Down Club Hurling & Football

[snoopdog]

Strange interview by McCorry on sunday game. Happy with promotion to Div 1
This guy is a spoofer would we be in any worse a position if we got rid of him now.

Who would you put in Snoop?

I honestly don't know. I suppose I should have an alternative if I'm Going to call for his head. But I don't know who within the county could change things around? Would anyone even want the job? Outside managers have been to the forefront lately for the top clubs winning the Down championship.

[5 Sams]

I promised myself I wouldn't get involved and bite at these clowns coming on here hurling personal abuse at people involved with our county set up. But this discussion board has got out of control. The personal abuse directed at our county secretary by one eejit in particular, I wont even stoop low enough to name him, is unacceptable. Constructive criticism is acceptable personal abuse is not. I see the work Seán óg puts in on a daily basis. Alright you might say he gets paid for it and yes myself and our club have had our disagreements with him, but what other job involves working 9 to 5 and then out every night helping clubs with grant applications, sorting tickets out, etc, etc, etc. His only concern is the welfare of clubs in Down and the county teams. It's not his fault 15+ highly tuned athletes couldn't beat a 4th division team. Don't forget how great a fella he was when he was supplying everyone with tickets in 2010.

[Brick Tamlin]

Non-comparable eras. Different ball game now with different set of requirements to run successful county football teams.
Funds have to be raised somehow and if the county board members are willing to put their head on the block in order to raise or attempt to raise revenue then that's fair enough.
You cant criticise people for at least trying to raise money to fund our teams. Maybe you can take issue with how they go about it but at the end of the day im sure those men who signed up for Crumlin Rd gig aren't doing it to gain something personally out of it.
If we had beaten Derry and beaten Wexford there would be no mention of it. The fund-raising activities and initiatives are not the reason for the losses. Neither is the size of the Abbey pitches.

And for the record, im no fan of some county board personnel and how they operate but some of the things being said on here are wild.

[thewobbler]

I dont think McCorry will be let go, but I think burrens Sean Ward could be a viable candidate in the near future, he had great results with Burren u21s, done fantastic with St Johns and I wouldnt be suprised if he got his first sfc as manager this season.

I don't get this.

If success in club football in Down is the criteria for county team appointments, then Jim McCorry is the outstanding candidate by miles. The only other person who could be considered is Frank Dawson.

Sean Ward looks promising, no doubt. But let's get this straight, you are actually promoting the appointment of a man who has never managed in a game at senior club championship level.

This is lunacy at every possible level. Yet you have the temerity to criticise the county board?

[ardtole]

I never once criticised the county board. Someone asked who might want the job or would anyone even take the job. All i said is I dont think McCorry will go but if he did, Sean Ward has impressed me with his record to date and might be a viable option in the near future. How the hell can that upset you??

[snoopdog]

If I made any personal comments other than question the managers potion then I apologise.  On bright side we avoided another trip to Derry. But I don't know why Down teams fail time and again to be totally tuned into games. No doubt we are better than wexford so why didn't we beat them? Is there any mental prep for the team, something I would say jim mcguinness did with Donegal.

[Aristo 60]

If I made any personal comments other than question the managers potion then I apologise.  On bright side we avoided another trip to Derry. But I don't know why Down teams fail time and again to be totally tuned into games. No doubt we are better than wexford so why didn't we beat them? Is there any mental prep for the team, something I would say jim mcguinness did with Donegal.

That's a serious bit of positive mental attitude right there!

[johnneycool]

I see our hurling isn't going much better.  Here's a message from the Antrim Hurling thread:

UMHC Antrim 4-18 Down 1-8
So much for Downs Dev Sq push, they have been talking themselves up for a few years now, and as usual, not delivering!!
I wasn't there but heard the first half was a good show the 2nd no so good, but it's a results business.
I would hope the seniors show a bit of fight today fortnight, couldn't bear Down celebrating(or the clowns they have managing them!!
Any reports in today's matches

Senior hurlers won a few hours later, but lets drown in negativity as it suits the agenda.

Back to development squads and what not, Whilst they're a good concept I think they cast the net too narrow and leave aside a lot of late developing potential and secondly they start at far too late in a childs development especially in hurling where if the basics aren't there at 6 to 8 years of age, you're pissing in the wind trying to change a youngster at 14, 15 or what not. Football might be slightly different, but I'm sure there's loads of bad habits that are hard to correct there too.

I think our full time coaches need to work harder at the finer details of coaching the coaches and I'm not talking about that bollox of foundation courses as they're far too generic and the devil is in the detail, e.g. we'd Paudie Butler up with us for a Saturday and he spent 30 minutes talking about the grip and swing in hurling and then proceeded to take another 20 minutes with our u16's putting into practice the theory he'd put across, but then again that's why his club in Tipp came from junior and got to three Tipp senior club finals and now have 3 or 4 lads on their senior county team whilst he was principal of the local national school.

On the games, Kilkenny historically allow their players go back to their clubs throughout the championship and their club championships are intertwined with the AI series, Kerry footballers are the same, so are Cork, plus Kilkenny underage club teams are guaranteed a game every week at all levels as well as the development squads, so as much as the development squads are there, they're not the be all and end all and clubs are still availing of their players throughout the year.
Plus the coaches are recognised for the voluntary work they do regularly, I think they've a thank you dinner every year, plus the senior hurlers are encouraged/reminded to thank these coaches every time they are interviewed on TV or in the press.

[A man from Down]

This may sound disrespectful to Wexford but Down should never ever be beaten by Wexford (a hurling county) at any level in football. It happened in Ross and DJ's time when everything was chaotic, is there chaos in the ranks now, with all the organisation and 'commitment' than has gone into the current regime, surely not?

I believe McCorry is the best candidate for the job but watching Down this year has been as frustrating as ever and if I'm honest there was much less optimism before this years championship than usual. To be dumped out by Wexford is a shock.

The Down senior football team do not have:


A Full back

A Centre half back

A Midfield Partnership

A Full forward line

Leaders on the pitch (apart from McKernan & Laverty)

And most importantly a match winner. For the first time in about 30 years we no longer have somebody to get excited about who can make something out of nothing, someone with the brain to match his ability (ie) a  Benny Coulter, a Mickey Linden, A James McCartan.


And before people start yapping about my criticisms I still do believe that most of the current squad are good enough to be there but for example, Luke Howard is a very good man marking corner back not a full back, not someone to mark full forwards 4&5 inches taller, Peter Fitzpatrick is a fine midfielder (as is Peter Turley) but surely we can find another competitive midfielder from somewhere? Apart from Liam Doyle and Aidan Carr in flashes we hav'nt had a presence at centre half back in many years, the same can be said of full back apart from when Big Dan excelled in there.

The point I'm making is that (in my opinion) concessions should have been made for the recently retired/dropped/uncommitted or whatever status they have.

Its the same issues year in year out, I'm sure Jim has a long term plan in place for success but Saturday night was certainly a step back in the process.


On another note, Antrim travelled to Laois last week for a 2.30 throw in. Offaly tavelled to Waterford for a 2.30 throw in. On Saturday Wicklow went to Armagh for a 2.30 throw in whilst Limerick travelled to Omagh for a 4pm throw in.

WHY DID DOWN HAVE A 6.30 THROW IN FOR A TRIP TO WEXFORD???

Somebody somewhere should have dug their heals in.


Rant over

[PAULD123]

There is a lot of talk about the missing players, hotel rooms and development squads. And although there were many goo points none address the actual cause of our failure. The way we play football is the problem. If you have  a good system that maximizes player abilities then better players make you a better team. but if you have such a god awful system as ours (in fact do we have one) then better players would not guarantee a dramatic improvement.

For me the blame lies firmly with the team management. We have good players, maybe not best in Ireland but definitely a squad of competent fit players. When Jim joined things had dropped off for us with our performances looking erratic and full of repetitive flaws. Jim was meant to address these issue but instead things are possibly worse. Key areas Jim failed to address:

1. Regaining possession from our own kickouts - All season we have persevered with long kick to easily beaten players. Jim's strategy was to change the personnel each game. But none of our players are classical fielding midfielders, he should have changed the approach instead. He is responsible for providing a system instead of stubbornly trying new players in a broken system.

2. Attacking space - We cycle the ball with fist passing but then the passer drops back behind the receiver so we gradually work our way backwards. Jim should have implemented a system of allowing some players to run forward into space to receive a pass and shoot. We rarely have players move forward for a return pass instead it is drop back and cover every time giving the opposition an easy task of outnumbering our attackers.

3. Scoring - Linked to point 2, the management have a responsibility for encouraging players to shoot when opportunities come and try to build scorelines. Instead we seem much more interested in retaining possession and working the ball into slightly better positions. It's like the lads don't even understand when they have succeeded in getting the ball to the right place and now is the time to shoot.

4. Group defending - Donegal, Mayo... are all good at group defending. An attacking team gets so far and then is swarmed and turned over. We had an awful lot of one-on-ones this season and suffered for it. Jim should have the boys drilled to allow certain attacks to progress and then attack the ball carrier at the right time. It seems to me that the team are being asked to try to tackle every single opposition ball carrier. causing our defense to fragment and act as individuals. (for example, put a little pressure on a half forward while marking his other attackers but leave the corner back or half back a little more free. When he passes to this man then swarm him because he is more likely to succumb to turnovers)

5. Timing of runs to maximize player fitness - It should clear to us that there is a system of who makes the forward runs and when, so that we see players can maintain a high level of pressure throughout the 70 minutes instead of just everyone running their guts out for the whole game. Coalan Mooney is one of the fastest players around yet we never utilized his pace by asking him to make breaks and playing the ball into his run.

6. Gaining possession in the danger area - We dance around the opposition 45 for ages but rarely get good possession inside their 21. We have no system of getting good ball to our full-forward line. Jim seems to think that pumping high balls into a small two-man forward line will work one day. At no point did he think to try a three man full forward line, or playing a target man up front despite McConville coming on as a sub and scoring 3 goals plus making two others this season.

In short I am not sure Jim had any system at all except "Don't lose possession". I didn't see one. I also didn't see obvious problems addressed except to stick with the approach but shuffle player positions. Most importantly we did not improve as the season progressed, we saw no development of the team cohesion. To me eyes this seemed to leave the players looking more and more like a bunch of guys that didn't trust the plan and weren't enjoying playing for the county. I saw a lot of personal pride and determined effort but no cohesion and no obvious game strategy.

[charlieTully]

This may sound disrespectful to Wexford but Down should never ever be beaten by Wexford (a hurling county) at any level in football. It happened in Ross and DJ's time when everything was chaotic, is there chaos in the ranks now, with all the organisation and 'commitment' than has gone into the current regime, surely not?

I believe McCorry is the best candidate for the job but watching Down this year has been as frustrating as ever and if I'm honest there was much less optimism before this years championship than usual. To be dumped out by Wexford is a shock.

The Down senior football team do not have:


A Full back

A Centre half back

A Midfield Partnership

A Full forward line

Leaders on the pitch (apart from McKernan & Laverty)

And most importantly a match winner. For the first time in about 30 years we no longer have somebody to get excited about who can make something out of nothing, someone with the brain to match his ability (ie) a  Benny Coulter, a Mickey Linden, A James McCartan.


And before people start yapping about my criticisms I still do believe that most of the current squad are good enough to be there but for example, Luke Howard is a very good man marking corner back not a full back, not someone to mark full forwards 4&5 inches taller, Peter Fitzpatrick is a fine midfielder (as is Peter Turley) but surely we can find another competitive midfielder from somewhere? Apart from Liam Doyle and Aidan Carr in flashes we hav'nt had a presence at centre half back in many years, the same can be said of full back apart from when Big Dan excelled in there.

The point I'm making is that (in my opinion) concessions should have been made for the recently retired/dropped/uncommitted or whatever status they have.

Its the same issues year in year out, I'm sure Jim has a long term plan in place for success but Saturday night was certainly a step back in the process.


On another note, Antrim travelled to Laois last week for a 2.30 throw in. Offaly tavelled to Waterford for a 2.30 throw in. On Saturday Wicklow went to Armagh for a 2.30 throw in whilst Limerick travelled to Omagh for a 4pm throw in.

WHY DID DOWN HAVE A 6.30 THROW IN FOR A TRIP TO WEXFORD???

Somebody somewhere should have dug their heals in.


Rant over

The difference being it was August when Down lost to Wexford not June. We also managed to beat the team that went on to win the AI that year and win a McKenna cup.

[Brick Tamlin]

Id love to hear some of the spin-merchants views now.
Mourne Rover where are ye sunshine? Give us a few nuggets.

Saturdays result was shocking but it wasn't a shock by any stretch.

[Pangurban]

If you have no presence in the middle third of the field you do not win football games. If you have a manager who cant see that or fails to address it we will not win football games. If we go on making the same mistakes we cant expect different results. Next year we will be heading into the championship with a losing mentality arising from a series of beatings in Div.1 and relegation. Where are the positives. I dont believe there are better footballers in the county that are not in the current panel. Minors and U21s are largely failing to produce any talent.

[Leonardo]

I think Jim was the correct appointment at the time, but what has surprised me is the radical change to his teams style of play. From what I seen with Kilcoo and Clonduff, he would drop one player into defence to sweep and play with 5 forwards.
With Down it has been a case of getting 13 men back behind the ball and the emphasis is on restricting the other team to score as little as possible. However, when Down turned the ball over, play was too slow getting up the field, and our players didn't break at speed to rejoin the attack. It seems we have the attitude of let's not get beat, rather than let's go win. That's fine if you are strong defensively, but we are not
Think the criticism of Jim is harsh and has been mentioned before, only Frank Dawson was a serious contender for the position.
Moving forward, I would like to see the team playing a more attacking system -you will find that the majority of our top players are forwards and we are taking them away from forward line

[wobbller]

Two days later and the various posts are getting longer and more analytical but we're
still out of the Championship and in a very bad place in all aspects-top to bottom. Think I'll join the Katie Taylor fan Club.