Kilkenny seem to be falling back to the rest a little
The counties meet on Sunday in the second phase of the National League with, effectively, nothing more than pride and brownie points at stake as with Laois, Dublin and Antrim in the same section, neither are realistic relegation candidates.
The form book suggests that, barring a catastrophe, the two will meet again in the Leinster final in July and McNamara is hopeful the occasion can provide a rare degree of competition after the damp squibs of the last half a decade.
“I was talking about the situation in Leinster the other night and the standard is improving but not at the rate you’d like,” said the Clare native yesterday. “Kilkenny seem to be falling back towards the rest a little, but there’s only a very few counties who seem to be making the gradual improvement. The rest are being left further behind.”
McNamara knows that, of those few counties making some improvement, Offaly are at the head of the queue. An opening day win over Tipperary was the undoubted highlight to the league, while Wexford and Antrim were easily swatted aside.
“We’re very disappointed that we didn’t make the top section,” said the manager. “Seven points was enough to qualify and we ended up with six. That makes you think about Cork scoring a goal against us in the last minute and the very bad off-day we had against Limerick.
“Kilkenny are still very much the yardstick to how the rest of us are progressing, though. They started poorly in the league but they’ve been improving ever since and a game like this will show us where we stand. At this stage, we feel we have progressed since last year and I’m pretty pleased with how the league went so far.”
The level of optimism, guarded though it is, about Offaly this year is a welcome change after the retirement of the old guard in the last number of years. With very little success in the underage ranks during the same period, the signs weren’t favourable but McNamara is confident that Offaly can begin to believe in themselves again.
“When I came in here we were looking to build a new team. The Johnny Dooleys and Johnny Pilkingtons weren’t there anymore and we had to start with a whole new age group. We had to start at the start but three-year plans are only good if you want an excuse for the first two years. I’m from the old school that says if you get committed fellas you won’t be far away. Get lads to come along with you, who have a little bit of talent and you’ll be there or thereabouts. That’s what I’ve learned with teams in the past.
“What is encouraging is that we have a settled team, one that we could say we will still be starting with in a month’s time. Brian Whelahan was back for the last day against Wexford as well, of course and the team will be built around Brian rather than the other way around. The steadying influence he has on such a young team as ours is massive and his level of motivation is staggering.”
The one real bone of contention for McNamara is midfield. In every game Offaly have played this season, they have ended with two different midfielders to the ones that started.
“Midfield is a stumbling block at the moment,” he admitted.” Whatever we’ve tried hasn’t worked. Midfield battles win matches, it’s been that way as long as I can remember.”
McNamara is looking outside the panel for a remedy and a former panelist, who was in club action last weekend has been singled out already, though he has yet to be approached.
Whatever the outcome there, McNamara is just as hopeful that injuries do not stifle his ambitions this year. Ger Oakley and Brendan Murphy are the only two significant injury worries at present “Injuries are so important to any team,” he reasoned. If we can stay away from a bad run of injuries we have every chance of giving things a shot this year.”
