pablo
Well-Known Member
Truth be told, and it's likely for a thread of its own, underage structures, mentality, coaching, resources, competitiveness levels, are all going to have to be addressed long term for the senior team to be success.
This isn't a negative post, throughout the thread here and in other sections these points have been alluded to, as have the structures of the senior, intermediate and junior club formats.
We have spent 3 years in Division 1. How many times has that happened over the last number of decades in Armagh. Last time in Division 1 we lasted 2 seasons. We won our only all Ireland from division 2.
We need competive club structures and competitive underage with a safety net to also catch and develop players who mature to county standard at a later age. There is a lot of good work done in the county, it's just about harnessing it that bit better to give us the extra 10% we need. Schools have to come into the equation here as well.
Agree. There have been a few posts bringing up our inability to close out tight games. I'm going to repeat something that I have posted on before-we can argue that our tendency to 'wobble' in the final stretch of a game is due to manager and coaching. But I think that mentality predominantly arises from a deeper problem that reflects the poor state of football within the county and the lack of players coming into the senior set up from a winning background. That is not an attack on the courage, committment or skill of our players; but our underage teams have had an abysmal for years and our club teams-at every level, rarely get past the first round of Ulster championship. Our recent schools record also is not much to get excited about. We have talented and whole-hearted players, but not many coming in with any prior experience of being on a team that has had success at a provincial or national level (apart the 09 class). Our players would run through a brick wall for the jersey-they are not cowards but in their development they have had little taste of success and winning anything outside the county. I genuinely feel this manifests in those final minutes as indecisiveness and overcautiousness. We need the county to be producing winning teams that can get past the first round of their respective championships.
I would echo the earlier post from Seamy in his opinion/assessment of McGeeney and go maybe further- I sincerely believe the county needs him involved in some capacity and to send him packing could be disasterous. I recognize his weaknesses in strategy, tactics and puzzling selections. At times I get as frustrated as that expressed by many on here. But the bigger picture is that McGeeney has set up an environment that brings in players to the senior set up and allows them to play at a level competitive at a higher national stage-seriously, despite the set back this weekend, we are not that far away and this has been achieved in spite of the poor level of football within the county. Other counties are working with a system of strong clubs, good underage and winning schools-all interlinked. McGeeney has not had that luxury. Of course he has limitations and I feel he needs a strong tactical team around him. Maybe his role is better as a director of football developement type role-but for the county to totally loss McGeeney, I honestly feel that could leave us in a truly bad position
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