On fire Hyland comes full circle for Offaly with second great tour-de-force
Offaly shooting machine firing on all cylinders again
DYLAN Hyland, smiled and initially tried to plead the fifth when the almost inevitable question was asked before brushing it off as he reflected on Offaly's great 3-22 to 1-20 win over Down in the Tailteann Cup on Saturday.
For the second game in a row, Hyland was in unstoppable form, impossible to mark, full of confidence and shot the lights out. He was man of the match in the first round win over Clare when he scored nine points, seven from play.
He somehow managed to trump that in O'Connor Park on Saturday as he scored 1-11. He stroked home his goal from a penalty, scored three two pointers that were as good as any you will see this year. Two of them were with the outside of his right foot and came against the wind while his haul also included two single points from play as well as two frees – his two pointers almost defied belief but in some ways his 57th minute free was the highlight, a delicious strike from 14 metres out near the sideline on the terrace side to put Offaly 2-19 to 1-18 in front and in sight of a season changing win against the Tailteann Cup favourites.
Offaly could be the round 2A winner who draw New York in a preliminary quarter-final or they could be straight into the quarter-finals. It is a turnaround that few saw coming after a dreadful first half of the season when they lost all seven games in Division 2 of the National Football League and had a horror show in their abject first round championship surrender to Laois.
Supporters feared the worse for the Tailteann Cup but the players have responded better than people had hoped and a season of promise is now open in front of them as they chase victory in the second tier competition.
For Hyland, this campaign represents a spectacular high in a county career in which he has been consistently one of Offaly's deadliest attackers but has had its share of controversy.
Down has provided one of his big low points and a real high point. In Declan Kelly's first year in charge in 2024, he went perilously close to walking the plank after a horrific Tailteann Cup campaign as Offaly lost to London and Limerick. The 2-20 to 1-12 loss to London was the worse that the majority of supporters had seen from an Offaly football team, and by a distance.
The 2-10 to 0-8 defeat by Limerick in the following game only seemed okay as it came after the London one but it was another dreadful day at the office, with Offaly displaying almost zero interest in playing football.
They salvaged a bit of pride with a closing defeat, 2-22 to 3-13, to Down in their final game in Cavan but it was a dead rubber with Down already through and Offaly gone. Hyland was not in Cavan that Sunday, opting not to travel and to work in the coffee shop he had helped take over in Daingean.
With a normal player, that would be a deal breaker and his county career in tatters but Hyland has always been a bit different. He plays football with an edge that a lot don't, he has had his share of discipline problems, picked up a large volume of cards of every shade over the years - but he has worked very hard to sort this out, his value to the team is immense and he was given another chance by Kelly and incoming manager Mickey Harte – who also brushed the subject off when asked about it in first interview when coming in after the 2024 season.
Quite simply, Hyland has been Offaly's best and most consistent forward for the past few years and he was always likely to be kept on board.
He was among the many players who displayed little appetite for the Tailteann Cup that season, though he made his distaste known in a much more obvious way when missing that Down game – others withdrew from the panel to go to America and it was a campaign that could have ended Kelly's term after one year.
Hyland had to jog his memory when he was reminded of that Down game in 2024 and asked if he regretted it. He initially asked which game he missed and then grinned: “Ah look, life goes on. There is no point in dwelling on the past, we get over those things.”
He was pushed on the irony on missing that game against Down and now scoring 1-11 in a man of the match display that will give a huge lift to everyone. “Ah shur, it was a nothing game (in 2024). We couldn't go up or we couldn't go down. We got over it, thank God. Forget about it, there is no point in hanging onto the past.”
Hyland has seen the light since, knows that the Tailteann Cup can really bring Offaly on and provide a tangible, meaningful reward. “We didn't perform the last few years but I think we have come to a realisation that it is a really good competition. It is a competition, we should be aiming to win to get to the next level. Westmeath won it a few years ago and now they have gone on and won Leinster. It is a proper competition, look at the teams in it. Down, Clare, Fermanagh, ourselves. It finishes in Croke Park, there is a good prize for it so why not get it.”
An outstanding underage protege, he spent time in Australia before returning home. This meant that his senior county debut came later than it could have been, in 2022, but Saturday's game was his 51st competitive league and championship and his scoring exploits have commanded complete respect.
He is now in the best form of his life – it looked like he might struggle to adapt to the new rules last year but he was injured and he has now answered those questions emphatically.
He was among the heavy injury list that loaded the dice against Offaly surviving in Division 2, only coming back in the defeat to Cavan. He scored seven points that day, four from play, but was kept back in a subs role for the loss to Meath. He has been fighting that bane of life for inter-county players, the groin related osteitis pubis, since last year but has finally got fit and has got better and better as the season wore on.
Now playing out of his skin, Hyland talked about how they managed to turn their season around. “There is a lot of work there. It was a terrible league and we went out bad in the championship. We weren't happy with that but I knew the last few weeks, training was going fierce well between Laois and Clare. I was hoping that would show on the pitch and it has.”
The Laois defeat had particular significance for Hyland. His mother Ann Gorry is comes from great Offaly stock in Geashill but his father Tommy is from a famous, fiercely passionate Laois family just across the border in Kilcavan. Tommy was one of a number of siblings who played a lot of football for Kilcavan, some of them featuring on Laois panels, though he finished up his career with Ballinagar, the club of his brother in law David Gorry.
The Laois-Offaly rivalry is particularly raw in border areas but it didn't hit Hyland harder than any other defeat. He reflected: “We were probably down until we got back training. The first night we got back training, we just had to forget about it. We had four weeks to prepare and we couldn't hold onto it, we knew we just had to leave it there. If we were dwelling on it, our training wouldn't have been to the standard needed but it upped intensity wise, a massive jump between Laois and Clare. Hopefully we will keep that going now.”
He was quick to forget about Laois himself. “I was disappointed at the time but I wasn't going to let it ruin my season or hold onto it for too long. You win some and you lose some. We beat them down through the years and they came out on top this year. I wouldn't hold onto it. I might be in a bad humour for a day or maybe a day and a half but after that, you just forget about it.”
Hyland was aware of the mounting mood of pessimism in the county after the Laois game and league run. “Yeah, we knew about it. If you lose eight games on the bounce you are going to get criticism. You just have to accept that and hopefully these last two wins will change that. We said we wanted to get the fans back onside. Against Laois, it wasn't that we lost. The work rate wasn't there, the intensity wasn't there. That was the worse part. We didn't put in the effort. Hopefully those two wins will get the fans back onside and get they will turn out for the quarter-final.”
He knew at training the week of the Clare game that they were turning a corner and in the right frame of mind. “I knew by training, the intensity of training. We had a couple of in-house matches between ourselves and there was lads taking lumps out of each other. We were playing matches there and it was as hard if not as hard as some of our matches. The hitting and the tackling. I was just hoping it would show on the pitch and it did.”
Clearly hampered last year by his injury, Hyland is glad that he finally managed to deal with it, though it still isn't 100 percent. “It is time but you don't really get much time. I took a bit of time off in the pre-season but there is such a short break between club and county, it is hard to sort. It is niggly. It is not bad enough to stop playing, it is there. That is the way it is.”
He agreed that the Tailteann Cup can be won by Offaly but stressed: “The thing is Down are still in this competition. We could meet Laois again, they beat us by ten points the last day, but we want to go as far as we can in this competition. To keep putting in performances and the work rate. The work rate is the big thing and wherever that takes us. . . . Hopefully all the way. We want to win this competition but we know there are good teams in it. We will have to up it and keep upping it.”
Hyland's confidence is obvious to all supporters as he is not only willing to take on audacious shots but is converting a high percentage of them. “No, I'm not afraid to take them on but they were going over today, lucky enough. When the first few go over, you always get a bit more confident to go for them. You have to be confident, you have to be. If you don't shoot, you don't score, it is as simple as that.”