Conor Doyle delighted to return from injury to help Offaly to victory

OFFALY forward Conor Doyle was delighted to have recovered from an early season injury to get back and help his side reach another All-Ireland final with victory over Dublin at O'Moore Park.

The Clara player had an operation on his foot in early January and knew he had a battle to get back to help play his part in the campaign but he has come back in in recent games and contributed to Offaly's victories.

“I hurt my foot at the tail end of last year and was waiting for surgery, which I had in January,” he explained. “It's a kind of misalignment of a bone or kind of dislocation, I had to get two screws into that on January 10^th and I knew it was going to leave it tight with championship. I was lucky, I missed the first game and was back on the line for the second game and and delighted to be involved and luckily the boys held their trust in me. The last two games I wasn't great but I'm getting back there, I'm not fully back but a game like that will get you back very quickly,” he said.

He said they were expecting a tough game. “We knew that coming down, Dublin are physical and they are fast and they move the ball quickly, so we knew we were going to be up against. We beat them at the start of the year by a point but it was a harder pitch now, it was a lot softer then,” he said.

Offaly took time to settle into the game and Conor said “there were a few nerves going in as favourites, the first time really it has happened to us. You could see in the warm up lads were a little bit nervous but it didn't take long to get the shackles off and get stuck into it. We were against a stiff breeze, it was hard to shoot into but thankfully we got over the line.”

The Clara forward agree that it wasn't Offaly's most clinical performance but said it is great to win those games. “It wasn't a game where you had the skill and lads out pucking the ball over the bar, it was more of the turnovers and hitting lads and we knew that was the game it was going to be. It was kind of a game played in the middle third and luckily we are a fit team and have done a lot of work in the gym, so we were as good as we could be today. The workrate of the team is just unbelieveable. It can't be taught, it's just bred into lads.”

Conor said it was all a bit wild at the end with premature pitch invasions and everything. “It was crazy trying to tell young lads to get off the pitch. I'd never seen Offaly winning, which is strange, and I still haven't seen Offaly winning from the sidelines as I've been on the field, so I don't know what it's like to those young lads running on, but it's great for them and great for the whole county,” he said.