Offaly's pivotal role in the establishment of ladies football

LADIES football has gone onto become one of the great participation sports in Ireland and Offaly can be very proud of the role they played in its establishment in the 1970s.

Offaly played in some of the first organised ladies football games in the early 1970s and they were one of only four counties represented when the Ladies Gaelic Football Association was formed in July 1974 – fittingly that meeting took place in Hayes Hotel, Thurles, where the GAA had been founded almost ninety years earlier.

Teams had come together to play games in Offaly before the official formation – Ballycumber was one of the first, playing games from the late 1960s.

Offaly, Kerry, Tipperary and Galway were represented at that historic 1974 meeting and the first All-Ireland championship took place that year when Offaly were beaten 2-3 to 2-2 by Tipperary in Durrow, Laois.

Ladies football was a very different sport then. It enjoyed nothing of the profile that the modern game does and there was definitely no suggestion of a Croke Park setting for All-Ireland finals. There was miminal public interest and that inaugural All-Ireland final was played before a handful of spectators.

It was in the 2000s before the game really mushroomed but the seeds sown by those pioneers were crucial. Offaly were a serious force for the early years and the ladies achievement added to the sense of excitement in the early 1980s as the county hunted All-Ireland senior football and hurling honours.

Offaly were beaten by Kerry in the 1976 All-Ireland final, 4-6 to 1-5 while they finally won in 1979, beating Tipperary, 3-6 to 1-6, in a replayed final. They won a second All-Ireland in 1981, getting the better of Cavan by 1-11 to 4-0 and they competed in their last All-Ireland senior final in 1982, losing to Kerry by 1-8 to 1-2. In Leinster, Offaly were unbeatable as they won nine Leinster titles in a row.

As motherhood and other commitments beckoned for many of that great team, Offaly entered a long decline and have not contended for the All-Ireland senior title again.

The 1990s was a particularly rough decade for the game in Offaly but over the last twenty years, it has begun to prosper again. Clubs have got organised, the local championships have got more competitive and playing standards have risen.

The county team slipped back to junior level but there has been signficant improvement in the past decade. There were great celebrations in 2013 when Offaly won the All-Ireland Junior Championship, beating Wexford in the final in Croke Park.

They have stayed at intermediate level since then while the county is always associated with All-Ireland senior final day in Croke Park as the prize for the winners is the Brendan Martin Cup – it was donated in 1974 by the popular Tullamore native who was a key figure in the formation of the game in Offaly and nationally. Martin was the first Offaly Ladies Football secretary and the first chairperson was Phyliss Price, nee Hackett.

A Belmont man, the late Tommy Kenny was national president from 1977 to 1979. The health of the game in Offaly was shown in 2019 when Naomh Ciaran, a west Offaly club and the dominant force in Offaly senior club fare, staged a terrific comeback to beat St Paul's of Antrim in the 2019 All-Ireland club intermediate final.