Diarmuid O’Flynn
IT was only a couple of weeks ago that Offaly senior hurling manager Joe Dooley wrote a letter to the secretary of the county board, a letter copied to the secretary of every club in the county, complaining of the treatment of his players and management team at the county ground, O’Connor Park in Tullamore.
During the course of Joe’s tenure it appears there had been several incidents at the superb Tullamore venue, culminating, according to his letter, in a lockout just weeks before Offaly were due to meet Cork in a critical winner-take-all All-Ireland qualifier.
In reply to that letter (and only after its existence and contents had been revealed in this newspaper), the county board issued the following statement: “Offaly GAA Management Committee met tonight and have decided they will issue a full and frank response in relation to the issues currently in the public domain regarding Offaly Senior Hurlers when and only when we complete our current Liam McCarthy Cup Campaign.”
It was a statement which, in its tone, baffled and angered many inside the county, not least Joe Dooley himself, a man not given easily to anger.
Last Saturday evening, against Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and despite being seriously injury-depleted, Offaly came within a point of the raging-hot favourites, with much controversy at the end over the decision to play just one minute of injury-time.
Yesterday, Joe Dooley announced that he was walking away from the job. Linked, all the above? I would have said yes, absolutely.
In an interview with yesterday’s Irish Examiner Dooley reckons that four years at the helm is enough, explains that a) as ESB Property Manager he has a very busy full-time job, involving nationwide travel, and b) it’s time for a new voice. He also states that the series of incidents in O’Connor Park, while they didn’t help, weren’t the decisive factor in his decision – “you’d overcome those problems, just keep going – we did for the last three years,” he explained.
So that’s that then, right? The ‘goings-on’ in O’Connor Park were just a minor irritation, no harm done – move on.
The thing is, I can’t accept that at all. I don’t doubt Joe Dooley’s resignation statements for a moment but there WAS damage done to Offaly hurling by what happened over the years in O’Connor Park, there was damage done by that utterly inadequate response by the county board to Joe Dooley’s letter.
To be truly competitive at either hurling or football, a county such as Offaly needs to maximise its resources. In both codes they have fewer numbers than many of the bigger and more successful counties, but time and again Kilkenny have shown us all – if you organise yourself properly, if everyone is pulling together, then lack of numbers is a problem that can be overcome.
Patently, and the incidents with their senior team are just one example (look at the performance in recent years of their minor and U21 teams), Offaly is not organised properly, everyone in Offaly is not pulling together.
In Joe Dooley Offaly hurling had a man of the utmost integrity, a professional man, a forward-thinking man, a man of proven ability. On the field he won three All-Ireland medals but that alone proves nothing; on the field Joe was one of those players who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time and who then – more often than not – made the right decisions.
Why? Lucky, accidental, incidental? No; it was because Joe was one of those cerebral players, a guy who read the play even as it developed, who reacted accordingly, who then got himself into the right position. Hurling intelligence I call it, just as you can have rugby intelligence, soccer intelligence, the guy who is constantly alert, who anticipates, who reads what an opponent is going to do often before the opponent himself even knows he’s going to do it, and moves, all done before the slower player has even begun to engage first gear.
Dooley had that quality, his brothers Johnny and Billy likewise. His son Shane has inherited it also.
A guy with that kind of ability should be treasured by his people, and when he takes over his own county team, as Joe Dooley did four years ago, he should be given every assistance, every co-operation.
Working from poor underage structures, working off a small player base, working off a player base that was massively reduced this year especially with an injury-list that stretched almost into double-figures, Joe still managed to get two outstanding championship performances from his side, against Dublin and Cork, two top-rated teams.
I can’t help thinking though that even as he takes this step, even as he makes this latest move, he’s again looking down the field and reading the play, reading the opposition.
It’s a sad day for hurling, on so many levels, but saddest of all? That opposition is coming from his own.
In GAA circles Offaly is known as the Faithful County – in the last few weeks, in the way they left a good man hanging out to dry, the county board didn’t do much justice to that particular sobriquet, did they?
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/VFs81Y0afQk/post.aspx
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