Time for a major review of Offaly’s displays at inter-county level

 

KEVIN EGAN believes a root and branch review is required to identify the reasons why Offaly’s inter-county performances have declined at virtually every level.

In this columnist’s former life as an odds compiler for a leading betting firm, one of the most common distractions during the course of a working day was to be asked to work out the odds on a strange novelty bet for a customer that had just walked into one of the company’s shops.

Quite often the request was for a bet on a child achieving some significant sporting milestone in their adult life – a trend that was particularly prominent around 2000, after Mark Williams won the World Snooker championship. Immediately after that success, Williams’ father spoke proudly of how he had bet on just such an outcome at 500/1 when his son was only eight years of age. Countless fathers consequently paraded into betting shops, soon wondering why the price on their son playing inter-county hurling for Sligo wasn’t equally as generous, even though they might be from one of just fifty families that hurl in Sligo.

One such novelty bet that would have seemed like a ridiculous long shot at the start of the year would have been for the Offaly footballers and hurlers, senior and minor, all to be eliminated out of their respective Leinster championships by a margin of fifteen points or more. We’re running at two out of two so far and with Kilkenny and Kildare looming on the horizon (two counties that beat Offaly by double figure margins the last time they met in championship fare) the odds on the gruesome foursome are surely quite short by now.

Certainly the recent Connacht championship fixture in Pearse Stadium was something of a grim portent for the footballers, as Mayo rubber-stamped the belief that the Division One counties are sprinting ahead of all contenders. It’s not as if Carlow did anything for division four form in Mullingar either.

As for the senior hurlers, part of the difficulty associated with hurling against Kilkenny is that a decent team can actually play quite well and still lose heavily if the Cats hit a rich vein of scoring form and get a little bit of traction in the inside forward line.

In fact, rather than worrying about whether or not all four teams will be well beaten in 2013, now would surely be the time to start working towards ensuring that the same thing doesn’t happen in 2014 and beyond. Occasional heavy beatings are one thing but at all levels, Offaly inter-county sides seem to be slipping further and further off the pace.

Realistically, unless the under-21 hurlers pull off a shock and beat Laois in Portlaoise on Wednesday week, 2013 will be the first year in living memory that no Offaly inter-county team in football or hurling competed in a provincial semi-final. The luck of the draw can play a big part in that – in 2011 only the U21 hurlers played in a provincial semi-final and they didn’t have to win a game to get there – but it’s long past time to keep making excuses for these landmarks.

Surely the time has come to accept the fact that there has been a continuous slippage in the level of performance of most county teams, without anyone stepping up to identify where the problems seem to lie.

Various commentators have cited aspects such as an inability to compete on two fronts for financial reasons; a lack of respect for the importance of playing inter-county football and hurling for Offaly; an inability to move with the times and adapt to a new style of play; insufficient strength and conditioning work; poor underage structures; and a lack of vision and drive by administrators.

But at this stage it must be time to grasp the nettle and put together a report which looks at all these issues and more, and identifies the truth from the myths. In turn this would nail down what needs to be done if the county’s fortunes are to be restored, what costs and sacrifices would have to be made; and then the report could be put to the clubs for acceptance, in order to set the county on a clear path to somewhere.

It may be the case that the logical conclusion of any such investigation into the county’s fortunes could be that the sacrifices entailed in competing with the big guns in Leinster are just too great to be considered. Historically Dublin teams at senior and underage level were always vulnerable because the Dublin county board failed to properly harness the vast resources at their disposal. Now Dublin have perhaps twenty times the coaching staff, twenty times the budget and ten times the number of players to pick from as Offaly do and yet they’ve only to finance the same number of teams.

Kildare aren’t quite as well endowed as Dublin when it comes to numbers and finances but they are considerably better off than Offaly; and yet, they’ve essentially decided to concentrate on one sport, running their hurling programme on a shoestring budget and happily attaching second class status to their ash wielders.

Kilkenny are somewhat on a par with Offaly in terms of population, however they’ve gone five steps further than the Lilywhites, barely even facilitating football on a club level, never mind at inter-county level.

By definition, any approach that would give Offaly a fighting chance of competing with these counties will involve some very hard choices, either for football, hurling, county, club or underage. It could be eminently reasonable to look at those choices and to say that the GAA exists to serve members, not sunshine supporters, and so the bar could be lowered and club players given priority again. On the other hand, perhaps the thirst for success still exists, and people could be found who’d be willing to take the big steps required in every facet. 

However, the Laois minor hurlers' emphatic win over Offaly recently, and the previous weekend in Newbridge (when the Kildare minor footballers dished out a heavy defeat) gave us a clear indication of what lies in store if the current path of making a half-hearted attempt to fulfil all goals is followed even further.

And if there wasn’t enough evidence on show over the last fortnight, the next two weeks could yet be equally stark.