Silver jubilee reunion of Tullamore's landmark 2000 Offaly SFC winners

TULLAMORE GAA stalwart Phil O’Reilly has described his 2000 county medal as his most treasured possession as the team he captained prepares to mark the silver jubilee of that landmark success.

The Millennium Offaly Senior Football Champions will be guests of honour at the club’s upcoming banquet on Saturday, February 8 at the Tullamore Court Hotel, when the various successes of 2024 will also be marked.

The night is themed ‘The Gift of Legacy’, a nod to the fact that the 2000 squad spawned so many successful managers and coaches, both for club and county.

O’Reilly himself managed the Offaly minor team to successive Leinster finals and an All-Ireland semi-final in 2005 before steering Tullamore to a county title two years later. He was also briefly Offaly interim manager and has coached extensively inside and outside the county.

John Rouse, full-back in 2000 as Tullamore ended a 23-year drought, oversaw the 2013 success while Niall Stack, who played at midfield 25 years ago, spearheaded the run of success in recent years which culminated in the club putting titles back-to-back for the first time since 1926 last October.

Paul Rouse, top scorer in 2000, managed the Offaly senior footballers in the 2018 Championship while Kevin Martin, who scored the crucial goal in the final win over Shamrocks, is a former Offaly and Westmeath senior hurling manager who also masterminded a sensational Offaly SHC triumph for Tullamore in 2009.

Several others from that group have also contributed richly to management teams at club and county level at various grades.

As a player, O’Reilly boasts an impressive medal collection having won Leinster and All-Ireland under-21 titles with Offaly in 1988 before going on to win Leinster and National League crowns with the senior team in 1997 and ‘98 respectively.

However, it’s that first county medal, in his 13th year playing senior football, that means the most.

“I always think of that as my favourite one,” he says. “Even though we won the Leinster with Offaly and won the National League as well, it’s always nice to win with your club and the fact that I was captain and it was the first time in 23 years, it was great to finally achieve that because my father (Phil Senior) has a couple of medals as well so it was nice to get one on him and then it started the ball rolling.”

However, having played on Tullamore sides that lost county finals to Ferbane in 1988 and ‘92 before falling to Shannonbridge in ‘96, he feared that it would never come to pass.

“I was only 19 in ‘88 and I thought we were going to be in one every year and we were beaten in ‘88 and we were beaten again in ‘92. Then we got to ‘96 and we played Shannonbridge and we were shoo-ins for that, everybody thought, and that’s no disrespect to Shannonbridge but in fairness Shannonbridge beat us that day as well so I was beginning to wonder then alright.

“Then we got to 2000 and I was 32 years of age and I always remember saying to the younger lads in 2000 that came on, Mickey Flynn and Briain Fagan, all those lads, and even talking to the James Keanes and the Shaun Martins and all that later, I think they won one early in their career, and I always say to people, ‘Just because you get to one early doesn’t mean you’re going to win them or you’re going to be in them every year’. Yeah, I did think for a while that I wasn’t going to get one but I suppose it was in the stars.

“I know that Pat Dolan who I soldiered with in ‘88, ‘92 and ‘96, he retired in ‘99 and we went on to win it in 2000 so he doesn’t have any county medal of any sort - underage or anything - and yet he was one of the best club players that I ever played with.”

O’Reilly won a second senior medal in 2002 and wound down his career with an intermediate title in 2004, on a team which featured a young Paul McConway, who went on to win five senior medals and has just been announced as the club’s new senior football manager in succession to Stack.

The vast majority of the 35-strong Tullamore panel from 2000 and team management will be in attendance on February 8 when, among other things, O’Reilly will be taking part in a Q&A on the night with other members of that team and management, with Will O’Callaghan as MC. In addition, the 2000 team will be presented with a special commemorative booklet, which will also be on sale on the night.

O’Reilly added: “It’ll be nice to catch up now again because even with the best of intentions and all the ideas of meeting up once a year or twice a year or something like that, going on holidays, it just never seems to work out because lads are busy at other things, but it’ll be nice now after 25 years to be recognised and it’ll be nice to catch up with all the lads. Some of the lads I wouldn’t have seen in 10, 15, even 20 years maybe.”

Tickets for ‘The Gift of Legacy’ on February 8 are available to buy via this link: https://member.clubforce.com/tickets_m.asp?LL_ID=461.

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Attached is a picture of the Tullamore team that beat Shamrocks by 1-9 to 0-10 in the 2000 county final.

Front (l-r): Phil O'Reilly (captain), Gareth Lee, Briain Fagan, Peter Kelly, Ken Furlong, Alan Hogan, Gary Heffernan. Back (l-r): Niall Stack, John Rouse, Michael Flynn, Paul Rouse, Joe Hughes, Ray Martin, Cathal Daly, Richie O'Mahoney.