Offaly manager delighted at long awaited win in Portlaoise

OFFALY'S recent track record against Laois and their long famine in Portlaoise were among the big challenges thrown down to players in the build up to Satrurday's Leinster Senior Football Championship derby with their neighbours.

Offaly's last win over Laois in Portlaoise in the Leinster Senior Football Championship was way back in 1978 and their last win over them was in 2002 when Offaly had a point to spare in Tullamore.

Those statistics are not as alarming as they may appear at first glance. Meetings between the sides have been comparatively scarce in the last fifty years or so. Since 1978, Saturday's championship game against Laois was only Offaly's fifth trip to Portlaoise.

They had a nightmare 3-15 to 3-5 defeat by Laois there in 1990. That Laois team was managed by the Offaly 1982 All-Ireland winning captain Richie Connor and was the day when everyone knew the glory days were well and truly over – though the slide had been gathering breakneck pace since the mid 1980s. Offaly drew with Laois in Portlaoise in 2003, losing the replay by 2-10 to 0-13 in Tullamore.

Their disdain for the qualifiers was shown when they could only manage four points when losing there in 2006 – Laois did not exactly set the world on fire that evening, only scoring 1-9 themselves. Offaly lost by five points there in the qualifiers in 2019 and Saturday's game was actually their first Leinster championship game in the Laois headquarters since 2003.

Since that 2002 0-13 to 2-6 win, Offaly had only met Laois five times in the Leinster championship and qualifiers before Saturday. They were all tight games with one draw and four defeats for Offaly. It is not a run of results that represented anything hugely disturbing but it still did not sit well with Offaly supporters and it did represent a psychological barrier of sorts.

After making their big football breakthrough in 1960, Offaly could nearly always beat Laois until the post 1982 decline set in. They suffered a couple of defeats in 1963 and 1968 when Offaly were in a rebuilding phase as the 1960-'61 team went downhill and the 1971/1972 All-Ireland champions began their road to the top. Apart from that, Offaly prided themselves on being able to beat their neighbouring counties, Laois, Westmeath and Kildare when they were good.

Laois pushed the great team of the 1980s hard on a couple of occasions and their winning margins of 2, 2, 3 and 4 points in their four games from 1978 to 1982 show this but the bottom line was that Offaly came out the right side of all those results.

On Saturday, it all came right for Offaly again as they played very well in a 2-13 to 1-8 win to remove all monkeys from their backs. Manager Declan Kelly revealed that their record against Laois was discussed last week and he was amused and bemused to discover the number of players listening to him who never won a game in Portlaoise.

“We were chatting during the week and there is a number of lads who have never won a game at O'Moore Park between county, schools you name it so we wouldn't have a good record here. So it was important for the group to get a result here tonight.”

Offaly were 0-7 to 0-2 up well into the second half but conceded 1-3 and went in level at half time, 0-8 to 1-5. Considering that Offaly had been clearly the better team for much of the half, this felt like a blow, even though Laois had corner back, James Kelly sent off for an elbow after twenty minutes.

What was the mood like at half time?

“Obviously they had the red card as well but I'd say they were quite happy with were they were. With the fact we had a bit of a lead and they were a man down and next thing it was level and the wind was sort of heading to the far corner. It was a worry, there is no point saying anything else but I suppose we sort of stuck at it early in the second half, we got a couple of scores and the goal probably gave us that bit of a breathing space.”

Offaly began to really push up on Laois kickouts in the second half and Kelly admitted:

“I suppose it is the way the modern game is gone. You are coming out of defence with the ball and you might not have enough of bodies up. It depends on how quick the keeper is but with the extra man we obviously went after that.”

Offaly conceded the first point in the second half but then scored 2-5 to more or less put the game to bed. The Kilclonfert man was thrilled with their football in that period, though he knew they didn't convert a couple of more goal chances.

“We still left a couple of goal chances behind us. That is something we will have to look at because the further you go in these competitions you need to take those chances.”

Offaly now face All-Ireland champions Dublin, who destroyed Meath on Sunday. On Saturday, they were not paying any heed to a semi-final or likely entry into the Tailteann Cup after that.

“The way we looked at is today we were playing Laois. Offaly's record against Laois is not good and ultimately we came here to win the match. We are in a Leinster semi final so we will get them in tomorrow and do a little bit of recovery and we will plan ahead for that by about six tomorrow.”

A number of the U-20s he led to All-Ireland glory in 2021 excelled on Saturday. Cormac Egan and Keith O'Neill were the two best players on the pitch, Lee Pearson had a super first half, John Furlong and Jack Bryant were very steady and Cathal Flynn took the breath away with the quality of some of his play when he came on.

“In fairness to them its a catch twenty two there for young fellas. You have to give them games and i suppose ultimately in the league, it's the first competition early in the year and it is important with promotion and all that goes with it but you have to stick with lads and give lads game time. If you give lads a game or two, you have to give lads time out there to find their feet and in fairness to those lads from a conditioning point of view, there still an awful lot of work to do. Some of them are twenty years of age but look they did well tonight and that's what matters.”