Johnny Kelly proud of part Offaly played in “exceptional game of hurling”
OFFALY suffered a heartbreaking one point defeat after extra time in Saturday's Joe McDonagh Cup final against Carlow and it was a very disappointed manager Johnny Kelly who faced members of the press in Croke Park afterwards to reflect on the game.
He said he was very proud of the effort of his players and the part they had played in a great game of hurling but that didn't ease their own disappointment.
“First thing to say is heartiest congratulations to Carlow. That was an exceptional game of hurling and it would be remiss of me not to congratulate them on a fabulous victory for the manager and the entire team. It was a brilliant game of hurling,” he said.
“We are disappointed, gutted to be honest. To come out with a one point loss is hard to take,” he added.
Offaly had met all their targets for the year up to last Saturday but with the progress made and age profile of the team, there is optimism for the future.
“Truth of the matter is Offaly have been out of Leinster for five years now and dropped a level below, and this bunch of men have worked extremely, extremely hard. The sacrifices that they have made, the injuries they have taken, the effect it has on their own private lives to make the sacrifices, it is just humbling to be part of a group like that,” the manager said.
“It's not easy to lose a game of that quality but again you have to be manly and take it on the chin and go forward and somehow find a way to get guys back in and motivated because we play a game in a few weeks time against the third best team in Munster. It's a tough station in there at the minute,” he added.
Johnny agreed that the panel had shown a lot of character but he was keen to address criticism for the team that had been selected to play the group game against Carlow a couple of weeks previously. “I want to say there was a lot made of the Offaly team over the last couple of weeks and the way it was perceived that we had thrown the game but the reality of the matter is we had 10 players injured after the Kerry game and we couldn't physically take the field with those guys against Carlow the last time out. We knew we had to get as much recovery into those players.
“Even today we had guys on the field who had to get injections during the week. We go back to the point, it's an amateur game. Players are after putting in that effort, putting their bodies on the line to play for their county and when all is said and done, they are beaten by a point and there are tears in their eyes in there after that game because they want so much to move Offaly forward,” he added.
The Portumna man was unhappy with some of the refereeing decisions including the red card for Offaly corner back Dara Maher.
“Maybe some day soon we will get a rub of the green. You mentioned the red card, the red card was not a red card. The red card in my opinion was not even a penalty. It was a really great catch on the edge of the square. Paddy Boland tried to attempt a strike on goal, he was falling at the time, the ball broke away and the referee decides to give a penalty from 60 yards out the field and then send off our corner back,” the manager said.
“For 35 minutes we battled on and eventually it was a bridge too far. Having said all that, that was a fabulous Carlow team and I want to wholeheartedly congratulate them,” he added.
Not winning is a setback but Offaly are still in a relatively good place and have Division 1 hurling to look forward to next year.
“It is going to take a massive effort again next year. We will be back in Division 1. I spoke early on about the league and the format of it, is it right the way it is such a yo-yo competition? It does have to be looked at. Even after today how do you prepare in a few weeks time for the third team in Munster, but we will. We will get back to training during the week, lick our wounds and come out with a good fight again the next day.”
Offaly had put in a huge effort to get back level in normal time and looked to be in a good place heading into extra time.
“We had momentum, we eventually started to score. We have to hold our hands up, we had 19 wides at full time. We put ourselves in really good positions but our scoring efficiency was down and is something we have to look at as well and take cognisances of that. Having said that, a couple of key decisions in the first half I felt went against us. Let's not cry wolf about that. Again we can point to our own wides as well. It did take a massive effort to get back into the game and it probably did tell coming near the end.
“It was a see saw affair. It could have gone any way towards the end as Carlow were continuing to send that high ball down on top of us and they were excellent in the air. We got a couple of breaks, we were through on a couple of occasions, a couple of missed chances and Carlow got a brilliant score off the left hand side here and that is an exceptional score from their hurlers. Again the Carlow team deserves huge credit as the standard they have played at is exceptional. Tom Mullally has done a brilliant job with them, we always knew that and more power to them,” the Offaly manager concluded.