By Kevin Egan

Of all the teams lining out this weekend in football and hurling, none will be as universally expected to deliver a victory as the Offaly hurlers.

The relegation to Christy Ring Cup hurling at the end of the 2019 Joe McDonagh Cup was seen as something of a shock, but their defeat to Down on penalties in the semi-final of the 2020 Christy Ring competition, even if it was played in Newry, was arguably the biggest surprise of the hurling year.

Now, in 2021, the Faithful County have finally clicked under manager Michael Fennelly, winning seven games out of seven in league and championship. All bar one of those win - their trip to Netwatch Cullen Park in the league - has come by a double figure margin.

Derry have hit a good run of form themselves after stumbling through the opening rounds of the league, but they will travel to Croke Park for a Sunday lunchtime throw in with everyone expecting them to struggle to compete with their Leinster opponents. Handling that mental challenge will be crucial to Offaly’s chances, and their captain Ben Conneely explained to GAA.ie the way they’ll approach this contest, and how they’ve taken on every competitive game so far this year.

“After last year, with the way things worked out, going into games we’ve had to really focus on who the team is but what the team can do. Respect where they are, respect the level they are at, respect the players they have. That’s one thing we’ve done this year because every team we’ve played is more or less a completely different team than what we have played last year.

“We've seen it with Clare there this year, who went on to show what a good team they are in the championship but lost to Antrim in the first round of the league. Clare probably thought Antrim are only after coming up from Division Two and Antrim showed them what they are really about. You just have to focus on what the team can do and what they can bring to a game”.

On paper, it looks like Offaly have stepped up to a new level in 2021. Teams like Kerry, Meath and Down that either beat them, or almost did, in 2020, have found the going much tougher up against the newly crowned Division Two champions. Conneely feels that was just a question of getting more time to develop under their new management team.

“It’s another six months that we have had with the management. When they came in we had to identify a style of play to suit the team. Since I’ve been on the panel we’ve never had any idea of who we were. Now, from the defeat to Down, we’ve had six months of working on things. Obviously we weren’t able to go to the field, but with all the zoom calls and knowing from the previous year what we had to work on, we could just bring that straight away to training,” he said.

As the rebuilding goes on in Offaly hurling and in Offaly GAA generally, Conneely is acutely aware of the importance of making every step along the way, including victory on Sunday and the reward of progression up to the Joe McDonagh Cup. Some of this responsibility comes from his role as captain, more from growing up as the son of an All-Ireland medallist with Offaly in 1994.

Unlike Joe Dooley and Michael Duignan, whose sons Shane and Brian will tog out in Croke Park as well, the name Micheál Conneely is not hugely well-known outside the Faithful County. But within Offaly, Micheál is remembered fondly, particularly around the St. Rynagh’s club. An immensely talented and powerful hurler who invariably togged out along the spine of club and county teams, Conneely (senior) won four county senior medals with the club at a time when the local championship in Offaly was once of the most fiercely contested in the country. Yet he never quite brought that talent to the intercounty stage on a consistent basis, save possibly for the high point of his Offaly career, lining out at midfield for the 1994 team that dethroned a Kilkenny team that was chasing three All-Ireland titles in a row in the Leinster semi-final.

Ben arrived too late to see his father in his pomp, and never felt pressure to follow in Micheál’s footsteps either.

“I think he retired from the club maybe a year after I was born” Ben recalled.

“I don’t have any recollection of him playing and I don’t think I have video of him hurling. Never seen any clips of him, not that I can remember. I’ve heard a few stories that have been told by different people with him at matches and around.

“When it came to hurling, you never felt you had to do it in our house. I was skateboarding when I was younger, I didn’t have much love of the hurling. When I hurt my ankle skateboarding, I said jeez it’s time to go back to the hurling, it’s easier now!

“For both myself and Garry (his brother, current St. Rynagh’s player) Dad let us go about our own business when it came to the hurling. He might give us a few pointers, especially back at minor when hurling was a lot simpler and when you could hold positions. I played centre back a bit underage and he used to play centre back so he would tell me one or two things.

“He never wanted to impose his ideas, he let us go about our own thing. He was very supportive after games. Just told the stories more than anything about his hurling times.

“From what I was told he was a brilliant hurler, there was a lot of hurling in him. He said himself when he got with Offaly it was a bit too much of a commitment for him, he was with Banagher Concrete and in the Fire Brigade as well. He had two jobs so trying to balance it all was hard, particularly with a very young family".

The arrival of a daughter of his own during lockdown means that Ben too knows what it’s like to have to balance different responsibilities. But so far, he has found his own way, and that seems to be working out just fine.