Offaly's mindset key to daunting Dublin challenge

By Kevin Egan

Of all the challenges that Declan Kelly has faced, and indeed will face in his tenure as Offaly senior football manager, trying to shape the team’s mindset in advance of Sunday’s Leinster semi-final (4pm) against Dublin is as difficult as it comes.

It’s the nature of any competitor, either on the sideline or on the field of play, to believe that, if the stars align and everything falls into place in terms of performance, tactics and of course luck, every game is winnable.

Yet the stats when it comes to Dublin in Croke Park in the Leinster championship say something very different. Since beating Meath in 2013 Leinster final, this will be Dublin’s 35th provincial championship game. The 2017 Leinster final against Kildare (2-23 to 1-17) and last year’s Leinster semi-final against the same opposition (0-14 to 0-12), and their three games in 2021 when it was clear that they were running on fumes at the end of their six-in-a-row run, are the only games where they didn’t win by double digits.

Admittedly, Leinster hasn’t been a strong province in terms of depth for the last decade, but this Offaly group also has a fair few rungs on the ladder to climb before they will be seen by the country at large as being a real threat to the Dubs.

So what’s the better course of action for Kelly and his management team? One option is to spend the week railing against the dismissal of this game as a foregone conclusion, citing how many of these Offaly players have come from winning an All-Ireland U20 title and that this is their chance to announce their presence on the national stage? Another option is to go down the road of damage limitation, and treating each play as an independent event, with a view towards trying to keep the margin as small as possible in advance of a wide open Tailteann Cup campaign?

The latter approach makes it easier for the team to shake off the concession of an early goal or any similar setback, since targets are exclusively set around performance. Going in with a dreamer’s mindset appeals to the natural psyche of the athlete that bit more, and might make it more likely that Offaly burst out of the blocks and keep things competitive for a good chunk of time, but it also runs the risk that some players might find it hard not to mentally switch off if Dublin move well ahead.

There were some positive signs last week, when it came to Division One teams taking on sides from a league tier or two below them. Cork did a lot right against Kerry and were fairly treated by the narrow margin of defeat. Sligo weren’t fairly treated by their defeat at all and were rightly gutted to have failed to close out what would have been a historic win over Galway, and Cavan couldn’t have come much closer to knocking over Tyrone.

We won’t include Donegal’s win over Derry here, since Donegal will be a Division One side next year, and by any measure, they are clearly one of the leading five or six teams in Ireland right now, given the transformation under Jim McGuinness.

That said, a misfiring Galway side and a Tyrone team that looks like 1990s Tyrone – an average group with a magically talented Canavan up front elevating them – are in no way comparable to the All-Ireland champions, who are gradually re-introducing a handful of legends of the game (Cluxton/Fitzsimons/McCarthy) into a side that was already going pretty well.

But it’s also a positive that this Offaly group is blessed with an exceptional group of one-on-one defenders, which makes life much easier when it comes to taking on Dublin. Dessie Farrell’s side can score from all over the pitch. Players like Seán Bugler and Brian Fenton in particular have to be respected in that regard, while John Small chipped in with a couple of points last time out against Meath.

In the main, however, Dublin still prefer to get the ball into the hands of their scorers up front, and much of their game is based around working the play until players like Ciarán Kilkenny, Paul Mannion, Con O’Callaghan or Paddy Small are in possession and in the right position. If Offaly can stick to their guns and deny those players clean looks at goal, Dublin might struggle to run up a score early.

Finding openings at the other end of the pitch won’t be easy and no forward enjoys a game where 80% of their time is spent defending, but spirits will be on the high side after the Laois game, where Offaly produced their best performance of the year so far.

The betting firms have set the handicap at 20 points or so, which feels a little disrespectful of Offaly. We won’t overdo it by saying that the greatest shock of the millennium so far is on the cards, but if a mediocre Meath team are 16 points short of Dublin, we suspect this Offaly group can improve on that by a little bit at least.