Dooley delight as Offaly’s team effort starting to bear fruit
Four points behind in the 45th minute after a three-minute Galway blitz had yielded 2-2 without reply, a man down after the straight red card issued to wing-forward Derek Molloy for a frontal hit on a Galway defender, all the signs pointed towards an end to the Offaly challenge, a comprehensive Galway win in line with what the bookmakers predicted.
Instead, and for those final 25 minutes, the youngsters of Offaly taking charge, outscoring the favourites by eight points to four to take the game to a most unlikely replay, next Saturday evening in Portlaoise.
Character, no question, and many outstanding individual performances, but most impressive of all, the group effort.
“That was very satisfying,” said manager Joe Dooley, “To beat Galway, or any top county, you have to work as a team; you’re not going to do it on your own and it was great from that point of view.”
After struggling past Antrim in the quarter-final, Offaly weren’t given any chance against Galway, not even by many of their own supporters, and even after this display, won’t be given much chance now either in the replay.
Understandable enough on the surface, reckons Joe, but perhaps people need to look a little closer: “Antrim were much better than people gave them credit for, were well organised, well up for it, in good shape, but if you looked to our league form you’d see the real Offaly – we had several good games there.
“Galway will be coming back very strong again now next week, we know that; they’re league champions, Walsh Cup champions, a big strong team, good hurlers – they probably feel they left it behind them yesterday.
“Hopefully we’ll get confidence from this though, put it up to them again, and I believe we will. Overall I’d be very pleased with the way it went; it was the first day out in Croke Park for a lot of them, Shane (his son, scorer of the last-puck free from 70 metres wide right to draw the game), Joe Bergin, Daniel Currams – probably 11 or 12 of them, a big day yet they really stood up to it.”
Galway manager John McIntyre was one of those, however, who didn’t buy into all the pre-game hype about a big Galway win, and with good reason.
As a former Offaly manager, he was only too aware of the potential in Joe Dooley’s team. “So many fine hurlers, and I know that from my own time with them. We played extremely well in several games – my last year with them (2007), we had Tipperary virtually beaten in Thurles but left them off the hook.
“All those young players I was trying to introduce – Joe Bergin, Paul Cleary, Shane Dooley, David Kenny, Derek Molloy and so on – they’re all older and more experienced now, bigger and stronger. From Offaly’s perspective it’s great to see those young lads progressing.”
All very true, of course, but lost in all the praise being showered from all quarters on Offaly is the character shown also by Galway, the guts to come back from that blistering Offaly first-half spell, a deficit of seven points coming up to the interval.
Ten minutes into the second half Galway hadn’t just reduced that deficit, they overturned it, and as mentioned above, led by four points themselves.
Then came that Offaly red card, but, reckons John McIntyre, far from deflating the Offaly challenge, it actually rekindled the flame, galvanised them again for the final 25 minutes. “We lost our shape,” said John, “Almost paid the price for it – the sending-off changed the entire fabric of the last quarter.”
“I’m not into the blame game,” said McIntyre. “Players at this level don’t need to be told where they went wrong, they take responsibility for their play and that’s the message we’ll be trying to drive home this week. Our overall standing as potential All-Ireland champions took a severe pasting but I think people are still underestimating the quality of Offaly.”
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