Major review needed after footballers' poor showing

In keeping with the tone of last Saturday's match against Wexford, the reaction to Offaly's exit from the 2011 Leinster football championship has been decisive, brutal, and very one-sided. The sight of fans trudging for the exits with ten minutes to go, muttering expletives under their breath was evidence enough of the prevailing mood, while the little sympathy existed for the Offaly football set-up was quickly blown away by the manner in which the Offaly hurlers defied a plague of injury concerns and a controversial red card to run Dublin very close in Croke Park the following afternoon. The contrast between the hurlers fighting for every ball with their hearts on the line and the footballers limply throwing in the towel after Wexford's second goal was stark, and anyone who watched both games couldn't fail to notice the difference in attitude between the two groups. 2011 is the fifth year in succession that the Offaly footballers have made their exit from the Leinster championship in a meek fashion. One win over Carlow in five years is a miserable return for a county of Offaly's standing in Gaelic football lore and unlike the first half of the noughties, there were no hard luck stories attached to any of these defeats. Offaly have been distinctly second best against every decent Leinster championship opponent in that time and while the qualifiers did offer some hope last year, Offaly enjoyed the help of a run of home games and two very moderate opponents to get things underway. Offaly's underachievement in Leinster doesn't tally with the level of individual talent in the squad, or indeed the potential that was shown in the run up to this campaign. Finishing mid table in division three is hardly catching the eye, but it shouldn't be forgotten that Offaly came desperately close to securing promotion while Niall McNamee was not on his best form, and Saturday evening proved that when the Offaly captain is playing well, he's worthy of comparison with the best in the land. One bad day against Tipperary was the difference between staying in division three for another year and topping the table while, after the league campaign, Offaly played out a draw with Down and a win over Mayo in challenge matches. Challenge games these may be but every player is competing for their championship starting place in these fixtures and they certainly can be used as an indicator of ability, if not big match temperament. In Offaly hurling, the problems are considerably easier to identify. The production lines have dried up to a certain extent, the same few key players are guaranteed to start for the county in good times and bad and there remains a persistent emotional attachment to ground hurling, that age old art which has lost all relevance in the modern possession game. Diagnosing the problems that run through the Offaly football scene is much more complex. There are those who feel that many of the current generation of footballers enjoy the social scene and the status that comes with being a county player more than they enjoy the actual football side of things. However, even if there are isolated cases where this might be true, and only the individuals themselves can ever say for certain if this is the case, it still isn't a lack of fitness and physical preparation that is telling on the football field. In previous years there have been regular references to footballers who haven't made themselves available, but once again last Saturday night blew that out of the water. The Tullamore trio of Shane Dooley, Michael Brazil and John Moloney were all unavailable for selection for various reasons and while these are three talented players, none of them would be guaranteed starters by any stretch of the imagination. One way or another, every county has to deal with players who have emigrated, or are playing other sports, and Tom Cribbin and his selectors had a full hand to pick from by comparison with most county management teams. Indeed after three years for Cribbin at the helm, there are very few outstanding club footballers in the county who haven't been given a chance to come into the county panel at some point, so there is the very real possibility that Offaly football supporters will have to accept that there is no hero waiting to ride to the rescue from the club scene. The issue of management also comes up quite often and certainly it will be a regular talking point for the remainder of the year. The current set-up is remaining in charge for the qualifiers, as should be the case, but it's safe to say that unless Offaly really excel through the backdoor, there will be a new team in place in 2012. Many of these Offaly players have seen plenty of managers come and go and there is only so much that a group of men on the sideline can do to change things once a team crosses the whitewash. Mentally the Offaly footballers have let themselves down in ways that cannot be addressed by a change of tactics so changing the figurehead is far from guaranteed to yield success either. The incessant blame and vilification circulating around Offaly at the moment is doing nobody any favours because the players and management took the field against Wexford genuinely aiming to represent their county in the best manner possible. Their good intentions cannot be denied, but neither can it be ignored that the result was another low watermark for football in the county and simply going through the same motions next year and hoping that the same process will somehow yield different results is not good enough either. There are senior players on the panel who would be a huge asset to any management team next year - they need to know that there is some prospect of things being done differently before signing on for another year of self-sacrifice and toil. There are sponsors, benefactors and supporters who put time, energy and money into Offaly GAA - they need to know that their funds are not being spent on unimaginative sticking plaster type solutions that don't address the core issues that are causing the spectacular underachievement. Above all, there is a generation of young players growing up in Offaly who have been moderately successful at minor level. These players need something good to aspire to. For all these reasons and more, the anger and frustration at last Saturday's result has to make way for inquisition and investigation, very soon.