Player power will have a role in Kelly’s future as Offaly manager

Kevin Egan Column

The managerial merry-go-round got off to a flying start this week with the news that both Henry Shefflin and Davy Fitzgerald have stepped away from their roles in Galway and Waterford.

Following last weekend’s football results, there could well be some deep reflection and indeed some serious executive discussions when it comes to some equally heavyweight figures in Dublin and Derry too, while it has been reported in Kildare that the hunt for Glen Ryan’s replacement will be stepped up in intensity this week.

Like every summer, this is only the start of it. A role that was once all about coaching and team selection has grown into something closer to a CEO or managing director, with costs expanding accordingly too.

Treasurers and sponsors in particular would love to be able to put the genie back in the bottle, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. One only has to look at the difference between Donegal’s footballing performance in 2023 versus what they’re doing in 2024 to see indisputable evidence of the difference that the right person can make when they’re handed the keys to the ship.

For many counties looking at their senior roles, the only decision to be made will be that of the current manager deciding whether or not they wish to continue. For example, regardless of what happens on Saturday afternoon, Derek Lyng has made a fine job of what many would have seen as an impossible task, that of succeeding Brian Cody as Kilkenny manager.

Ger Brennan came into Louth with relatively little experience and has built on well on the work of Mickey Harte, Justin McNulty has helped make Laois relevant again, and Keith Rossiter had a very impressive debut season in Wexford. They’re all going nowhere, unless they choose to.

There are many more that are not quite cast iron certainties to continue, but that still look to have done more than enough to justify another twist if they want it, and Johnny Kelly should be in that category. Had Laois built on their late momentum and sneaked victory in the Joe McDonagh final it probably would have been a very different story, particularly given the lack of substitutions for long stretches of the second half of that game. But the bare facts of the matter are that with the exception of the Cork game, Offaly were competitive in the league, and they rebounded well from an unlucky start to the championship in Portlaoise to win five games in a row, before producing an encouraging display against Cork. In a results business, Kelly has met all his KPIs and more.

The other key factor weighing heavily in Kelly’s favour is that Offaly’s return to the Leinster championship is a juicy carrot for any players weighing up whether or not to make themselves available for selection for the county panel when it is reconvened. Notwithstanding the balancing act that will have to be done with the players that were born in 2005, and of course injury issues, Kelly will have every player he wants at his disposal. That makes it much easier for the Offaly County Board to rubber stamp his return.

Like it or not - and there are large cohorts of GAA traditionalists who don’t like it at all - players wield a lot of power in these situations in the modern era, particularly in counties where the pool of players that is up to inter-county standard can be quite shallow.

It’s easy to look on with envy at the situation in top tier counties, where any player, regardless of ability, can be cast aside if the manager feels that they don’t fit into their plans for one reason or another. However, as teams move further and further away from the top of the mountain, some element of compromise and management of difficult situations becomes necessary.

This isn’t about trying to cajole along a player who is not interested in being physically fit and ready to play inter-county football or hurling; even at the better club grades, the era of carrying players like that is long gone. Instead, this is about players where their conflicting interests or situations fall into a grey area. That might be a personal or work situation that causes a player to be in a position where they might still commit to putting in as much time as is needed, but maybe not always at the time when collective sessions are taking place.

That might be a player who clearly has something to offer and who never shirks what’s needed on or off the training field, but struggles to deal with not getting the playing time they feel they deserve. It might be a player with commitments to other teams, either as a player or perhaps as an underage or schools coach. They will make the county side their number one priority, but that doesn’t mean it will be their only priority.

Or sometimes there is just a player who perhaps isn’t as likeable as all that, and that’s just their personality. They can be fit, talented, competitive and driven, but their own interaction with their fellow players, or maybe even how they handle relations with management, leaves something to be desired.

There is no right or wrong answer in any of these situations, but when you drop below the top five or six teams in either sport, management teams have to take a more nuanced view, purely because their panel can only take so many walkaways before really feeling the pinch.

Like it or not, that’s the grey area that Offaly are in right now with Declan Kelly and the senior footballers. Nobody, least of all Kelly himself, would argue that 2024 was a good year for Offaly football. The league campaign was disappointing, albeit that was easy to excuse with a lot of key players missing for long stretches. An impressive showing in the Leinster championship against Laois gave rise to optimism, but from then on things went from bad to worse, and the Tailteann Cup game against London will be a stain on Offaly’s record for a long time to come.

That being said, Kelly is still an All-Ireland winning manager at U20 level, and a man who has had success at senior club level, and someone who deserves more than just ‘one and done’.

His problem, and by extension Offaly’s problem, is that it doesn’t matter that much whether he deserves it or not.

If it’s the case that there is any substance to the suggestions flying around social media and indeed the club terraces around Offaly that a host of senior players have no intention of staying on if he remains at the helm, then the hard truth for the county board is even that a good manager – which Kelly undoubtedly is – cannot succeed with a shadow panel.

Either they and Kelly together have to find a way to ensure that the only players that walk away are ones that would have left even if Jim Gavin was in charge, bar maybe one or two at most, or else they have to accept that too much damage has been done by all the water that has gone under the bridge over the past eight months.

When Galway won the U-20

All-Ireland final four years ago, they did so with a starting 15 containing six players that featured against Dublin last Saturday. Conor Flaherty was starting keeper back then and sub keeper in Croke Park last weekend, while another five are on the senior panel, but didn’t make the 26.

Offaly are well on the way to getting a similar return from the 2021 All-Ireland winners. But if those players are thrown to the wolves, with a dearth of experience and maturity all around them in 2025, the chances of them staying around into their prime years will diminish very quickly. And while the role of the manager may have expanded exponentially in the past decade or two, even the best of them still need to bring players with them to reach their potential.