Harte's arrival a major boost for Offaly despite potential pitfalls

By Kevin Egan

The Offaly football world was electrified on Monday evening with the news that Mickey Harte is to be part of a joint management team with Declan Kelly at the helm of the Offaly senior footballers, purportedly for the next three years, and it’ll be hard to avoid supporters talking about what this might mean for the county’s prospects in 2025.

Whether you plan on going to one of the four U-12 ‘B’ championship fixtures down for decision tonight, or even one of the senior football fixtures on Sunday, no doubt you’ll feel the same frisson of excitement around the ground as you walk in and meet people.

There will of course be naysayers, and prognosticators of doom – and there are plenty of reasons to fear that this may not play out as was hoped. It’s not long ago that Tomás Ó Sé was added to an Offaly management ticket to add star power, but that didn’t work out particularly well, and in general, joint management teams have a mixed track record. For every Feargal Lohan/Brian Dooher combination that went well, there is at least another Kevin McStay/Fergal O’Donnell combination, which was much less successful than when either man was in charge of Roscommon by themselves.

Inter-county managers tend to have plenty of “alpha” tendencies out of sheer necessity, and in sport as well as in business, there often needs to be one desk where ‘the buck stops here’. It’s for Harte and Kelly to work out how that will operate in practice, but it’s also likely that in the national media, this will be painted as Mickey Harte’s operation.

When you’ve won three Sam Maguire Cups as a senior manager with a county that had never won the biggest prize in Gaelic football prior to that, casual observers will struggle to picture you as anything other than the top dog. Financially, bringing Harte on board and making sure that he has all the support around him that he feels he will need to do his job successfully, will mean that the Offaly senior football operation is likely to cost a few extra euro to run.

Yet while there are pitfalls, the reason there will be so much excitement around Offaly this weekend is because the ceiling on what this county can achieve over the next few years has suddenly been raised by a few floors.

First and foremost, rumours of a significant cohort of players not making themselves available for selection in 2025 can instantly be dismissed. There will always be some who, whether for work, family or health reasons, cannot commit to playing at inter-county level. But it’s reasonable to assume that any footballer in this county who can make it work, will let it be known that they are ready and willing to be part of next year’s campaign.

Given the likely age profile of the team, the 2025 Leinster SFC is probably a little bit out of reach just yet – but when we also consider the elite footballers that will step away from the Dublin set up in the next year or two, winning the Delaney Cup in 2026 or 2027 should be considered a very realistic target.

But in order for that to happen, Offaly need to get up into Division Two, to make consistent progress, and to have 90% or more of the best footballers in the county on the panel, fit and strong enough to compete with the best teams in the country. Mickey Harte wouldn’t come to Offaly if he didn’t believe that this was realistic, and any players who don’t buy into this vision will soon be passed out by the cohorts who will want to be part of the type of journey that Louth travelled.

Moreover, the Offaly County Board wouldn’t have brought him in, if they didn’t believe that the support structures would be there to help Kelly and Harte achieve everything possible in their tenure. The ambition and vision required to bring this about is commendable, and while there are no guarantees of success, the likelihood of some brighter days ahead has just increased considerably.