Offaly can recover from Clare collapse but lessons to be learned from fallout

In terms of preserving Division Three status, Offaly’s defeat to Clare last Sunday was a setback, but it was far from a hammer blow to the team’s chances.

Given the current form of the eight sides in the division, it’s now almost certain that relegation will be decided by the mini-league of games between Offaly, Wicklow and Limerick, so if Declan Kelly’s side can win their two home games against those sides, they’ll almost certainly be fine. And even if Offaly had held on to beat Clare, it’s still quite likely that they would have needed at least three points out of those two games – so not a lot has changed, in that regard.

As a marker for where this team is at, however, there’s no getting away from last Sunday's result being a hammer blow of a defeat, probably the most demoralizing league result since either Longford’s 11-point win in the first round of the 2018 season, or the 6-22 to 0-10 debacle in the Athletic Grounds a year previously.

It’s not that losing by a point to this Clare team is a terrible result on paper. Even in the absence of Eoin Cleary, Keelan Sexton, Podge Collins and all the other big names that have stepped away from the Banner County set up since last year’s championship, this is still a capable group and one that isn’t completely out of the running for promotion just yet.

However, the manner of last Sunday’s defeat was simply inexcusable. Even after Ciarán Downes’ penalty, there was still plenty of time for some Offaly player – any player – to take control of the game, make a big play, do something to shift the momentum. There was incredibly naivety to the way that Clare were allowed to simply push up, squeeze Ian Duffy’s kickouts, and when they did win possession and slice through the defence, there was no cuteness, or even stubbornness to take a yellow card in the spirit of “thou shalt not pass”.

When Clare goalkeeper Stephen Ryan pushed forward, Offaly made it a low-risk play by failing to keep a player or two high up the pitch to keep him honest, and conscious of what was happening behind him. Whether on the field or on the sideline, it was another chance to disrupt Clare and break their flow that wasn’t taken.

It will have been a nervous week for a handful of players in the lead up to Saturday's trip to Newry, since a result like that leaves Declan Kelly with little option but to make significant changes. Anything else represents tacit acceptance of what happened against Clare as just a bad day and nothing more, which is a risky strategy for a manager in his first year.

Nobody wants to see Offaly football mimic the Conservative Party in Britain, where the reaction to failure is always to chop off a head or two, as opposed to any form of introspection about whether there might be a deficit in the areas of ideas, leadership, competence. But at the same time, something has to be different. It’s not like things were going well before this, Offaly scored 0-10 and 1-7 in the first two games of the season, losing both. Anything else, and it will start to look like there is only Plan A, and nothing else.

The aftermath

For Clare to come back from nine points down in the final quarter to win made last Sunday’s game far more newsworthy on a national level than would normally be the case for a Division Three fixture. And the story of the game stayed up near the top of GAA conversations everywhere when Offaly GAA chairman Michael Duignan chose to publicly rebuke some social media posters who had responded to the result with criticism of the team.

The wording of the Offaly GAA social media post after the game, while well-meant, didn’t help. Use of the phrase “hard luck” implied an element of misfortune, when in truth, it wasn’t misfortune that caused Offaly’s downfall. Many social media users responded with a dismissive view of the idea that it was a hard luck story, and as is invariably the case with such matters, many crossed the lines of decency and respect by getting personal in their abuse.

Duignan was no doubt channelling the same spirit he would have shown when playing for either St Rynagh’s or Offaly a generation ago. His own were under attack, he sprung to their defence. But his comment that “No one on here has ever been inside an inter county dressing room. You have no idea what these players do for their county” was ill-advised for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that the Offaly football and hurling teams can mean a lot to people even if those people never had the raw material to be called up to a county panel themselves.

As a smaller county, Offaly GAA needs everyone invested and committed to the county cause, regardless of sporting ability, and in Duignan’s defence, he clarified this in a piece in the Irish Examiner the following day.

In a county like Offaly, the majority of people know very well the extraordinary commitment required to play inter-county football or hurling. It would be a rare GAA supporter in this county who wouldn’t have a friend, family member or club colleague inside an Offaly dressing room at some time now or in the recent past, and any comments calling commitment or will to compete into question should of course be dismissed as nonsensical, since they clearly come from someone without that level of human understanding.

However there is a flip side to this debate, and that’s the need for accepting that criticism will happen, and that much of it, however hurtful, is fair. It’s not a contradiction to say that players are working hard, making sacrifices and hugely ambitious all in the cause of playing for Offaly, while at the same time saying that they had a poor game, or that their deployment in a particular role doesn’t appear to be working, or that they made one or two very consequential errors.

A comment like “that lad should never be let near a jersey again” is abusive, disrespectful, and should be ignored. A comment stating – for example - that the final quarter of last Sunday’s game saw individual and collective meltdowns taking place, and where there was a glaring lack of leadership to change the game when Clare took over, is fair and accurate.

Long before there was social media, there was criticism, both of the measured variety, and the bluff and bluster flavour. In every walk of life, this applies. And like every other walk of life, learning to tell the difference between the two types is a vital skill.

There are those who would call for your head on a stick for writing something, and those are easy to ignore. However, if measured criticism can be taken in the spirit in which it’s intended, then it becomes one mistake that you won’t make a second time. Learning which comments to disregard and which ones to take to heart is just one of many lessons that the Offaly senior football panel members have had to take on board this week.