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You'd think they'd go the whole hog and get it tattooed on! 

Clap clap.
Great report, Bord na Mona man.

Its hardly Pulitzer prize winning stuff in fairness!

I'm just curious as to what Prenty's motivations are.
I saw it alleged elsewhere that he is not amenable to the spread of hurling in his dealings in Mayo.

Prenty slams hurling loan system
22 February 2008


Connacht Council secretary John Prenty has criticised the ruling that allows hurlers to be loaned out to weaker counties.

In a system that echoes soccer loan moves, non-traditional counties are permitted to borrow hurlers who are surplus to requirement in the more established counties. Prenty is adamant that the policy is in no way beneficial to the weaker counties:

"These fly-by-nights are being entertained under the tenuous logic that they will promote the game at intercounty level.

"How can a player who is just passing through - who has no contact with a club within a county - be more valuable than a young player who has been nurtured by his club, who has an ambition to play for his county?

"This player has to look on as he sees one third of his county team populated by players with no allegiance to the county they play for.

"This scheme is only of benefit to players with no allegiance to the county and team managers who are seeking short-term gain with no interest in developing the game in the long term

Birr ran out commanding winners in the end but had it tough for 3/4 of the match.
Surprisingly, the Birr side under Pajo Whelahan would be renowned for enjoyable training sessions and relaxed "team bonding" sessions, lasted the pace much better then Dunloy. It did seem noticeable that some of Dunloy's older stalwarts ran out of steam with about 10 minutes to go. In contrast, the Birr bench contained speed merchants like Michael Dwane, who was sprung from it to torment Dunloy with his pace.

In the early exchanges Birr looked very much in command. They went into a 0-3 to 0-0 lead fairly quickly with the Dunloy defence looking shaky. At this point Birr should have pushed home their advantage more. They would have gone further clear, was it not for over elaboration in attack, overdoing the soloing and too many stray passes. Also Brian Whelahan fluffed a couple of straightforward frees. On a side note, free taking was probably the least accomplished aspect of Sid's game, yet most pundits and commentators tended to rate him as one of the master practitioners of the art. He was 60% at best in his Offaly days from 65s.
Never mind that. One piece of Sid magic in the first half was when he was under pressure and crowded on the touchline, turning back towards his own goal, he slung a lovely ball back out towards the middle picking out an unmarked Rory Hanniffy who stuck it over.

As the half wore on, Dunloy started to win the ball, find their colleagues and play good direct hurling. They were preventing Birr winning puckout possession and were edging it at midfield. Sean Mullan was managing to keep Gary Hanniffy from making clean catches and puckouts aimed at Brian Whelahan (playing centre forward) were being defended well by Damian McMullan. At midfield Dunloy drove good long balls into the full forward line, whereas Birr were more ponderous in possession.

At half time the game was keenly balanced though you felt Birr had a little that little bit extra in reserve. For the second half, Michael Dwane came on for Paul O'Meara who had picked up an injury mid way through the first half. Birr upped it a notch and started to score more freely. The spread the ball wide more and gave forwards like Simon Whelahan a chance to run, onto it and shake off the markers.

Barry Whelahan started to win a lot of puckouts and move the ball quickly. His ability to get the ball in hand first time, avoid tackles and deliver, makes him the sort of player Joe Dooley should be contacting.

Stephen Browne also came to the fore after half time, winning ball, making yards and hitting quality low ball down the channels. Rory Hanniffy started to find space and gave us glimpses of his blinding pace. He stuck over one great long range point at a crucial stage of the match.

Sean Ryan, found the conditions difficult, though he did get 2 points. He is player who thrives of picking up loose ball but isn't suited to being a target man. I think he needs to be played further outfield, unless he is played alongside a full forward who breaks the ball down for him. Lobbing in 50/50 balls between him and his marker is not going to work.

With pitch conditions so poor, both sets of backs were in for a nervous time of it. The Birr full back line stuck tight to their men and were unlikely to concede the goals that realistically were Dunloy's best hope of turning Birr over. Breeder made some good catches and apart from worrying short puck out, had a faultless display.

The game was still in the balance with 10 to go. With Birr 3 points up, Dunloy went in search of a goal. If the 50/50 lob into the Birr goalmouth had got whipped to the net, instead of away to safety, it could have been a storming finish. Instead Birr went downfield, stretched the gap to the magic 4 and kicked for home.

Overall it was an impressive Birr display gievn the conditions. Dunloy are in transition and need more time to blend a team together. Birr are clever enough to give Portumna a good battle in the final. On paper the Galway men would warrant being favourites, but never rule out the Pad Joe Whelahan madness factor to cause an upset.

I think this will be tighter than the odds suggest.
Dunloy have taken a couple of semi final scalps in recent years.
While they then let themselves down in Croke Park, they are still one of the top club teams around.

Birr have often found it difficult to over Dunloy also.
In the 1995 club final, Birr were very lucky to get a draw the first day out, before winning the replay.
In 2002 in a semi final, Birr needed another rally to come from behind and win.

The current Birr side made up of young inexperienced players as well as veterans like the Whelahans and Gary Hanniffy. However they have still a bit to go to compare to the Birr side of the late 90s and early 00s.
After 2006's trimming against Ballyhale, the general feeling was that Birr were destined for a long spell in the doldrums.

So it was big surprise that they managed to win out Leinster. Birr did well to beat Ballyhale who were minus Shefflin and Cha Fitz and outsmarted Ballyboden in the Leinster final. Padjoe Whelahan seems to have the magic touch with Birr. He came back in after 2 years away and has got the team buzzing again.
However I still think Birr need to improve more in order to challenge for the All Ireland.

I'm not sure what can be read into Dunloy's draw with Ballycran in Ulster. It remains to be seen if they can put in a fired up performance that saw them ambush Mount Sion and Portumna already this decade. However it wouldn't surprise me at all if they did.

Would like to see some softening of the relations between Cuba and america - the embargo is a disgrace to humanity.
Cuba is being kept poor and the people impoverished because of it.

Even if there was no embargo, I don't think Cuba would be much better off.
A country when you can't realistically start your own business, or buy property etc is hardly going to start thriving in a hurry.

The American embargo is petty, but it is the certainly has helped the Castro regime. Cuban people have a cause to rally behind and are less questioning of their own less than ideal living standards.

Certain dioceses still have them and others don't as I recall.
Ardagh and Clonmacnoise still do, whereas I never recall them in the Meath diocese.
Some lads only go to them for the soup and sandwiches after.
They were great craic for you young lads.
The hallways and bedrooms were great places for tittering and laughter during the solemn proceedings down in the kitchen!

A buffer for the congestion charge might be to allow private operators start to open new routes where the demand picks up on.
As stated, the current transport model makes everyone converge onto O'Connell Street.
With the intransigent unions, rigid work practices and no incentive to improve service, Dublin Bus are not going to quickly respond to the changes in commuter behaviour.

I don't know whether or not Kenny was a great manager (definitely a great great player) but I think his time at Newcastle is much maligned. I could be wrong but did he not take over over half way into a season, and then was shown the door two games into the next?

In the over all scheme Dalglish wasn't the worst Newcastle manager. However he played more conservative football and put greater emphasis on defence, which didn't go down well in the post-Keegan days.

Wow.  It's hard to believe there are still people who think like that.  Even in Australia!

A horseshit article.
You'd swear no "outside settler, blow in, whatever you call them" Australian ever benefited from the welfare state. And that every native is creaming it off the system.
Read between the lines and most of the benefits listed look like pure tokenism from a guilty state.
If there hadn't been so much interference from outsiders towards the Aborigines they wouldn't need to be trying to patch things up so much.

Worrying recent second half outings. It appears as if our stamina and/or desire fades after about 50 minutes. I think we scored poorly against DCU, Wexford, Antrim and now Tipp in the second half, and that was a common failing last year as well.

Yep.
It's a worrying stat.
I've been checking over Offaly's half time scores compared to full time scores against the top 8 counties over the last few years.
There have been some terrible second half fade outs.
I'll put together the stats soon enough.

Wicklow beat Leix in last year's league, so they are one of the better Division 2 sides.
Hopefully this performance is a sign of progress from Mayo.

It's gas in the article above.
Eoin Kelly had a quiet day and though he did take his goal well, he was be no means Tipp's best forward. Yet he steals the headlines because of 9 points from frees.

Anyway, this is what I threw up on uibhfhaili.com.

Having hurled so well for a 3/4 of the game, my overall feeling is one of dismay at yet another Offaly surrender once the opposition got the run on us.

The 17 point margin may look harsh on the balance of play, but really in the last quarter several players were either banjaxed or threw in the towel and got severely punished. There's no better county than Tipp to showboat and sow it into you when this happens.

Certainly this was an Offaly side shorn of the Birr players and with so many young players, there is propensity to allow heads drop, but I just feel it is a really bad habit from Offaly's that really bugs me.

The first 3/4 of the game. Tipp moderately the better of two sides still looking to shake of the winter cobwebs. Offaly troubles starting from the puckouts. Offaly's lack of a Gary or Rory Hanniffy, or Joe Bergin in the half forwards stuck out badly.

Shane O'Connor wasn't driving them beyond the opposition '45, but trying to find an Offaly shirt around midfield and half forward. Unfortunately Offaly got very little change here as Tipp had the superior size and fielding here. Credit Offaly lads like Ger Oakley who contested hard for the breaks and weren't afraid to use timber. Tipp used the possession better most of the time, though some of their touches were poor.

Tipp won most of the primary possession, Offaly on many occasions did battle well to win it back, or else a Tipp player made a basic error and gave it away, but too often Tipp created scoring chances. Offaly gave away a lot of frees and Eoin Kelly rarely missed. For a good stretch of the first half Tipp were held scoreless from play, but I don't remember Kelly missing a single free.

Shane Dooley put over most of the early frees, but started to miss as the game went on. Given that Damien Murray was very consistent last year, there might be call for a change here. While Murray wasn't faring any better than anyone else in winning possession, he did use the ball well and set up a couple of scores. I think Dooley might find himself squeezed out of the side as we need a more robust wing forward.

When in possession, too often Offaly players tried to tap a short ball to a colleague who wasn't in much space, where an old fashioned drive down the field would have been the better option. I fear that not enough Offaly players have to accuracy to deliver the pinpoint pass to a colleague and the recipient hasn't got the required hands and wristwork to control it first time. And barring that, the physical brutishness to compensate for the lack of the above. Too many Offaly players were static when receiving a 20-30 yard delivery. I think Joe Dooley might want to go back to basics here.

David Kenny had a super performance, of fielding covering and clearing. In the modern game, high fielding is such a prized skill and his ability to pluck balls from the sky was a pleasure to watch. His clearances were quality too. However, therein lies our problem. We simply don't have enough players greater than 6 feet, with the ability to win the high ball.

The Offaly full-forward line didn't get much in terms of quality ball. When it did come in too often, the were flat-footed and behind their men. What did help was some of the terrible mistakes made by the Tipp full back line when trying to rise, or clear the ball.

It was always inevitable Tipp would pull away at some stage. They had options on the bench and made the positional switches tell. Moving a subdued Lar Corbett to half forward made a huge difference to their attack for example.

Rampant Kelly causes Faithful to collapse

With two new managers at the helm, hope was bouncing around Thurles yesterday like a spring lamb but, of the shepherds, only Liam Sheedy looked happy with his flock after this Division 1B NHL opener.

Asked afterwards if they had picked up any residual injuries new Offaly boss Joe Dooley grimaced and admitted "our pride!"

Questions will certainly be asked about his young side's drastic capitulation in the last 10 minutes.

Twenty minutes into the second half, they were trailing by just three and holding their own, admittedly thanks largely to two first-half goals inside four minutes and some particularly timely defensive interventions by wing-back David Kenny.

And then bam! Like many a team before them they were undone in a split second by the hurling genius that locals only half-jokingly call 'God'.

Eoin Kelly, already faultless while racking up 0-7 in the first half, reached into the sky to pluck down a John O'Brien pass and rammed it home before Offaly could blink.

It was only one of the highlights of Kelly's eventual 1-10 and simply sucked the life-force from the visitors.

"With 20 minutes to go I thought we were going to win it," Dooley said. "Then we missed a couple of points, one from a free and one from play, and then they got the goal and it all switched within five minutes.

"Tipp's experience around the middle of the field showed. We played well for 55 to 60 minutes but when the goal went in we seemed to drop our heads alright," he admitted.

"We had nine or 10 U21s there today and maybe four in their first National League game so it's hard for them to come from behind," he added.

Offaly didn't score for the last 27 minutes while Tipperary racked up an unanswered 2-9, their second 65th minute goal also a stunner, started by Lar Corbett and cleverly scooped up by substitute Seamus Butler for league debutant Pat Kerwick to volley home.

Even allowing for the absences of Brendan Murphy and the influential Birr contingent, this was a bad opening day hammering.

And yet, as Sheedy noted, "until Eoin got that goal it was anyone's game," which made Offaly's collapse all the more disappointing.

Sheedy, clearly, has greater depth to work with, even without the Loughmore-Castleiney crew and, as the scoreline suggests, an arsenal of firepower that any manager would envy.

But he made some impressive calls himself on his managerial NHL debut.

The switch of Lar Corbett to centre-forward, the move of Benny Dunne to midfield and two feisty subs called Seamus Callinan and Butler, who scored 0-5 between them, visibly moved them up the necessary gear.

And even though Tipperary led by just three with a score of 0-14 to 2-5 at half-time, the warning signs were already there.

All their forwards had already scored from play. Their half-forwards were on top and rangey former minor star Pa Bourke had scored two glorious long-range points.

The problem was in defence where, apart from Eamonn Corcoran, they looked surprisingly shakey.

Tipp were four points clear before Derek Molloy beat Declan Fanning to score Offaly's first goal and then, four minutes later, when they should have cleared out of a scramble, Daniel Currams laid a ball back to Damien Murray to score into an unmarked goal and give Offaly a one-point lead.

No surprise then that recalled goalkeeper Brendan Cummins took drastic action, marching out to his '45 during a break in play to have a few quiet words with his defenders.

Sheedy clearly gave them a talking-to at half-time also.

Like? "Well, that we needed to knuckle down. People might have been getting carried away with South-East league matches but they are what they are. I knew today would be a completely different tempo," Sheedy admitted.

"But, after conceding the two goals, when questions were asked of the defence afterwards they finished strong," he said .

"Obviously I'd like to see a little more ball going in to our attack because I do think we have a full-forward line that's as good as what's in the country but for them to thrive they need to get the ball in quicker and crisper," Sheedy added.

And Limerick next week? "Yeah, it will be a step up again. Limerick will bring a real crowd, Richie Bennis is probably the most popular man in Ireland right now and what do you call what comes after 'the trilogy'?" he quipped.

Scorers -- Tipperary: E Kelly 1-10 (8fs, 1'65), P Kerwick 1-1, L Corbett, P Bourke and S Callinan 0-3 each, S Butler 0-2, R O'Dwyer, J O'Brien and W Ryan 0-1 each. Offaly: D Molloy 1-1, D Murray 1-0, S Dooley 0-3 (2f), J Rigney 0-2, C McMahon and B Carroll 0-1 each.

TIPPERARY -- B Cummins; E Buckley, D Fanning, P Curran; E Corcoran, C O'Mahony, B Dunne; J Ceaser, S Maher; P Kerwick, R O'Dwyer, J O'Brien; E Kelly, L Corbett, P Bourke. Subs -- D Fitzgerald for O'Dwyer (48 mins), S Callinan for Maher (48), S Butler for O'Brien (55), W Ryan for Bourke (64).

OFFALY -- S O'Connor; C Hernon, K Brady, D Franks; D Horan, J Bergin, D Kenny; C Mahon, J Rigney; S Dooley, G Oakley, B Carroll; D Currams, D Molloy, F Kerrigan. Subs -- J Brady for Currams (54), F Kerrigan for Molloy (63).

REF -- J Owens (Wexford).