Eamonn Kelly up for challenge as Offaly begin rebuilding

Eamonn Kelly doesn’t do straightforward. Never has.

When he took over his native Kildangan in 2000, the club’s intermediate hurlers who were without a championship win for three years. Then there was his role with the Loughrea hurlers in 2012, the Galway club having lost two of the previous three county finals. His job with Ballybrown the year following was to preserve the Limerick club’s senior status and when he stepped up to inter-county level in 2014, he was tasked with changing the collective mindset of the Kerry hurler.

Last September he was approached by members of the Offaly County Board to gauge his interest in taking charge of a team that had fallen outside hurling’s top 10, had lost to neighbours Laois in a championship game for the first time in 43 years and consequently, would have to ply their trade in a qualifying group to gain entry into the Leinster championship proper this summer.