Offaly Senior Football 2026

[frankthetank]

How many shite performances have the footballers put in the last dozen years? A heap.

A waste of money. Period.

[Superhans75]

Something has been amiss since the start of the year
Injuries yes
But something bigger I can't put my finger on it
The management are killing time to get there money and get out .
The extra bit of money from a certain pateron has seemed to bought out all the snake oil salesmen who can't believe there luck .
I think the county board is very poor
They need to sought this out or go themselves.
Or division 4 and Mcdonagh cup games are the counties future
Hopefully the U20s on Wednesday bring
Some cheer

[Offy]

If you know, you know

[del]

No excuses. Playing Diarmuid Egan centre back and Daire mc daid wing forward. Poor aidan. Bracken after no ball it’s not fair on good players
Like surely .. the mgt will walk. Not likely tho

[Barnet]

Very poor offaly support at it today, was just on a social media site there is an awful lot of hatred towards the management on it. A little bit harsh.

[Bord na Mona man]

It's the performance I hoped wouldn't happen, but unfortunately I'm not surprised by it.
Many things looked off in the league. In a team that's with the right spirit in the dressing room and on the same page as management, they can be fixed. Clearly not the case in Offaly.

The defence looked in huge trouble at times. Ball watching, slow reactions. Players switching off and allowing Leix forwards steal several yards before any response. The margin could have been far worse. A more clinical opposition would have gone to town.

At the other end, Offaly had plenty of possession, but too many single man drives ending up in a square pass, or a turnover. There was little clever inter play.
Either advance attacking play wasn't worked on in training - or it was and the players ignored the advice - or else the players have become very poor players in 2026?

Worryingly, some of the normally quicker Offaly players looked dead-legged and lethargic. Take pace out of a team already small in height and that spells trouble.

Right now my feeling is that it's a pity Offaly have to limp onwards into the TC. This would have been an appropriate time to sign off with a management set up that had a productive 2025, but has now reached the end of the road

[Wingbackassassin]

Didn't get to go this evening but from listened to all on radio. It was very poor by all accounts

It was mentioned here in middle of league that Rory Egan is like a fish out of water as a half forward. Daire McDaid has rarely if ever played in forwards for county and ended up there in a championship senior game. Aidan Bracken who has not played for 6 months is thrown in to mark their best player and taken off at HT. That was all on management. Good to see Bryant back contesting for place but again, he was not played in maybe 2 months or more. Is it asking a lot of him, Bracken and Higgins to play today having missed so much time? It is certainly a big jump.

There will be people calling for managements heads no doubt. I don't think that is right.

How are you writing a novel on the game if you weren't at it and listened on the radio?
Leinster championship is essentially useless now. Laois and Offaly will be in Tailteann anyway. Thats Offalys championship. Seen teams go badly in Leinster before and still play well in the Tailteann.
If you can name who you'd start in the forwards from whats available that would do a better job go ahead.

[Barnet]

Didn't get to go this evening but from listened to all on radio. It was very poor by all accounts

It was mentioned here in middle of league that Rory Egan is like a fish out of water as a half forward. Daire McDaid has rarely if ever played in forwards for county and ended up there in a championship senior game. Aidan Bracken who has not played for 6 months is thrown in to mark their best player and taken off at HT. That was all on management. Good to see Bryant back contesting for place but again, he was not played in maybe 2 months or more. Is it asking a lot of him, Bracken and Higgins to play today having missed so much time? It is certainly a big jump.

There will be people calling for managements heads no doubt. I don't think that is right.

How are you writing a novel on the game if you weren't at it and listened on the radio?
Leinster championship is essentially useless now. Laois and Offaly will be in Tailteann anyway. Thats Offalys championship. Seen teams go badly in Leinster before and still play well in the Tailteann.
If you can name who you'd start in the forwards from whats available that would do a better job go ahead.

For starters harry plunket should be starting we all know that, the full back line wasn't looked at and got a roasting all day, we allowed them to much time on the ball, we didn't look fit, we had no game plan laois bring out the keeper we are scratching our heads. Laois had free men all over the field. If we had no plan A we definitely had no plan B. But anyone coming on asking who would you pick or who's available it's not about that no more, it's about. No game plan, no B plan. Forwards on the bench backs in the forwards, no fight, no instructions during the game. Players just seen out the year and management known they have lost the dressing room.

[Offalysupporter26]

Harte didn’t seem overly to disappointed judging by his interview with Colm Parkinson. Spent the whole time talking about the ref and not how bad offaly were against a weak laois side that will show later in the championship.
Hard to know where things go from here. The worrying issue I feel is it could take a new manager a year or two possibly to fix the mess these lads have made.
It’ll be interesting to see how many panelist players hang around now for the tailteann cup.

[Anon444]

Didn't get to go this evening but from listened to all on radio. It was very poor by all accounts

It was mentioned here in middle of league that Rory Egan is like a fish out of water as a half forward. Daire McDaid has rarely if ever played in forwards for county and ended up there in a championship senior game. Aidan Bracken who has not played for 6 months is thrown in to mark their best player and taken off at HT. That was all on management. Good to see Bryant back contesting for place but again, he was not played in maybe 2 months or more. Is it asking a lot of him, Bracken and Higgins to play today having missed so much time? It is certainly a big jump.

There will be people calling for managements heads no doubt. I don't think that is right.

How are you writing a novel on the game if you weren't at it and listened on the radio?
Leinster championship is essentially useless now. Laois and Offaly will be in Tailteann anyway. Thats Offalys championship. Seen teams go badly in Leinster before and still play well in the Tailteann.
If you can name who you'd start in the forwards from whats available that would do a better job go ahead.

I don’t agree with the sentiment of this. Dublin’s slight fall has made the Leinster championship desirable again. There is light at the end of the tunnel, where years gone by there was nothing. Not one person in Offaly expected to win Leinster or even make the semi, but the nature of the defeat will have huge knock on effects. I’ve been dumbfounded over the selection of the panel throughout the year (not going into who should or shouldn’t be there), but if you lose 3 players and your answer is to play two corner backs at wing forward, then move another corner back to wing forward in the second half, what are we actually doing? If I was any so-called forward on that squad, I’d be thinking I’m wasting my time. Players are going to be thinking that way too. It’s a huge pity, but I get the feeling we are sleepwalking into another disastrous TC campaign

[Payperview1]

Tailteann cup might as well be wrote off now as well. Both management and players know this management will not be there next year at this stage, so both will just want the year to be over. Any player thinking of going to America for the summer will not be hanging around just to fulfill the fixtures and even a new management would hardly change that at this stage.

[Bord na Mona man]

Harte didn’t seem overly to disappointed judging by his interview with Colm Parkinson. Spent the whole time talking about the ref and not how bad offaly were against a weak laois side that will show later in the championship.
Hard to know where things go from here. The worrying issue I feel is it could take a new manager a year or two possibly to fix the mess these lads have made.
It’ll be interesting to see how many panelist players hang around now for the tailteann cup.

I didn't hear the interview but there can be no complaints about the ref. Faloon has a high threshold for blowing for aggressive fouls and applied it to both teams.
This helped Offaly early in the 2nd half when there was a couple of challenges in the big square that almost every other ref would have awarded a penalty for.

[Barnet]

I am hearing Declan Kelly is stepping down at end of year and wants to manage offaly minor/under20 teams. Surely to god if it hasn't worked with these lads he shouldn't be giving an under age team, very important younger lads are coached right.. anyone hear anything about this?

[Lone Shark]

Very poor offaly support at it today, was just on a social media site there is an awful lot of hatred towards the management on it. A little bit harsh.

I don't think there could be any emotion even remotely close to "hatred" from any rational supporter, Mickey Harte hasn't worked out as we would have hoped and Declan Kelly has certainly burned some bridges, but just the same as he can't claim credit for successes in 2025 when we were freakishly lucky with health and then blame injuries for what happened in 2026, equally it's not right for his critics to expect him to own what has happened this year, or indeed in 2024, and not give him credit for what happened in 2021 and 2025.

What I think is fairly universal now at this stage is that it's time to move on, and 100%, I'd say these Offaly players would happily walk away from the Tailteann Cup, there's no recovering things at this stage.

Other comments on the thread here are that we didn't look fit, and that it'll take years to undo the damage of 2026. I'm at a game now and too lazy to do the proper quote thing, but on the fitness thing, I would say we look jaded and worn out rather than unfit, and a decent rest, as well as a freshening up of the panel and some of the long term injuries coming back in, with a decent management set up, and we'll be absolutely good to go. I fully believe that Luke Bree is an excellent coach and players will benefit from his work with them, and that we'll get promotion in 2027.

[private joker]

As far as I know he's director of football at development squad level and will almost certainly be over the minor football