a media point of view, or from the perspective of people outside the county, it's more about medals. I know you'll think of a Kerry footballer and say he has three medals, four medals or whatever, but it doesn't seem to matter within the county. You wear the jersey and if you're lucky enough to win a medal, that's great.
- Kieran Culhane, former Kerry footballer
Between them, Pat Spillane and Kieran Culhane have won eight All-Ireland winners medals.
Problematically, and it is perhaps for this reason that some clarification of Culhane's place in Kerry's footballing past is required above, the entirety of those medals belong to Spillane.
Kieran Culhane, despite certain assumptions regarding footballers from the Kingdom, concluded his inter-county career with no Celtic Cross.
"Look, when you start wearing the jersey and you ask yourself what you want to do," Culhane explains, "you want to win an All-Ireland for Kerry."
"Each year that it doesn't happen, there is huge disappointment."
Although a hierarchy that equates the worth of one's opinion to the medals they possess suits the unsurpassed Spillane, Kieran Culhane inhabits an alternative realm.
"If you brought the Kerry players together from 1975 to the mid-1990s," Culhane suggests, "the majority of them would have a bucket of medals."
"Then there are the lean years where I was involved and there's no medals.
"Now, those players wouldn't be divided in the one room in terms of medals, you know what I'm saying? It's just not a big deal within the county among past players.
Pausing his train of thought, Culhane wonders aloud: "I might just think that way because I never won one," he says with a laugh.
Something of an inter-county every-man surrounded by wildly successful Kerry-men, Kieran Culhane is forced to draw different terms of engagement than his vaunted colleague Spillane.
You wear the jersey and if you’re lucky enough to win a medal that’s great, but you haven’t tried any less hard than lads who went before you or since.
Kieran Culhane
"I had a photograph of the four-in-a-row team on my bedroom wall," Culhane admits with a laugh as he recalls breaking into the Kerry senior panel in 1984.
"Here I am, 18-years-old, coming off minors and I find myself within the dressing-room sitting beside them."
Emerging in an era where Kerry dominated all-comers, the astounding pedigree of Mick O'Dwyer's team made few allowances for young prospects.
"I was a minor in 1983 and Cork beat us in the first round of the Munster Championship down in Kilmallock on the 18th of May," Culhane recalls with startling precision.
"There was a feeling out there that Cork were coming good and had some good young footballers, [but] I would say that if we played them again, and again and again, there'd be nothing between those teams."
With time, however, the "good young footballers" of Cork would be afforded opportunities denied to Culhane and his teammates.
"That Cork team went on to win the senior All-Ireland in '89 and '90," Culhane states, "and I would say that over half that minor team were playing."
"You had Barry Coffey, the McCarthys, Paul McGrath, Michael Slocum ... the bulk of that team.
"Now, at the same in 1983 the Kerry seniors were coming off the four-in-a-row and a couple of them were maybe at the end of their careers, but going nowhere.
"So, there was a bunch of players around those years at my age who couldn't see any sign of progressing in football terms because they weren't being asked into the senior panel.
"We were kind of stopped in our tracks, and I think that was the reason we had the poor years later on - we brought nobody through to any great degree."
Although Kerry's eventual shortcomings on the national stage scarcely appear lean in the general understanding of the term, the precarious rise of Cork as Kerry slept hindered the likes of Culhane.
"Some of the older lads on the panel at that time were obviously legends," the Ballylongford man appreciates, "but I remember a comment made by one of them after training one night: 'It's harder to get off the team then on it.'"
"He said it jokingly like, but it struck a chord with me.
"Funnily enough, I'm great, great friends now with the guy who said it, but it was very, very true.
"You really, really had to go out of your way to get off the team when you were one of those guys who'd won the four-in-a-row."
Opting for temporary respite by way of a spell in America, numerous false starts throughout the National League meant Culhane would wait until 1990 for his Munster Championship breakthrough; seven years on from his exploits at minor level, seven years behind his Cork counterparts.
It was said in Kerry that Cork were the third-best team in the country, and the second-best were the lads who couldn't make the Kerry team
Kieran Culhane
Beginning at senior where it had left off for Culhane at minor, it was Cork who would carry on their summer beyond the Munster Championship of 1990.
Coming into '91, Kerry's failure to reach an All-Ireland final since 1986 signaled an absence from the national decider unknown to the Kingdom since Mayo's hey-day in the early 1950s.
Yet, as Culhane recalls, expectations persisted.
"During that time, I met a gentleman who was a native of Kerry but had emigrated and was now back on his holiday," Culhane remembers.
"I happened to meet him on the beach in Ballyheigue and we got chatting away about football.
"'Ah, sure ye'll win it this year and if ye don't win it this year ye'll win it next year,' he said to me. 'I'd love to have your confidence,' I told him.
"'I'm not a gambling man,' he said to me, 'but I've made one bet every year that Kerry will win an All-Ireland in the next three years, and it's a bet that's paid off handsomely.'
********************
We played Cork in February that year in the National League and it turned into a mass brawl. I think we made the headline on the six-o-clock news, but that was the beginning of winning that Munster medal. There was a feeling that a message needed to be sent out and we did it that day.
- Culhane on Kerry's 1991 league defeat of Cork
One wouldn't need look as far as Pat Spillane and his thirteen provincial winners medals to realise that the Munster Championship has suffered something of a devaluation in the currency of Kerry football.
Yet, for Kieran Culhane, Kerry's first provincial win since 1986 delivered a degree of satisfaction he continues to savour.
"What does that medal mean to me," Culhane questions before pausing.
"Ya, I suppose at the time it meant a huge deal. I won that medal in '91, and since 1983 I had been trying to beat Cork.
"They had been beating us at minors, U-21s and seniors while I was involved in all those teams."
Although only the prospect of beating Cork in the Munster final itself may have made the result sweeter still, that it took Culhane a few moments to remember it was Limerick they had overcome in the deciding match hinted at what had been achieved.
"They came to Killarney as raging hot favourites, the All-Ireland champions," Culhane recalls of a team chasing three-in-a-row.
"That medal is a symbol of those years trying to beat Cork.
"It's a Munster medal but that doesn't really resonate with me as much, it's more about toppling Cork at last.
"Even if I didn't have the medal, I could still say we beat Cork - box ticked."
An unfamiliar high-point in the career of a Kerry footballer, perhaps, it is a memory Kieran Culhane cherishes. Not long thereafter, as the emergence of a new, talented generation appeared ready to compliment a player making up for lost time, misfortune struck Culhane once more.
Plagued by injuries, the Ballylongford man would not make it past 1993 with Kerry.
"When Páidí Ó Sé took over in '95 he got onto me and I arranged to meet him in Dingle," Culhane explains.
"I had bowed out the year before, but he asked me to give it another year.
"I'd gotten married a couple of years before, we'd bought a house, started a family and things changed.
"One day you're this young, easy-going individual who lives and dies for football, then, all of a sudden, it's not the big deal that it was."
Still shy of his 30th birthday, Culhane doesn't trouble himself thinking whether or not he could have held on until order was restored in 1997.
In his own mind (and crucially, his body), that time had passed.
It just seemed like another road to be travelled, but I'd already travelled enough roads at that stage.
Kieran Culhane
"1994 and '95 are a complete blur," Culhane admits as he recalls navigating an interest in football through the malaise of his departure from the Kerry set-up.
"I didn't even go to games. People couldn't understand it, but when you're at it so long and trying so hard and you haven't succeeded as such, it's the last thing you want to do.
"I didn't see Kerry playing for a couple of years like, and it wasn't that I didn't have the interest, I just didn't have the energy.
"It just seemed like another road to be travelled, but I'd already travelled enough roads at that stage."
Yet, no more than a fan when Kerry last lifted the Sam Maguire, such was his happy lot as Páidí Ó Sé's side put fat back on the bone in '97.
"At that time you could run onto the pitch at Croke Park," Culhane remembers, "and I was one of the first out there to meet the lads."
"I'd made my choice, told Páidí no - Sin é. But I wouldn't swap '97 and that day on the pitch with the lads for nothing."
********************
Culhane, I went home to the sitting-room, put the cup on the coffee table at five-o-clock in the morning and stared at it until 8-o-clock.
- James Doherty, Ballylongford captain (2000)
In reality, few regrets are forthcoming in Kieran Culhane's recollections of time spent playing inter-county football with Kerry.
"When you look at your own career it comes down to whether you wore the jersey," Culhane states assertively.
Throughout a period of plenty for Kerry, it is both difficult and ultimately unnecessary to share much sympathy for one like Culhane who found himself in the right place at the wrong time.
Furthermore, you'd scarcely think he'd welcome such platitudes.
Thankful for the opportunity of representing the country's most feted county, it has provided Culhane with friendships that stretch across the country.
Similarly, one gets the impression that although no All-Ireland was won, he knows himself to have been a suitably talented footballer to reap greater rewards had fate been a little kinder.
Sharing in a sense of unfulfilled promise that most surely irk the vast array of inter-county players past and present who never achieve that ultimate goal, in other ways he has found tremendous satisfaction through football.
"We had won a couple of championships," Culhane recalls of his spell playing club football with Ballylongford, "but a very, very good friend of mine had been away and missed them."
"He was older than I was, but in 2000 he became club captain and we put a huge effort in to win the North Kerry Championship - his holy grail.
Where he had waited seven years for his breakthrough from minor to senior with Kerry, the conclusion of that chapter in 1993 preceded a further seven-year wait.
"We won it," Culhane proclaims proudly.
"There's a picture of himself and myself somewhere, and we're coming off the pitch after the final.
"I said to him, 'I'm crossing the white line now for the last time, Sin é.'
"That was it, good luck and thanks."
Subscribe to Off The Ball's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
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Post by Mickmack on Feb 28, 2019 12:52:27 GMT
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peanuts
Fanatical Member
Posts: 1,850
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Post by peanuts on Feb 28, 2019 13:50:18 GMT
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 28, 2019 16:49:19 GMT
Looking forward to seeing what Kieran Donaghy does outside the white lines as he's time on the pitch & court closes in.
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 28, 2019 16:55:01 GMT
Good piece on Kieran Culhane, a teak tough defender in his time. There were some great players from that time during the famine, Sean Burke, Anthony Gleeson, Morgan Nix, Connie Murphy etc who missed out on a medal. An interesting insight from Kieran Culhane from an interesting time in Kerry football while Kerry wandered in the outback.
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Post by Mickmack on Feb 28, 2019 18:02:59 GMT
Good piece on Kieran Culhane, a teak tough defender in his time. There were some great players from that time during the famine, Sean Burke, Anthony Gleeson, Morgan Nix, Connie Murphy etc who missed out on a medal. An interesting insight from Kieran Culhane from an interesting time in Kerry football while Kerry wandered in the outback. someone asked last week whether Munster was ever competitive.. a strange comment i thought. Those Munster finals were All Ireland quarter finals played in Cork and Killarney on a knock out basis. The whole summer was defined by them.
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Post by kerrygold on Feb 28, 2019 18:45:12 GMT
Agreed, the Munster championship was completely relevant pre the backdoor concept.
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Post by kerrygold on Mar 1, 2019 10:30:45 GMT
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Mar 1, 2019 10:54:30 GMT
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Post by Seoirse Ui Duic on Mar 1, 2019 11:38:11 GMT
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Post by kerrygold on Mar 1, 2019 14:07:37 GMT
The video doesn't say if he was/is now professional, semi pro or an amateur dancer.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Mar 1, 2019 14:14:31 GMT
The video doesn't say if he was/is now professional, semi pro or an amateur dancer. Well he was hardly doing it just for the craic. He was professional. Did you not read the article.
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Post by kerrygold on Mar 1, 2019 15:19:16 GMT
Coaching as a performance art in the GAA
By Peter Sweeney RTÉ Sport Journalist
The role of performance coach is, by it’s nature, difficult to define.
It’s easy to sneer at too, particularly in the GAA, where there’s a resistance to most new innovations when they first arrive.
The appointment of Kieran Donaghy and Doug Howlett to performance roles at two high profile hurling teams has brought this growth area into the spotlight in recent days.
"It’s about what are the specifics and expectations from the person that’s bringing in the coach."
Donaghy is to take the post of performance coach with Galway hurlers, manager Micheál Donoghue saying he was thinking ‘outside the box’ when it came to finding marginal gains.
The former Footballer of the Year won’t be involved on a regular basis due to his commitments as a player with Tralee Warriors in basketball’s Super League, but he has been brought on board for his ‘personality and experience’.
Howlett remains New Zealand’s all-time record try scorer and a Munster legend. He works with the province as their marketing and commercial manager and he will combine that with the role of performance lead with Cork hurlers.
Over the past few decades sports psychology, nutrition, sports science, strength and conditioning, and video analysis have all become common place in top level Gaelic Games despite being greeted with initial scepticism.
In recent years performances coaches have started to pop up, the first high profile case the appointment of former world boxing champion Bernard Dunne to Jim Gavin’s Dublin backroom team in 2013.
He quit that role in 2017 when he took over as the high performance director of the IABA, Ireland amateur boxing’s governing body.
As with everything in the Dublin football camp, his role was shrouded in secrecy and the nearest he came to explaining his duties was in a 2016 interview
At the time he said: "Honestly, and without fudging the lines or you thinking I am not telling you anything, I literally will do whatever Jim tells me what to do, and that’s as simple as being a Maor Uisce, sitting in at a training sessions or kicking balls back out to boys that are kicking."
Whatever he did, he played a part in three All-Ireland wins in four seasons and he was popular among the players.
Former Mayo and Wicklow footballer Austin O’Malley is performance lead with McNulty Performance, the company run by 2002 Armagh All-Ireland winner Enda McNulty.
The company’s slogan is ‘our mission is your potential’ and McNulty has worked with a string of well known clients in sport, performing arts and the corporate world, including Ireland’s Grand Slam winning rugby team.
O’Malley explains that there are two different types of performance coaching brief - one aimed at the environment around the team or athlete and the other aimed at the athlete themselves away from their sporting life.
"It’s a fluid concept, as is all coaching," he said. "It’s about what are the specifics and expectations from the person that’s bringing in the coach.
"You can look to a performance coach to build a high performance environment. It’s a cold pair of eyes looking at what is there, a ‘situational analysis’. What should be here, what are the gaps? Then it’s about creating and planning.
"If the brief is player-focused, it’s about the player away from the pitch - it’s lifestyle and a holistic approach. It’s about things that the manager might not have time to deal with."
According to O’Malley, the appointment of Howlett and Donaghy, even though they don’t have a professional coaching background, makes perfect sense. The fact that they’ve never played hurling makes no difference either.
"These guys have been in the trenches and have a solid profile of performance," he said. "They’ve lived and breathed it - the young guy with the masters degree straight out of college might have all the science, but they haven’t lived it. Experience is everything."
The modern inter-county footballer and hurler are generally open to new innovations in their sport, on and off the field.
That wasn’t always the case, of course, and Kerry legend Tomás Ó Sé admits he wouldn’t have been comfortable having to sit down and chat to a performance coach, no matter who they were.
He preferred to take the counsel of his brothers, Darragh and Marc, and uncle Paidí, all All-Ireland winners with the Kingdom. He acknowledges: "It was a different era.
"We never, ever had anyone like that in Kerry when I was playing. It’s a relatively new thing.
"My perception of it is, you go in, talk about what you’ve done, what it is you’re doing. If they are open to it, players can go up and talk to you then. If I was in the role, I’d be ringing people privately and talk to them, try to give them a bit of confidence.
Tomás Ó Sé on the ball for Kerry "Teams have been doing this for a while in the GAA and it shows that teams are continually trying to find that edge. If four or five players buy into it and that makes a difference, it could be the difference in winning an All-Ireland or not.
"Kieran Donaghy has been through it all. Nothing beats a guy who has been there and done that.
"He puts people in good form because he’s just positivity itself," said Ó Sé, a long-time team-mate of Donaghy in Kerry colours.
"If Galway had a fellah who was brilliant for them two years ago and is struggling now, I’d be saying it to Kieran, explaining that we need to get him back to that level.
"I don’t think he’s going to be up there for every training session, or even every week, he might call them for a chat on the phone while he’s in the car. I don’t think that chat would do anything but good."
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Post by southward on Mar 2, 2019 11:04:22 GMT
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Post by Seoirse Ui Duic on Mar 2, 2019 13:18:12 GMT
It's as bad as it gets. They argue that Maghera rack up huge scores and Abbey had no choice, but that mindset is inherent to our game now. It's okay now when Fermanagh do it, as otherwise they would never win a game and as Mickey Harte said in his book: "In 10 years time all people remember is who won the game, not how it was won" We can kid ourselves saying we would rather see nice football than lose ugly, but nobody wants to lose. It's a total low point in football, but is it wise of Brolly to pick on a bunch of underage players? They are only doing what their coaches tell them to do.
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Post by southward on Mar 2, 2019 13:45:28 GMT
It's as bad as it gets. They argue that Maghera rack up huge scores and Abbey had no choice, but that mindset is inherent to our game now. It's okay now when Fermanagh do it, as otherwise they would never win a game and as Mickey Harte said in his book: "In 10 years time all people remember is who won the game, not how it was won" We can kid ourselves saying we would rather see nice football than lose ugly, but nobody wants to lose. It's a total low point in football, but is it wise of Brolly to pick on a bunch of underage players? They are only doing what their coaches tell them to do. Don't think he's blaming the players. Surely no kid wants to do this... If kids are being made to play like this at U15, what hope is there for them at senior? Shameful.
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Post by Mickmack on Mar 2, 2019 13:59:42 GMT
this is what happens when a team that set up to counter attack meets a team that wont oblige the opposition by coming forward and being dispossessed.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Mar 2, 2019 14:08:09 GMT
The common denominator is that these are overwhelmingly LOSING tactics and the team employing these tactics lost the match again here.
By double scores I guess.
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Post by southward on Mar 2, 2019 14:21:59 GMT
The common denominator is that these are overwhelmingly LOSING tactics and the team employing these tactics lost the match again here. By double scores I guess. Won't be long before some coaches start lobbying for losing bonus points.
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Post by Mickmack on Mar 2, 2019 14:41:59 GMT
this is what happens when a team that set up to counter attack meets a team that wont oblige the opposition by coming forward and being dispossessed. just to add.... Kerry lost the 2005 final by being dispossessed in attacking forays.
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Post by southward on Mar 2, 2019 14:46:33 GMT
this is what happens when a team that set up to counter attack meets a team that wont oblige the opposition by coming forward and being dispossessed. just to add.... Kerry lost the 2005 final by being dispossessed in attacking forays. As did Dublin in 2014. Still though, you just can't play the game like that; what's the point? Might as well take up bingo.
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Post by kerrygold on Mar 12, 2019 10:49:04 GMT
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kerryexile
Fanatical Member
Whether you believe that you can, or that you can't, you are right anyway.
Posts: 1,108
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Post by kerryexile on Mar 12, 2019 11:28:37 GMT
i see that like Tomas, he announces himself as a fully paid up, card carrying member of the "Kerry don't have specialist man markers" brigade. As usual it is journalism of the level of pub chat. For example, like the others, he can't give one instance to substantiate his claim against the current squad. No player has scored a lot against Kerry. McManus scored a lot of frees (some dubious ones) but only got 1 point from open play. Also apart from telling us what we all saw, he doesn't make any predictions.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Mar 12, 2019 11:52:22 GMT
i see that like Tomas, he announces himself as a fully paid up, card carrying member of the "Kerry don't have specialist man markers" brigade. As usual it is journalism of the level of pub chat. For example, like the others, he can't give one instance to substantiate his claim against the current squad. No player has scored a lot against Kerry. McManus scored a lot of frees (some dubious ones) but only got 1 point from open play. Also apart from telling us what we all saw, he doesn't make any predictions. It is a well known phenomenon that pundits' predictions are no more accurate than pub talkers'. I prefer pundits not to make predictions.
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Post by Mickmack on Mar 12, 2019 22:34:49 GMT
on TSG last sunday Donal Og made point that Offaly hurling is at where it was for most of the last 100 years apart from the 70s and 80s. He then had a pop at Offaly pundits who are against innovation by teams. I was thinking to myself that he is having a go at Michael Duignan over criticisms he made about the blanket defences by Davy Fitz at Clare and also the same tactic used by waterford. It all seemed a bit pointed towards Michael Duignan. Well, Duignan responded... www.balls.ie/gaa/michael-duignan-donal-og-cusack-407174
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Mar 12, 2019 22:48:56 GMT
on TSG last sunday Donal Og made point that Offaly hurling is at where it was for most of the last 100 years apart from the 70s and 80s. He then had a pop at Offaly pundits who are against innovation by teams. I was thinking to myself that he is having a go at Michael Duignan over criticisms he made about the blanket defences by Davy Fitz at Clare and also the same tactic used by waterford. It all seemed a bit pointed towards Michael Duignan. Well, Duignan responded... www.balls.ie/gaa/michael-duignan-donal-og-cusack-407174Talk about playing the man and not the ball...
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