‘These guys don’t let anything faze them’

by Kevin Egan

There’s no masking the fact that after a dreadful couple of decades, the buzz is back in Offaly GAA. Last year’s U-20 All-Ireland football title felt like the start of a new era, and now the minor hurlers are aiming to replicate that achievement, having already won the county’s first provincial hurling title at any grade in 22 years.

Perhaps most remarkably, their wins over Dublin, Laois and Clare weren’t an ambush. Manager Leo O’Connor was headhunted due to his involvement with Limerick’s underage development over the past decade, and straight away he tried to bring the same mentality to a county that in hurling terms, stopped living in Limerick’s world a long time ago.

“We’ve taken this team on a tour of Ireland this year,” said O’Connor.

“We have played Cork, Tipp, Galway, Limerick twice, and we’ve gained experience. Every day’s a school day, and these lads embrace that.

“Our Leinster quarter-final was a really tricky fixture against a good Antrim team in Dowdallshill, the field wasn’t good, and the lads adapted and thrived. Then it was the other extreme against Laois and Clare, thousands of supporters on perfect pitches in Portlaoise and Thurles, and these guys don’t let anything faze them,” he added.

For now, Offaly supporters are revelling in the journey that this group is travelling, but successful senior teams tend to be built around a succession of minor teams coming together. O’Connor was part of the Limerick underage scene as the current golden generation of Treaty County players were being brought through, and he’s gives a very optimistic take when asked if it’s plausible for a smaller county like Offaly to try and match those achievements.

“I’ll be very straight - I’d be very disappointed if it doesn’t sustain.

“Look at what we’re in (Faithful Fields), four fields, absolutely perfect. You’ve O’Connor Park. You’ve Birr. The way it works in Limerick is they have their Saturday morning from eight o’clock to one o’clock. Each development squad comes in for an hour and a half and there’s an overlap of a half an hour and when coming towards tournament time in July and August, they come in on a Wednesday night for eight weeks before it. That’s not major resources.

“Offaly have this ready-made already. Everything is self-contained, you have your gym, you have your ball wall, you have your training fields, you have your astroturf there. Everything is self-contained here, so it’s a matter of organising this and putting the right structures in place and getting, as I said, making sure that the right people are involved in the underage teams coming up.

“There isn’t as many players as there might be in Limerick or Tipperary, but there’s enough hurlers to get them through the system, work them through the phases. The strength and conditioning has been vitally important.

So that’s the future. And what about now?

“Traditionally the big three have been Kilkenny, Cork, Tipperary. I live in Tipperary so I see the traditions that they have and how proud they are” he said.

“They are things we use in a dressing room to drive these boys on and get them over the line. I don’t know how many All-Ireland minor hurling titles Tipperary have won and nor do I care as on Sunday week it’s going to be us against them and it’s going to boil down to 60 minutes. That’s it. If we do the things right the way we want to do them and get our own house in order, I think this Offaly team has a lot to bring forward.”