THE OTHER NIGHT, Daithí Regan brought his daughter out for a walk around the neighbourhood.
Up until recently, there might not have been too many around. Those that were and held hurleys were sporting an assortment of jerseys in county colours, but rarely Offaly, something that made him wince.
Midweek though, the green in the middle of the estate was bunged. Young lads and girls out with their parents, Offaly jerseys everywhere. A thought occurred to take a picture and send to county chairman Michael Duignan, but he had left the phone at home.
“I swear to Jesus, I could have cried looking at it,” he says.
For all the pride that is flowing through Offaly hurling and football this weekend, a defeat in Saturday’s Joe McDonagh Cup final to Carlow would not be the end of the world. Not when you consider the stirrings under the surface.
“It would be great if we beat Carlow at the weekend, but let’s say Carlow beat Offaly, that would not dissipate one iota the whole uplift that is in the county about these young lads coming through,” he says.
“The biggest game in our county since the minors last year is the Under 20 All-Ireland. That’s the really big one.”
A quick recap on their progress. Leo O’Connor had a curious relationship as a Limerick hurler against Offaly. He made his debut against Offaly in the 1988-89 season. He came on as a sub in the 1994 All-Ireland final when Limerick thought they were coasting, until late goals from Joe Dooley and Pat O’Connor pinned them back and Offaly claimed Liam MacCarthy.
He fetched up as the Offaly minor hurling manager last year when they topped their group and beat Laois in the Leinster final, Clare in the semi, and were caught with a late Tipperary flurry and a last-gasp goal by Paddy McCormack to cough up the All-Ireland title.
This year he has moved up to the U20s and they beat Wexford in the provincial final. They meet Cork in the All-Ireland final on 4 June.
Add all this into the mix that includes the All-Ireland football winning U20 team in 2021, and there is a powerful optimism everywhere.
However excited they are getting, there is always enough sensible parties to hand and warn against losing the run of yourself. Ger Loughnane’s diktat that losing an All-Ireland minor final is the best course of action for long-term development still holds currency.
Michael Fennelly put three seasons down in charge of Offaly. During that time, they experienced enough sickening defeats. Somewhere near the top you could count the evening they lost a penalty shootout to Down in the Christy Ring semi-final of 2020.
“There’s a lovely group of players coming through there in Offaly at the minute, around 18, 19 years of age and that U20 group at the moment are very strong and well able to hurl,” he says.
“It’s not that there are two or three, there’s probably seven or eight guys there.
“That’s very positive to see that. There is a group there with the senior team that are quite young enough there as well.”
In terms of a player’s development, being mentored by the likes of Fennelly would be ideal. A lecturer in Applied Strength and Conditioning at TUS Midwest, Thurles campus, he is acutely aware of the requirements to play county hurling and shared it with some of the prospects in the county.
“In my final year, we did try to focus on bringing in younger players to give them a year’s experience to bring in their athletic development, to bring them up to the pace of the game,” he recalls.
“Their panel is very young, and with that joining together in the next couple of years I think they will be stronger and competing at a higher level.
“Will they be challenging for a Leinster final? I probably struggle to see that maybe, at the minute. But they will definitely climb that ladder.
“What Offaly need is, and I said it last year, is another strong minor team, another strong minor team the year after.
“You need to be coming each year, even if there’s a year break in how strong they are at that level, you need those quality players coming through. The odd green shoot needs to support the sustainability. You need teams coming over the years.”
When Fennelly was there, he had the vastly-experienced Johnny Kelly as coach, who stepped up as manager. They have retained most of the back-up staff in the areas of statistics, analysis and strength and conditioning to provide serious continuity. Kelly has also brought in no less than Tipperary great Brendan Maher as a performance coach.
That was important to Fennelly.
“When you do leave, you want to leave something in a healthy place,” he says.
“Again, what is healthy? People look at it as success, winning finals but you need the ingredients in there too. You need good people in there to support the players, you need the players training at a lot higher level.”
To that end, their work concentrated on a period of intense player education. Most teams review tape of upcoming opponents, but Fennelly and his backroom team turned the gaze inward and looked back over their own performances to see what was going well, identify the problem areas and bring it forward on the training field.
They would review it in stages, two months at a time, to record their progress. Last year Carlow knocked them out and they will be keen to reverse the result.
At underage the transformation has been stark. At senior level, a lot more patience is required.
Regan credits his old team mate Michael Duignan, who took over as county chair in late 2019.
“We were the authors of our own misfortune in Offaly because we didn’t invest and we took our eye off the ball,” says Regan.
“What’s changed our fortunes is we have a county board under the leadership of Michael Duignan that came in four years ago and what they have done is bloody extraordinary.”
“Michael was over with me today and someone was talking to him. He said you can talk about finance and everything else, but it is about resources and the proper resources.
“They have bolted on so many top-quality people onto the development squads in football and hurling from all the people involved.”
Elsewhere, there are incremental improvements. The Faithful Fields training facility has been operating since late 2017 and is well bedded in now.
Each team is enthusiastically supported. They get their training gear on time. Equipment is plentiful. Physios and medical staff are on tap.
All of that takes huge effort and needs some payback in the short term. Winning the U20 football All-Ireland two seasons ago was like a miracle for that. The feeling it gave was cleverly exploited and nurtured.
Right now, Birr and other towns are awash with Offaly flags. That’s most unusual. In a lot of blue-chip counties, the colours and bunting now only come out for a senior All-Ireland final.
“Here’s the interesting thing. We have a very upbeat way of looking at things in Offaly that we long for the great days of the ’70s and ’80s with the footballers and the ’90s with the hurlers,” Regan says.
“Now, that was a 30-year period. Now you take the GAA as a whole since 1884, a 30-year period in Offaly is a relatively short period of time.
“For most of that time, we were getting hidings. We have a skewed version of where our place is, in the GAA. For us to win All-Irelands was an incredible thing to do. But for most of the existence, we have achieved little, and that is based on our numbers and the split of hurling and football in the county, and we won nothing for decades before and we have won nothing for decades since.
“So to see the sight of an All-Ireland U20 A Final, winning a minor last year, people are high on this. That’s all I heard on the pitch the other night; ‘Oh, this is like the good old days!’”
Continuity between county and schools has worked out well for them. The vast majority of those players who played on the minor team of last year were grouped together for an Offaly combined schools’ team that beat the fabled Kilkenny nursery, St Kieran’s College, in the Leinster Senior school’s final.
Others popped up in the Colaiste Naomh Cormac, Kilcormac team who won the All-Ireland ‘B’ final, beating Hamilton High School of Bandon in the final.
Star of the show on that day was Adam Screeney, who hit 1-12 against Wexford in last week’s Leinster U20 final.
No wonder the mood is buoyant.
“We over achieved back then,” says Regan of his own playing days.
“We are maybe back doing that again. But it is a magnificent feeling. Imagine if the Wicklow footballers won an All-Ireland U20 and the following year the Wicklow hurlers were in the Minor A final.
“I just don’t know if Offaly people have a semblance of what this is about. They are giddy and it’s brilliant, we are all giddy.
“To me, it is happening because of what happened four years ago with Duignan and his team coming in. That’s how quickly it happened.
“Ok, other people have been doing work before that. The U20 football team didn’t just manifest itself. But already there are structures in place, people are asking who is taking these teams.”
Filling the roles became less about waiting to see who would put the hand up, but a proactive process of talent identification and recruitment.
“We want people who are smart people, get a message across, buy into the culture and the culture is so important,” says Regan.
“I’m a huge believer in the culture, in sport and in the workplace. It’s about the person. The core qualities that come up and I am a firm believer in life that good manners goes a long way.
“The skills, you can learn if somebody wants to learn. But the core character, the inherent decency of somebody is important.”
