Offaly hurling on its knees and prospects look bleak

Inside Track with John McIntyre

THESE are harrowing times for Offaly hurling and judging by what we saw in Tullamore last Sunday, the county’s slide into oblivion shows no sign of levelling off any time soon. Thrashed by both Kilkenny and Tipperary last summer – the latest in a long line of heavy championship defeats – the Midlanders remain in a full blown crisis.

Offaly’s gradual fall from the top tier of hurling counties is arguably the sport’s biggest problem on a national scale and things could conceivably get worse before there is any significant upswing in fortunes. Goodness knows, their plight is bad enough as it is and survival in the second division of league hurling will stretch them in the months ahead.

They fielded a team against Galway which contained a number of what turned out to be poorly equipped novices. They were over-run by the men in maroon at times and were really flattered to be only beaten by 12 points. It is obvious Offaly don’t possess the necessary depth of quality players anymore, but there appears to a lot of local apathy as well.

Granted, Joe Bergin and David Kenny missed the Galway match due to injury, but Conor Mahon didn’t rejoin the panel as he is due to go travelling while talented wing back Derek Morkam has fallen out of favour with the team management. Rory Hanniffy, one of Offaly’s great servants, has retired, while Brian Carroll didn’t feature last Sunday seemingly because he will be unavailable for the team’s opening two league matches.

The curious thing is that Offaly were reportedly very competitive in a challenge outing against Tipperary a few days earlier, but how often have we seen such encounters offering unreliable form guides? In reality, they were out of their depth against a Galway team missing several of their frontline players and, early in the second-half, trailed by 2-18 to 0-6.

What happened after that is largely immaterial. When Offaly needed to be competitive, they just didn’t possess the class, craft or technique to match up to their visitors. The team’s supporters were demoralised by what they were seeing with only a handful of players holding their own. By all accounts, Offaly have been committed on the training ground, but the gulf in standard was simply alarming last Sunday.

Brian Whelahan, the greatest hurler ever produced by Offaly, is now in his second season as team manager and he would have taken over from Ollie Baker with no shortage of enthusiasm or ambition, but the Birr man can only do so much with a limited deck. Publically, he has to stand by his men but, privately, he must be despairing of Offaly’s current woes.

It’s hard to credit that Offaly haven’t beaten Galway in a competitive match since a National League game in the spring of 2001. Hurling in the county was in a different place then, but they have gradually fallen off the pace in the interim. In my first coming as Offaly manager in 1997, I remember them also edging out the Tribesmen in a league tie in Birr, but they were backboned by some great men during that era, like the Dooley brothers, Whelehan himself, Martin Hanamy, Kevin Kinahan, John Troy and Johnny Pilkington.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.