DECLAN KELLY BELIEVES it may take three years before members of his All-Ireland winning U20 side establish themselves on the Offaly senior team.
Supporters will naturally expect some of the Faithful’s star performers to make the step up to John Maughan’s panel next year, but Kelly has called for patience with his young players.
“The one thing you’d say to the general public out there is that some of these lads are only 18, 19, going on 20,” he remarked.
“If they continue to do the work, you’re probably looking at them maybe 23, three years’ time, realistically, before you’d be thinking they can establish themselves [on the senior team].
“That’s going to be the challenge now, that really is. From a players’ perspective, if they get a call into the senior squad, they really have to serve an apprenticeship in there now for a few years.
“I suppose the one thing you don’t need there is a long going in and all of a sudden six months later, I’m not getting a game and it’s good luck to me, like. Yeah, that all has to be managed now realistically.”
But Kelly viewed a large part of his role as developing players to represent the county at senior level.
“Our remit from day one has always been to get players through to the senior squad. That’s the way I would have always looked at it, if you can get four or five in every year, which we have been sort of progressing, that’s really what you’re trying to do.
“No doubt, winning an All-Ireland is something that will probably bring its own challenges now in relation to players as to how they handle it, that’s something we even spoke about this week, regardless of how the result went, we have to obviously look at that. It brings its own challenges now as to where players are.”
The likes of Jack Byrant, Morgan Tynan, Cathal Flynn, Rory Egan, Lee Pearson and man-of-the-match Cathal Donoghue look capable of making the step up in the coming years.
Others will big futures ahead of them are John Furlong, Tom Hyland and Cormac Egan. The trio were on the Offaly minors last year and only started training with the U20s following the delayed 2020 Leinster minor final defeat to Meath on 30 June.
“You probably would have heard bits and pieces in interviews, a very down to earth young lad, a very talented young gasun,” said Kelly about Tullamore clubman Egan.
“A good hurler as well. He’s a bit of an all rounder in fairness to the chap. It’s a managing thing to be quite honest. He has two more years still at U20.
“In fairness, we have been very lucky over the last three years with a John Maughan involved with us, John’s mantra has been very simple; U20s, that’s where they play.
“Even though he would have a couple in to come back to us for matches, and that’s key like, it is about developing these lads and getting them through.”
The outpouring of emotion after the final whistle from long-suffering fans, Shane Lowry among them, summed up what the end of a 23-year wait for an All-Ireland in either code meant to the county.
“I didn’t realise, to be quite honest, how much it meant to people until during the week,” explained Kelly.
“I got a couple of good luck cards from people in the post that I didn’t even know, in relation to wishing the team the best of luck and all of that. You’re sort of saying, ‘This is striking a chord, there’s no doubt about that’.
“In relation to shielding the lads, there’s not a lot you can do in relation to flags going up. We would have got a few phone calls from Club Faithful saying, ‘Do you mind….’ I said, ‘Go ahead…’ You’d have looked well now trying to stop all that happening, you’d sort of feel like a Grinch going around.
“You just told them, ‘Listen lads, you have a game to play next week’, that would really have been the focus. And in fairness to them, you’re not going to watch them 24/7 either as regards if they’re on social media.
“Like, we told them, we advised them obviously to keep off the social networks and all that goes with it and I hope they did anyway!”
Positive results in the last few seasons at underage level filled Kelly with optimism that the Faithful were on the rise.
“To be fair there’s been a good bit of work at developmental level and underage level, there has been a good bit of work going on.
“This is our fourth year involved with the 20s bit you could see from the first year involved when we played the Corks, the Galway and Mayos in challenge games, we won a couple of those games, we lost a couple.
“When Kildare won the All-Ireland, we’d have played them six or eight weeks before the championship and beaten them. You knew that you were competitive anyway, Leinster is hard enough to get of, obviously Dublin was the team up there but there was nothing between the rest of us.
“It has been building and the 2020 minors getting to the Leinster final so the whole thing was to get back being competitive and even in the hurling end of it, we have been competitive.
“You would have got fair odds to say Offaly would win the U-20 All-Ireland at the start of the year but we got on a bit of a roll and there’s no doubt that the Leinster final was a big weight off the shoulders.
“It’s been that long since we won a Leinster at any level in Offaly, that was definitely a big lift. People would have said then that it’s been a great year but this is really the icing on the cake.
“We said we’d give the All-Ireland campaign a rattle, it was going to be quick enough anyway, you’d have a week to the semi-final and if you get over that then you’d have two weeks. It just happened to fall into place then really.”
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