This Offaly team aren't finished yet - Leo O'Connor

By Shane Brophy

Leo O’Connor joined Eamon Cregan in becoming an honorary Offaly man after guiding the Faithful county to the only major All-Ireland title that had eluded them in hurling or football, the under 20 hurling title.

The Limerick native, who resides in Newport, has been central to the revival of Offaly through this team in the underage ranks and said his approach isn’t too difficult.

“Just get the basics right, that’s the first thing. First touch, hooking, blocking,” he revealed.

“It’s down to the pace you play after that and make sure that they’re physically strong enough. You see how they developed tonight over the last twelve months.

“And they’re not finished yet. There’s 10 of that team, 11 of the team that finished up on the field, underage again next year. There’s no doubt that’s an opportunity.

“We set our goal at the start of the year that we’d go out and defend our Leinster championship. Now we’ve to come back and defend an All-Ireland championship. That’s the standard. You just can’t stop and we keep moving on with it.”

O’Connor brought a lot of the experience from being part of the Limerick underage revolution with Offaly following a similar path.

“To be very realistic about it, I think it’s going to take three to four years before these guys are at their full strength,” he revealed.

“They all have to develop and that’s the most important thing.

“I worked with Limerick for 10, 11 years and I know what it takes. I remember 2008, 2009 with development squads in Limerick and it took ten years to get back up. We won a Munster championship with Limerick in 2011 with Declan Hannon and all those lads. It took until 2018 for them to really mature. Fair enough, Limerick won a Munster senior hurling championship in 2013 but, as I said during the week, 2013 Limerick were beaten in an All-Ireland semi-final, 2014 beaten in an All-Ireland minor final, and it took time for the thing to come through.

“That’s what’s going to happen in Offaly. There’s guys ahead of this team that were involved last year. They’re there and we’re going to work hard on them again. It’s a matter of development, development, development, and I can’t emphasise it enough. No one swallow made a summer so it’s a work in progress.”

The experience and hurt of losing the minor and under 20 finals of the last two years served them well, fuelling the fire, as well as adding certain aspects in which they fell short.

“It’s the learnings we got in 2022 and 2023, they were really vital and it’s so important that we them took on board,” O’Connor added.

“You don’t want to look back on the All-Ireland last year, it’s water under the bridge, but we did analyse it.

“Tony Gleeson came in with us this year as well, added a different element from a tactical point of view. No one is perfect. We are all learning. And it is a matter of collaborating the whole thing together.

“Hughie Hannon is there as coach and has worked extremely with these guys over the last three years. Johnny Pilkington, the experience that Johnny has built up over the last couple of years, like has you cannot buy that.

“I have my own experience with Limerick, I lost 30 years ago this year, I was beaten in an All-Ireland final by Offaly. So from my point of view it’s a case of taking the learnings and experiences that you had over your lifetime and bring them all together and we borough them all together and they bore fruition.”