Offaly clubs and players must have their say after Croker collapse

By Kevin Egan

It didn’t take 70 minutes for the future of the Offaly senior football team to be thrown into massive doubt – just 35 bad ones after half-time in Croke Park against Wicklow.

The talent of some of the players in this group was in full view in the opening half, with Jordan Hayes and Jack McEvoy immense at midfield, solid defensive play from Aidan Bracken, David Dempsey and Lee Pearson, and some mercurial moments up front. Jack Bryant struck two excellent points in quick succession, one off either foot, Keith O’Neill was showing his boundless attacking quality and Dylan Hyland’s dummy finish for his goal was subtle, but no less brilliant for that.

Nonetheless, the warning signs were there, and things unravelled. The decision to effectively leave Chris O’Brien without a dedicated man-marker proved catastrophic, there were self-inflicted wounds in the form of Wicklow’s second goal and the two two-pointer frees from Mark Jackson (one breach and one utterly needless foul on the sideline) and not for the first time this year, the lack of depth proved to be fatal.

In sport, as in life, recency bias can creep in very easily. After the game, Mickey Harte argued that the Tailteann Cup campaign be assessed as a whole, not unreasonably. But by extension, that begs the question as to where the assessment should begin because some granular assessment is now necessary in advance of the decision to either stay the course with Harte and Declan Kelly, or to pursue a different direction.

This Tailteann campaign, mixed as it was, cannot be divorced from the league and Leinster championship, just as the 2026 season as a whole should also be viewed in parallel with the much more successful 2025 league and championship.

Equally, consistency of assessment is crucial. Injuries hit Offaly disproportionately hard in 2026, but it’s equally true to say that Offaly were incredibly fortunate in this regard in 2025, when a small cohort of as few as 20 players got all bar a small few playing minutes in the important games, and at least 18 of those were available for selection for every game.

A couple of very close calls, most notably Dylan Hyland’s shots that came off the crossbar and post, had a huge bearing last Saturday. But by the same metric, Down hit the crossbar from around four metres out when chasing what would probably have been a match-winning goal in Tullamore, and on the day the Mourne men hit one goal from seven clear cut chances. Would Offaly have been strong enough to do what Down did, and to go away to both Longford and Laois and win convincingly, if they had to do that?

And since mitigation cuts both ways over the course of two seasons, the most logical metric by which to assess where this team stands is by results and results alone.

There are those who would argue that the very clear disconnect between the senior football team and the supporters, manifesting in the form of some incredibly small attendances, should also be considered, but it’s impossible to fairly ascertain what percentage of responsibility for that state of affairs lies with the current management.

The voices of the players, who operate within the system, should be afforded the most weight, particularly if there are strong feelings one way or another. However, this is also the time for the clubs of the county to weigh in, and not just during ‘ratification season’ later in the year.

One of the biggest failings of GAA democracy is that for every club executive that will sit down and discuss at length the merits and demerits of each course of action, there will be another club, most likely a hurling-only club, who will vote with the top table. They will do this, not because they have any strong thoughts on the Offaly senior football team’s performances, but because they want to make sure they can call in a favour some time when it comes to a fixture problem or a grading issue.

Perhaps even worse, there will be those club officers who will chat among themselves, but who will not make their voices heard until much later in the year.

This is not a decision that should be made based on social media, or based on chatter around the terraces when the club championships begin next weekend. It is very much a decision that should be made by those involved in Offaly football – and much more than that, it is a decision that needs to be made soon, rather than just forgotten about once the whirlwind of club activity whips up.

*See here for the views of Offaly joint managers Mickey Harte and Declan Kelly.