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Can Armagh Hurlers achieve the Impossible against Antrim

let me think about this   NO

gutted to hear young clarke and maybe Jennings going to soccer especially when both was going to make county panel no probs. If Clarke prefers soccer to hurling theres nothing we can do about that but wish him good luck. I would envisage that he will try it and get disillusioned and come back to the small ball some day. This is a big blow to the town WHO where starting to produce enough quality players to have a crack at a county Senior very soon.

Just not liking the excuse culture which DC is cultivating - can we have a check on how many different excuses that we have heard for the weekend so far...

answers on a post card please

I don't think i would go so far to say Dinny was cultivating an excuse culture after the Wexford match. I thought on tv he just looked in a state of shock and confusion after watching the 2nd half so i wouldnt pay much attention to what he said then. Wexford maybe stepped it up a notch in the 2nd half with the benefit of Div 1 experience this year and maybe this thing of not putting in an effort in to the League is not good for Antrim but who can be sure.

Having seen Antrim this and last year i think Dinny is trying to get the players to play a more intelligent way by looking for men in the forwards and playing ball in to space. However as a few others have said here this way of playing needs to be brought in to underage develpoment squads so that by the time the players get to the senior county squad they are used to playing this way. This will take time and good underage coaching.

As for this thing about picking more players from Div 1 clubs, nonsense. Any county manager will pick the 15 players that make the best team in his opinion, not necessarily the best 15 club players. As like any other Antrim manager Dinny is trying to pick his best squad from limited resources and overall in his two spells in charge to date i think hes done a good job.

agree with all the above accept one thing regarding wexford going up a gear. they only started to excel when they went 7 or 8 points up and sensed antrim heads starting to drop. prior to this they didn't look comfortable at all. once we missed two early frees the antrim players seem to regress. they where standing off their men second to ball compared to first half. I genuinely felt at half time that this was a real opportunity to take a big scalp for the first time in years.(last year against Dublin excluded).

agree that Dinny and the rest of the management has done a good job with the players available. until the second half on sunday there seem to be some mental steel about them that wasn't there before. I suppose considering there age they are very much a work in progress. as for the better players not on the panel and what clubs they play for debate, bit of a pointless argument as the said possibles probably have been approached and declined.

apoligies miltown i picked you up wrong.

miltown the only time 50/50 ball was mentioned in my post was in relation to mc cann. kevin molloy was picking jacob up(just in case you didnt travel down on sunday) and he did o k when he was standing beside him. but jacob was usually on the move. how ever was making the delivierie hit the ball in to the corner when jacob wasnt even there but he knew exactly where it was going the minute it left the weford players hurl and stole a yard. JB and skull are making very valid points on what when wrong on sunday maybe you should do the same instead of nitpicking other posters comments.

19 scores from 70 minutes of hurling is pretty standard for decent opposition regardless of how fearless the defense is at this time of year (e.g cork v tipp or dublin v offally). 12 scores tells us where we are in the forward department. We haven't developed the cuteness inside or the awareness out the pitch to deliver quality ball to get us up to the scoring rate that is needed. Hurlers like Joe Deane and Rory Jacob are those type of players who could/can break your heart because they are unmarkable WHEN you have you have players out the pitch who (when given time to) focus on getting quality delivery into the space they have created for themselves. In Antrim it's all blood and guts, which sometimes works but it doesn't gaurentee enough scores IMO. This needs to be developed into development squads as I don't think it can be resolved today or tomorrow.

This is the best post on this subject so far highlighting one of our biggest problems. Jacob was pulling his marker all over the place, timming it that when the ball was coming in he had himself some space. and as skull says he was getting good deliveries. our forwards are to stagnant at times. young mc cann does well when in space but cant win 50/50 ball.

hey lads lets not get to hung up on what Dinny said, he was asked at a time when the teams second half performance just didn't make any sense. Hes not a politician or broadcaster

as for the match why did so many of our players go  AWOL when wexford where there for the taking. I lost count of the times our boys stood off there men and watch them catch high balls. I have been to all the games this year and we didint hurl for 70 minutes in any of them. We haven't a strong panel but they have showed some good hurling but only in spurts. Need a bit more consistansy