Flanagan: Time we knuckled down as unit

New Offaly football manager Pat Flanagan says they need to stop looking for excuses if hisnative county is to move forward in 2015.

The Faithful County has been plagued by controversy in recent years with regular bust-ups between players and management. Ross Brady, Sean Pender and Richie Dalton are all unavailable; they were axed from the panel in 2013 after a disagreement with then manager Emmett McDonnell.

Meanwhile, Michael Brazil has emigrated to America and David Hanlon has opted instead to play soccer. Star player Niall McNamee has also spoke of his “embarrassment” at the lack of facilities in the county but Flanagan believes excuse time is over.

“The bottom line is that when things are not going well, everything can become an excuse. When things are going well you probably wouldn’t hear anything about training facilities. We need to knuckle down as a unit, I’m talking about players, supporters the whole lot.

“What we have is huge potential and we need to use them to get ourselves to a better position. The time for making excuses is gone because basically all it is doing is hiding behind a wall.”

Regarding the players who are making themselves unavailable, the former Sligo boss stated: “My point to those guys is we need fellas who want to play for Offaly.

“The guys that didn’t come back I suppose you would hope they would have changed their mind but they didn’t. Offaly supporters would have wanted to see all of those guys back in but we have to work with what we have,” he said.