Right mix of ingredients working a treat for ravenous Offaly
HUGE STRIDES: Offaly manager Leo O'Connor. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
A Friday evening spin to the Faithful Fields.
The town of Kilcormac is winding down after the week. An Offaly flag hangs limp outside Corboys bar. There’s a few still out for sale across the road in O’Sullivan’s Centra.
On up through the town we meander. The gates into Coláiste Naomh Cormac are closed shut. The school celebrated All-Ireland Senior B glory only two months ago. Four of that team should start Sunday’s All-Ireland U20 final.
We turn in left to the county’s centre of excellence. First to greet us is the main playing field. It’s in the middle of a manicure. Applying the polish is a robotic lawnmower.
Into the main reception room and our attention is drawn to the Faithful Fields donor wall, this gargantuan board drilled onto the back wall.
The donor wall carries the names of 297 people and businesses - if we counted correctly - who made a financial contribution of €250 or greater to help bring the Faithful Fields into debt-free existence in 2017.
Contributions came from near and far. Leo O’Connor came from Limerick. He came with almost a decade of experience of working within the Limerick underage academy. He came in as minor selector in 2019. They fell to Kildare in that season’s Leinster quarter-final.
Four years later, his U20 charges are 60 minutes from an All-Ireland title most hadn’t expected the county to contend for until next year or, in all likelihood, the year after that.
They’ve gone from being miles off the pace to being ahead of schedule.
On the road from here to there, they’ve picked up Leinster titles at minor (2022) and U20 (2023). The county’s most recent success in either grade prior to the current swell was 2000.
Leo lists out the key ingredients to this Faithful reawakening with all the snappiness of Adam Screeney firing over points from right corner-forward.
“Organisation. Strength and conditioning. Coaching. And a county board that gave me and my management the freedom to really push on and get players up to the level,” he begins.
“In 2019, I was part of a minor management team that wanted it every bit as much as the 2020, 21, and 22 management teams. But we were coming from a very, very low base.
“The pace they were playing at back then compared to the pace they are playing at right now, that's been a major factor. Their ability to adjust, their ability to get into a gym and do the work. With our current S&C coach Paul O’Donovan and previous S&C coaches we have worked with, we've really stepped up along the line.”
Lining the walls of the room we chat to Leo in are pictures of 17 All-Ireland-winning Offaly teams. There’s the history-making hurlers of 81. The county’s All-Ireland winning ladies footballers from the same year are close by.
Over in the corner are the U20 footballers from two years ago. At the end of the front row, down on his hunkers, is the familiar Cormac Egan. He’s hoping to add a second U20 medal this weekend.
On the patch of astroturf out the back of the Faithful Fields complex, Egan and the rest of the U20 hurlers are limbering up ahead of Friday evening training.
We wander into the gym that runs parallel to the astroturf. Another large board drilled onto the back wall. It carries the names of the market leaders from each Offaly panel who’ve squatted the heaviest weight this season, benched the greatest amount of iron, completed the most chin-up reps, and produced the highest vertical jump.
Egan’s vertical leap is top of the U20 football class. Colin Spain sits second in the squat rankings for the U20 hurlers.
The numbers on the board would make your back sore just looking at them. And yet the widely held view is that Cork will bring far greater heft to the party in Thurles.
“When you have the likes of myself and [Adam] Screeney, we wouldn’t be the biggest people in Offaly,” Spain takes off.
“I know everyone says hurling has become a very physical game but in our eyes, I don’t think it is. You look at Screeney’s feet, it’s all about speed, movement and how you can hurl.”
Spain is a local lad. School is Naomh Cormac down the road. English Paper One awaits him next Wednesday. There’s more than Shakespeare on his mind this weather.
Spain has already conquered Cork opposition in an All-Ireland final this year. He was part of the aforementioned Coláiste Naomh Cormac side that overcame Bandon’s Hamilton High School in March. He was also part of the Offaly colleges panel that defeated St Kieran’s to claim a first Leinster Senior A crown.
All those victories fed a belief that a sustained U20 run was possible. Those on the outside took some convincing. It took toppling Galway in the Leinster quarter-final to win them over.
“I don’t know why, but everyone outside of the panel thought at the start of the year that this Offaly team won’t be hectic and maybe in a year or two they can compete, but not this year. Coming into it, we knew there was something special about this group,” Spain continues.
Thoughts linger to Thurles and being stuck in the middle of a potentially 25,000-strong cauldron.
“I’d say we will walk out onto the pitch at half-time in the minor game for a puck around, and it's going to be mesmerising. You won’t know what to think.”
Minding the Offaly goal will be Mark Troy. As his father Jim did before him. Mind you, the intention was never to follow in dad’s footsteps. Mark plays outfield for club and college. The development squads were short a number one a few years back. He volunteered to stand in.
Been there ever since.
Where he would like to emulate his old man and uncle John is in the halcyon days they heralded for Offaly.
“During Covid, we watched an old match or two. Dad and John were playing. You would see the skill of Johnny P (now U20 selector) and them boys, what they brought to Offaly and how great it was. We want to bring that to Offaly as well,” says the SETU Carlow sports management and coaching student.
The Leinster final scenes from Netwatch Cullen Park would suggest they’ve already brought plenty.
In all his time playing and managing in Limerick, even when part of Phil Bennis’ minor and U21 teams in the mid-1980s where the manager would bring Cork out to Bruff to create a claustrophobic Munster championship atmosphere for the visitors, O’Connor has never come across anything to rival this Offaly rising and the impact its having.
“I've never ever experienced what I experienced in O’Moore Park last year (Leinster minor final) and in Dr Cullen Park this year. It was like the Romans in old times; the players running out onto the field and the crowd in around you.
“Dare I say it, but I think the Cork players are going to experience something very, very different on Sunday. They are going to be running out in front of an Offaly crowd ravenous for success.”
Last year’s All-Ireland minor final didn’t go their way. Neither did the recent Joe McDonagh Cup final. Offaly’s renaissance could do without a third stray brushstroke.
“I think it is time they did step up now and finally get over the line,” O’Connor signs off.
We leave them to their training. Back down through Kilcormac we head away.
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