Hurling Championship 2019

Started by seafoid, May 08, 2019, 04:35:26 PM

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Croí na hÉireann

Quote from: Milltown Row2 on May 19, 2019, 02:39:08 PM
Quote from: imtommygunn on May 19, 2019, 02:29:28 PM
Things not looking good for Waterford. Offaly have been a long way off past glories for at least this decade. Antrim game a big test for them. Should have enough for Kerry. (Although bar 89 the buggers usually beat Antrim by a bit but hopefully not this year)

I'd say Offaly and Antrim at similar level, was listening to the games on the radio yesterday and the co commentator was an Offaly man, he was fuming

Going on yesterday I'd be surprised if Offaly get near Antrim either. Their touch was shocking, rallied a bit after half time but the Westmeath goals killed it. Westmeath should have won that game by 20+ points, really good performance in the first half but had a few needless wides. Weren't at the same pitch in the second half but did enough to kill the game. Killian Doyle was on fire throughout and Aonghus Clarke and Jogger were in complete command at the back, really strong spine to the team. Good work rate from Mitchell up top too. A full performance like that first half, next weekend against Kerry, should set us up for a nice battle with Laois and Antrim to make the final.

Iarmhí Abú
Westmeath - Home of the Christy Ring Cup...

seafoid

Limerick shaken to the core as Cork demolish the apple-cart
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/limerick-shaken-to-the-core-as-cork-demolish-the-apple-cart-1.3897627

All-Ireland champions left looking ordinary after Cork catapult themselves back in the mix

   


We should have known, really. The lesson of the hurling summer of 2018 was that nobody was safe, least of all in Munster. And so it has proven again this time around. Cork, so lily-livered and out of sorts in their opening-day defeat to Tipperary, turned the whole thing on its head by going to Limerick and handing the All-Ireland champions a 1-26 to 1-19 defeat.
Four games into the Munster championship, three home defeats. Driven on by Patrick Horgan, who scored 1-9 despite for once having a shaky day on the frees, Cork catapulted themselves back into the mix. It was vindication for John Meyler, who made four changes and lost Conor Lehane after six minutes. But with Daniel Kearney and Séamus Harnedy in full cry, they made Limerick look very ordinary in a dominant second-half display.
"There are five teams in Munster, three of them weren't here today and they can all beat each other on any given day and everybody knows that," said John Meyler afterwards. "There are five really good teams and the Munster championship is really competitive and you don't think anything for granted. We knew that coming up today that we had to up our performance, our work-rate, which wasn't good enough last Sunday, but we got it today."

Torpedoed

For Limerick, this was an apple-cart not so much upset as torpedoed. All the fine words about their handling of All-Ireland success, all the hosannas sung for their league title earlier in the year, all of it is up for grabs now. They have to go to Waterford in a fortnight to rescue their summer.
"I see very little chance of us being able to make it through without winning down there," said John Kiely. "I don't know what the maths is going to be like at that stage but listen, let's face it, we've lost our first game, we need to get something out of that second game. We have to go and get a result."
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

seafoid

Hurling odds  21/5

Tipp 11/2
Cork 5/1
Galway 5/1
Lim 11/2
Clare 13/2
Kk 7/1
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

AZOffaly


Ball Hopper

Odds I found today, 21 May:

Tipp 11/4

Cork Galway Limerick all 9/2

Kilkenny 5/1

Clare 13/2

Wexford 20/1

Dublin 33/1

clonadmad

Quote from: Ball Hopper on May 21, 2019, 10:02:00 PM
Odds I found today, 21 May:

Tipp 11/4

Cork Galway Limerick all 9/2

Kilkenny 5/1

Clare 13/2

Wexford 20/1

Dublin 33/1

There's a bit of value to be had with KK

seafoid

Quote from: AZOffaly on May 21, 2019, 09:42:54 PM
Tipp 11/2?
Another typo

Should be 11/4

fierce early for that I think. a lot of hurling to be played
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

johnnycool

Quote from: clonadmad on May 22, 2019, 08:30:10 AM
Quote from: Ball Hopper on May 21, 2019, 10:02:00 PM
Odds I found today, 21 May:

Tipp 11/4

Cork Galway Limerick all 9/2

Kilkenny 5/1

Clare 13/2

Wexford 20/1

Dublin 33/1

There's a bit of value to be had with KK

I can see a semi-final in them TBF. Not sure thereafter.

seafoid

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/hurling/jackie-tyrrell-tipp-s-roving-style-makes-defending-against-them-a-nightmare-1.3902326

Jackie Tyrrell: Tipp's roving style makes defending against them a nightmare
I chased Noel McGrath around Croke Park that day, but really I was chasing shadows
about an hour ago

Jackie Tyrrell



After 21 minutes of the Tipperary versus Waterford game on Sunday there was a frantic piece of action in the middle third of the field in Thurles. Various players from both sides tried to put manners on the ball until eventually Paudie Maher played a lateral pass to James Barry, who in turn stroked a low ball to Ronan Maher, standing just short of his own 65 with his hand in the air.
The camera angle from behind the goal is perfect for seeing what Tipperary are all about now. As the ball was going from Paudie Maher to Barry, Ronan Maher and Brendan Maher (standing to his right) both took a quick look over left and right shoulders to check where the space was.
As soon as Ronan saw that John McGrath's corner was empty, his hand shot up, looking for the ball off Barry. He collected the pass and striking across his body off his left side, played a diagonal ball that went 60 metres to top of the right where McGrath was running out from goal to collect it.
Catch, one touch, turn, over the shoulder, point. Not much Noel Connors could have done about it. If you freeze the frame as the ball is coming in, John McGrath is the only Tipp attacker inside the 45 and Waterford have three defenders in there covering zonally. The ball from Ronan Maher was so good and so well-disguised that it took out all three of them.
As I looked on it felt like I was watching my own funeral.
That's because halfway through the first half of the 2014 All-Ireland final the exact same play happened to me. Talk about déjà vu. Different years, different pitch, different environment, different contributors. Same result.
I chased Noel McGrath around Croke Park that day, but really I was chasing shadows. I was sucking for oxygen, looking for a respite in the cauldron of intensity. The worst thing about it was it felt like Noel was just gliding around Croke Park, constantly out of my reach and I couldn't shackle him.
At that point Noel was standing at the end of my bed with the plug from my life-support machine in his hand. Looking at me just like in the Mortal Kombat computer game with the finishing move in sight. GAME OVER!
He scorched me for four points that day, and scored an identical point to the one his brother scored against Waterford on Sunday.
Bottled up
The really interesting thing about that is that it isn't as if Tipperary have been scoring those points day-in, day-out through the five years since.
The Tipp team that went out early in Munster last year was so easily bottled up and yet if you compare the forward line from this game to the one from their final game in 2018, Bubbles O'Dwyer for Billy McCarthy was the only change.
So how does a team who seemed so stuck in a rut, lacking ideas and direction, one that was essentially playing with the handbrake on last year, how does that turn into this?
There is no coincidence here. With Eamon O'Shea back in the Tipperary fold they have put together some off-the-charts stats from their attack. In two games they've scored 2-28 and 2-30, with 2-23 and 2-24 from play. Those numbers are devastating.
In these two games Tipperary have been all about movement, creation of space, giving the right ball to the right person at the right time, long ball, short ball, high or low, whatever the situation requires. To put up 4-58 over two games, with 4-47 from play, is incredible stuff.
O'Shea's fingerprints are all over this attack. They are averaging a score every two minutes. They don't have any really pacy players, but their roving style and movement opens up a world of space for defences to close off.
Defending against it is a nightmare. You're continually fighting fires and filling gaps. Bubbles starts inside, and moves to centre forward. Jason Forde starts inside, then moves out, Seamus Callanan the same. Out and around, in and away. And then bang – John McGrath is under no pressure even though he's outnumbered by three-to-one.
That's why I was getting flashbacks to 2014 when I saw how this forward unit sets up and moves and creates space. You make space on a hurling pitch by moving the opposition around, putting them in places they don't want to be. Tipp took us all over the pitch in that 2014 drawn final, never more so than in their forwards.
Alien space
I'll never forget there was one stage where Darren Gleeson pinged a puck-out to Noel with me on his tail. His movement had been so constant in the minute or so before it that when he caught the ball, he was standing in midfield. Which meant that I was standing in midfield too. Not good!
I honestly didn't know what to do. I was in an alien space. I'm sure anyone in the crowd who saw this was thinking, "what in the name of God is Tyrrell doing out there?" Trust me, I was thinking the same thing. All that was in my mind was, "I need to get out of here".
I'd say it was pretty much the first time in my career that I had spent any significant time where I was closer to the opponent's goal than my own. In an All-Ireland final! Crazy stuff.
The worst of it was I could sense that Noel knew this. Tipp knew they had our number that day. They looked us straight in the eye and just went past us as if we didn't exist at times. It left us in a spin. I had a headache after the game, purely from trying to concentrate on what they were doing.
They beat our backs all ends up in that game. We conceded 1-28, which really hurt us. But then everybody knows that. A more interesting subject for this column to get into is what we did to turn it around in the 20 days between that game and the replay.
We bounced back and held them to 2-14 the second time around. Tipperary didn't get any less talented or any less slick or any less motivated in those 20 days yet we were able to bottle them up. How? What was the difference?
Match-ups
When we sat back and looked at the game, we boiled it down to three things that essentially had to change if we were to contain them. Broadly, we split these into match-ups, defensive fluidity and cohesion.
The first one was obvious. We had to get our match-ups right the next day, which meant everyone knew early on who their target would be. I was detailed to be on Bubbles, JJ Delaney would take Callanan, with Paul Murphy going on to Lar.
Kieran Joyce was drafted in at centre-back to take on Bonner Maher, Cillian Buckley picked up Noel McGrath, and Pádraig Walsh came in at wing-back to make use of his aerial ability.
The next thing was defensive fluidity, the starting point of which was simple – when they set foot inside our 65-metre line they were ours, the backs. Outside of that distance it was the job of our midfielders and forwards to spot the danger and pick them up. We reasoned they wouldn't be able to hurt us all that much that far out.
We decided as well that we weren't going to be stuck to our positions. We were going to trust our match-ups and every man was going to do a proper man-marking job. We were going to be touch-tight at all times – if air or light could get between you and your man you weren't tight enough.
The consequence of this fluidity was that we were going to find ourselves popping up in positions that we weren't naturally familiar with. So in the training sessions during that three-week period we all made ourselves comfortable in different places on the pitch. When the ball was in play, you followed and tracked your man no matter where he went until the ball went dead.
We orchestrated training so that you could end up in three or four different positions over the course of one passage of play. You could start off corner-back, get pulled out to half back, follow your man back into full-back and finish in the other corner. You might have covered 80 yards and not seen the ball.
When the ball went dead we restructured our shape – JJ went to the edge of the square, Joycey to went six and we filled in around them. By the time the replay came around, we were used to it and expected it.
Great defensive plays
The third element was cohesion. Basically, none of us were to be out there defending alone. The best example of it came with JJ's hook on Callanan, one of the great defensive plays executed in Croke Park. Most people who are any way into hurling could describe it to you – Seamie bearing down on goal, JJ trailing in his wake, Seamie pulling the trigger and JJ getting his stick in to foil him.
For us what came next was every bit as important. JJ got the hook alright, but he had to dive headlong to do it so when the ball spilled at Callanan's feet, JJ was sprawled on the ground, out of the game. Watch it back and you'll see that Callanan only had to readjust his feet and he still had a free shot, no more than six or seven yards out from goal. Eoin Murphy had moved his body to go to save the first attempt and was in the process of getting himself set again for the second.
JJ's hook was amazing, but if Callanan had been able to whip on the loose ball and bury it to the net, nobody would remember it. The reason it lives on to this day is that Pádraig Walsh had made a covering run while JJ was chasing Callanan, and was able to be in and disrupt Seamie's second swing at it. Pádraig didn't even touch the ball – he just threw his hip into Seamie's and Paul Murphy was able to come in and scoop it up and make the clearance.
That was the key to the cohesion part of the plan. You backed each other up and you trusted that if a Tipp forward got around you, the cavalry wasn't going to be far behind. It was a simplistic approach, but when carried out with conviction and hurt it made for a dangerous and effective system.
Five years on and Tipperary look to be back in the groove, with all the old Eamon O'Shea movement in play again. We were able to hold them in the replay in 2014 so it can be done. But it takes a lot of planning, a lot of discipline and if there's a bit of luck thrown in, it won't do any harm.

"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

johnnycool

I've been in O'Shea's company once at an event in Downpatrick and he's certainly different to any other coach I've ever listened to.

He's very much motivated by movement, creating space and decision making, not a cone in sight.


seafoid

Quote from: johnnycool on May 24, 2019, 10:08:10 AM
I've been in O'Shea's company once at an event in Downpatrick and he's certainly different to any other coach I've ever listened to.

He's very much motivated by movement, creating space and decision making, not a cone in sight.
He is a really interesting person. It's a pity he didn't win an all Ireland with them when he was manager
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

manfromdelmonte

Quote from: seafoid on May 24, 2019, 12:10:20 PM
Quote from: johnnycool on May 24, 2019, 10:08:10 AM
I've been in O'Shea's company once at an event in Downpatrick and he's certainly different to any other coach I've ever listened to.

He's very much motivated by movement, creating space and decision making, not a cone in sight.
He is a really interesting person. It's a pity he didn't win an all Ireland with them when he was manager
he was a bit to loyal to underperforming players
he's probably better as a coach and coming up with solutions or game based training

Milltown Row2

Quote from: manfromdelmonte on May 24, 2019, 01:03:24 PM
Quote from: seafoid on May 24, 2019, 12:10:20 PM
Quote from: johnnycool on May 24, 2019, 10:08:10 AM
I've been in O'Shea's company once at an event in Downpatrick and he's certainly different to any other coach I've ever listened to.

He's very much motivated by movement, creating space and decision making, not a cone in sight.
He is a really interesting person. It's a pity he didn't win an all Ireland with them when he was manager
he was a bit to loyal to underperforming players
he's probably better as a coach and coming up with solutions or game based training

Which is what you need in any successful team set up, trying to do it all or being very good in one area and lacking in another will eventually catch you out.

The bit in bold needs to be implemented from the start, once kids have an understanding of spacial awareness then game based training has to be employed. But the ball is fine as it is  ;)
None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an after thought. Ea

johnnycool

Quote from: Milltown Row2 on May 24, 2019, 02:15:45 PM
Quote from: manfromdelmonte on May 24, 2019, 01:03:24 PM
Quote from: seafoid on May 24, 2019, 12:10:20 PM
Quote from: johnnycool on May 24, 2019, 10:08:10 AM
I've been in O'Shea's company once at an event in Downpatrick and he's certainly different to any other coach I've ever listened to.

He's very much motivated by movement, creating space and decision making, not a cone in sight.
He is a really interesting person. It's a pity he didn't win an all Ireland with them when he was manager
he was a bit to loyal to underperforming players
he's probably better as a coach and coming up with solutions or game based training

Which is what you need in any successful team set up, trying to do it all or being very good in one area and lacking in another will eventually catch you out.

The bit in bold needs to be implemented from the start, once kids have an understanding of spacial awareness then game based training has to be employed. But the ball is fine as it is  ;)

f**k no, the ball needs a lump of lead put in it.................







Our reserves lost 8 bloody balls into the Newry canal the other week. Can't be at that week in week out.

manfromdelmonte

Ok.
Junior b goalies shouldn't be landing the ball past the half forward line