League promotion was real progress for Offaly as tougher tests await
By Kevin Egan
The news of Mickey Harte’s addition to the Offaly senior football management team in August of 2024 was widely hailed as a coup for Michael Duignan and the Offaly executive at the time. But it’s easy to forget now how much of the optimism and excitement that washed over the county when he greeted well-wishers in Daingean at his first local championship game had largely dissipated by the time Sligo prepared to visit Tullamore for the first round of this year’s Allianz Football League.
In his initial interviews after taking on the role, Harte spoke about the Offaly team that took his Louth side to extra-time in the 2023 Leinster semi-final as a group that had plenty of talent, but now rubber was meeting road as nine of the 15 players that started that Louth game were unavailable, as were six of the nine replacements that saw action in Croke Park.
Offaly started the league as relative outsiders for promotion according to the bookmaking community, and a Sligo side that had made steady progress under Tony McEntee’s guidance was one of those that were seen to be a little bit ahead of their hosts in the queue to get into the top two tiers of league football.
In what was a real ‘Sliding Doors’ contest, Sligo’s inaccuracy when the game was in the melting pot and Offaly’s shrewd early adaptation to the new rules was enough to carry the home team over the line to victory, and almost immediately, the sense of hope and possibility about the season exploded.
That momentum was carried into the following weekend’s game in Portlaoise and from then on it was a year of positive energy. Neither was there any notable trough or low point as the only clear underperformance was a dreadful first half in Enniskillen.
In terms of catching the eye of the nation, the league final win over Kildare at Croke Park was a high point. Jack Bryant’s sensational goal was the type of flash of brilliance that the Shamrocks player has always threatened since his emergence onto the scene with the U-20s and there was a degree of flair to the way Offaly performed at headquarters that captivated pundits and viewers.
In terms of importance, however, it was the home win over the same opposition that made all the difference. That 2-17 to 0-17 win in Tullamore was the biggest single result when it came to securing promotion, and unfortunately when it came to the championship, there were near misses but still nothing of note to celebrate.
The Leinster championship clash with Meath in Navan was one of the games that highlighted how no lead is safe with the new rules, though a missed goal chance at the start of the second half could have seen Offaly through to a clash with Dublin. The needless penalty conceded at the end of the Tailteann Cup tie against Laois meant that Offaly had to go on the road for the quarter-finals of that competition, once again taking on Kildare, and not for the first time this year, the lack of game-changing depth in the panel made all the difference in what was an agonisingly close encounter.
By the time that game in Newbridge rolled around, Keith O’Neill, Dylan Hyland and Cormac Egan, all key players, were clearly not operating at anywhere close to full fitness. Yet all three were asked to play every minute of the game in a 1-17 to 0-19 defeat to the eventual competition winners, and to the immense credit of those that took part, it was Kildare rather than Offaly who were fighting for oxygen and trying to hold on at the end.
Cillian Bourke showed incredible responsibility as a teenager to take on the attempt to win the game at the end, and the subsequent performances of Kildare showed that Offaly were more or less at the standard required to win this competition. They didn’t, because there was no second wave on the bench to come in and add freshness to carry the team across the line in big games.
Across the league and Leinster championship, Offaly played nine games and in seven of those, they either made one unenforced substitution before the 60th minute, or none at all. The bench got a bit more use in the Tailteann Cup but still usually somewhere in the vicinity of 30 to 40 minutes between all of them, which is far short of the normal amount of ‘load-sharing’ in panels of this size.
The new game puts incredible pressure on the middle eight, with those players now taking less contact but covering more distance than ever. To put it into context, Kerry were the best football team in Ireland in 2025, playing 17 games across league and championship. In every one of those 17 games, they had at least two (and usually more) elective substitutions made by the hour mark. Of course the quality of substitutes available to Jack O’Connor is quite different to the options available to Declan Kelly and Mickey Harte when they look over their shoulder, so it’s not comparing like with like.
Nonetheless, it’s a very clear indicator of where Offaly most need to improve if they are to be competitive in Division Two of the 2026 National League. Already we know that Paddy Dunican will do well to see any action in that league; Cathal Flynn is likely to miss at least some of it; Keith O’Neill is still not where he’d like to be in terms of getting fully right and sharp; Nigel Dunne has retired and, of course, Cillian Bourke will be doing his training on the other side of the world.
Add in a few niggles and issues on any given weekend, particularly among those players lining out with third level teams, and it’s impossible to deny the need to have a much deeper reservoir of players that management trust to do a job, particularly on the first two weekends when Offaly face into winnable fixtures against Louth and Kildare.
The other glaring black hole that will need addressing is the lack of a go-to kickout setup that will allow the team on the field to retain a restart and alleviate pressure at key times in games. Kicking into the wind in the second half in Páirc Tailteann on that breezy Sunday last April was unbelievably challenging but that turnaround, going from ten up at half-time to seven down at the final whistle, highlighted the need for Offaly to develop a more robust strategy in that situation.
Whether it’s Corey White, Seán O’Toole or some other player who takes over the number one jersey in Dunican’s absence at the start of the year remains to be seen but regardless of who wins that battle for a starting berth, a huge amount of work will have to be done to prepare for a league where Offaly will have to stare down the barrel of kicking out into Conor Glass, Conn Kilpatrick, Bryan Menton, Ian Maguire and more. With coaches all across Ireland working on innovations and new approaches now that they have a full year of new rules data to work with, this will be a key area for Harte and Kelly to once again try and push the panel into the vanguard of invention and tactical craft.
Overall, 2025 will be viewed as a year of incremental progress, and one that put the nightmare that was the 2024 Tailteann Cup into the history books as an anomaly. As this Offaly football panel climbs the mountain and moves into thinner air, replicating that progress will get tougher as they go.