Offaly county football team

The Offaly county football team represents Offaly in men's Gaelic football and is governed by Offaly GAA, the county board of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The team competes in the three major annual inter-county competitions; the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, the Leinster Senior Football Championship and the National Football League.

Offaly

Sport:	Football
Irish:	Uíbh Fhailí
Nickname(s):	The Faithful County
County board:	Offaly GAA
Manager:	Declan Kelly and Mickey Harte
Captain:	Lee Pearson[1]
Home venue(s):	O'Connor Park, Tullamore
Recent competitive record
Current All-Ireland status:	Leinster (QF) in 2025
Last championship title:	1982
Current NFL Division:	3 (2nd in 2025; promoted to Division 2)
Last league title:	1998
First colours Second colours

Offaly's home ground is O'Connor Park, Tullamore. The team's managers are Declan Kelly and Mickey Harte.

The team last won the Leinster Senior Championship in 1997, the All-Ireland Senior Championship in 1982 and the National League in 1998.

History

Perhaps the most famous moment in football history came in the 1982 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship final when Offaly played Kerry. The match was a repeat of the previous year's final; however, not only that but a win for Kerry would give them an unprecedented fifth consecutive All-Ireland SFC title. Kerry were winning by two points with two minutes to go when Séamus Darby came on as a substitute and scored one of the most famous goals of all time in football.^[2] Kerry fumbled the counterattack which allowed Offaly to win by one single point with a score of 1–15 to 0–17.

Offaly manager Liam Kearns died suddenly in the middle of the 2023 National League campaign.^[3] Ahead of the first league game since his death (against Tipperary, another team that Kearns had managed) a moment of silence took place, with Offaly winning the game.^[4][5]

The Offaly vocational schools' team have made it to six All-Ireland finals but lost all six, including the first final when they were beaten by the Cork City team in 1961.

Support

Professional golfer Shane Lowry said in 2021: "But any time I get the chance to go to O'Connor Park and watch Offaly play, I do and I am the first to give out if they lose and I am sitting in the stand."^[6]

Panel

Team as per Offaly vs Longford in the NFL Division 3 Round 5, 5 March 2023

No. Player Position Club 1 Paddy Duncan Goalkeeper Shamrocks 2 Lee Pearson (c) Right corner-back Edenderry 23 Kyle Higgins Full-back Ferbane 4 Rory Egan Left corner-back Edenderry 5 Aidan Bracken Right half-back Ballycommon 6 Jordan Hayes Centre-back Edenderry 7 Cormac Egan Left half-back Tullamore 8 Jack McEvoy Midfield Clonbullogue 9 Cillian Bourke Midfield Tullamore 10 John Furlong Right half-forward Tullamore 11 Cathal Flynn Centre-forward Tullamore 12 Keith O'Neill Left half-forward Clonbullogue 13 Dylan Hyland Right corner-forward Raheen 14 Jack Bryant Full-forward Shamrocks 15 Shane Tierney Left corner-forward Daingean

No. Player Position Club 16 Sean O'Toole Goalkeeper Shamrocks 17 Shane O'Toole Greene Substitute Shamrocks 18 Marcus Dalaton Substitute Clara 19 Cathal Donoghue Substitute Oughterard (Galway)[7] 20 Nigel DunneRET Substitute Shamrocks 21 Diarmuid Finneran Substitute Ballinagar 22 Robbie Gallagher Substitute Ballinagar 3 Aaron Kellaghan Substitute Rhode 24 Daire McDaid Substitute Tullamore 25 Kevin McDermott Substitute Durrow 26 Eoin Sawyer Substitute Castleknock (Dublin)[8]

^INJ Player has had an injury which has affected recent involvement with the county team.
^RET Player has since retired from the county team.
^WD Player has since withdrawn from the county team due to a non-injury issue.

Management team

• Manager: Mickey Harte
• Selectors: Martin Murphy,^[9][10] John Rouse^{[11][needs update?]}
• Coach: Alan Flynn^{[12][needs update?]}
• Backroom: Brendan Egan, Paul Fitzgerald^{[13][needs update?]}
• Strength and conditioning coach: Keith Carr^{[14][needs update?]}

Managerial history

Offaly have a history of appointing "foreign" managers, doing so on several occasions since taking Eugene McGee from Longford in late 1976. Emmet McDonnell became the tenth foreigner to manage the team when he was appointed in 2012. Only Tommy Lyons was a successful appointment though; Lyons led Offaly to the 1997 Leinster SFC (a first in 15 years) and then to a first National Football League Division 1 title the following year.^[15] According to Colm Keys, writing in the Irish Independent after the Offaly County Board sacked Stephen Wallace in May 2018: "In the quest for perfection, Offaly have repeatedly left themselves in a right old mess when it has come to choosing and retaining managers... No county has experienced such managerial upheaval as Offaly since the turn of the century".^[16]

Key

*	Interim manager

Dates	Name	Origin	Honours
1969	Tom Scully	Aharney? Tullamore?	1969 Leinster Senior Football Championship
1970	Alo Kelly	?	—
1970–197?	Alo Kelly & Tom Gilhooley	?	—
1976–1984	Eugene McGee		1980 Leinster Senior Football Championship, 1981 Leinster Senior Football Championship, 1982 Leinster Senior Football Championship, 1982 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship
1984–1986	John Courtney		—
1986–1987	Greg Hughes	?	—
1988–1989	Michael McBrierty		—
1989–1990	Jody Gunning	?	—
1990–1992[17]	Brendan Hackett		—
1992–1993	Pat Fitzgerald	?	—
1994–1994	Eugene Mulligan, Eamon Mulhall & Kevin Gavin	?	—
1996–1999[additional citation(s) needed][18]	Tommy Lyons		1997 Leinster Senior Football Championship, 1997–98 National Football League
1999–2002[19][20]	Pádraig Nolan		—
2002–2003[21][22]	Paul O'Kelly	Edenderry	—
2003–2004[23][24]	Gerry Fahy		—
2004–2006[25][26]	Kevin Kilmurray	Daingean	—
2006–2008[27][28][29]	Pat Roe		—
2008–2009[30][31]	Richie Connor	Walsh Island	—
2009[32]	Tom Coffey, Vinny Claffey & Phil O'Reilly	?	—
2009–2011[33][34]	Tom Cribbin		—
2011–2012[35][36][37][38]	Gerry Cooney	Meath? Or Tullamore?	—
2012[39]	Tom Coffey* (2)	?	—
2012–2014[40][41][42][43]	Emmet McDonnell		—
2014–2017[44][45][46][47][48]	Pat Flanagan	Clara?	2015 NFL Division 4
2017–2018[49][50][51]	Stephen Wallace		—
2018[52][53]	Paul Rouse*	?	—
2018–2022[54][55][56][57]	John Maughan		—
2022–2023[58][59]	Liam Kearns		—
2023[60][61]	Martin Murphy*	Gracefield	—
2023–[61]	Declan Kelly	?
2024–[62]	Mickey Harte

Players

For individual player details, see list of Offaly inter-county footballers.

Records

• Tony McTague is the team's top scorer in National Football League history, finishing his career with 9–360 (387) in that competition.^[63]
• Cillian O'Connor of Mayo became the highest scoring player in the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, surpassing the record of Kerry's Colm Cooper, a feat O'Connor achieved against Kerry during a defeat in Killarney in 2019.^[64] He had done this by scoring in all of his previous 51 previous championship matches prior to the record breaking match, except for one game against London in 2013 when he had been black carded, a rate of scoring in the competition only previously seen from Offaly's Matt Connor.^[65]

Most appearances

• The following are among those to have made the highest number of appearances for the senior team:

#	Name	Career	Apps
1	Martin Furlong	1966-1985	176[66]
2	Niall McNamee	2003–2022	163[67]
3	Ciaran McManus	1995-2011	160[68]
4	Vinny Claffey	1986-2003	132[69]
5	Anton Sullivan	2010-2024	128[70]

All Stars

Colours and crest

Kit evolution

Before the beginning of the 2024 season Offaly revealed a new home jersey, which featured a crew neck with ribbing and the inscription Eslo Fidelis (Latin for "Be Faithful") on its lower back.^[71]

Team sponsorship

The food company Carroll's of Tullamore has sponsored Offaly since the GAA first permitted shirt sponsorship deals in 1991. It is thus the sport's longest running shirt sponsor.^[72]

Professional golfer Shane Lowry and Offaly announced a five-year partnership in April 2021.^[73][74]

Period	Kit manufacturer	Shirt sponsor
1991–		Carroll's of Tullamore

Honours

National

• All-Ireland Senior Football Championship
  • Winners (3): 1971, 1972, 1982
  • Runners-up (3): 1961, 1969, 1981
• National Football League
  • Winners (1): 1997–98
  • Runners-up (2): 1968–69, 1972–73
• National Football League Division 3
  • Winners (1): 2025
• National Football League Division 4
  • Winners (1): 2015^[75]
• All-Ireland Under-21 Football Championship
  • Winners (1): 1988
  • Runners-up (2): 1968, 1986
• All-Ireland Under-20 Football Championship
  • Winners (1): 2021^[76]
• All-Ireland Minor Football Championship
  • Winners (1): 1964
  • Runners-up (1): 1989

Provincial

• Leinster Senior Football Championship
  • Winners (10): 1960, 1961, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1997
  • Runners-up (9): 1907, 1945, 1954, 1962, 1967, 1970, 1979, 1983, 2006
• O'Byrne Cup
  • Winners (6): 1954, 1961, 1981, 1993, 1997, 1998
• Leinster Junior Football Championship
  • Winners (4): 1935, 1972, 1998, 2001
• Leinster Under-21 Football Championship
  • Winners (8): 1968, 1971, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1986, 1988, 1995
  • Runners-up (7): 1964, 1965, 1970, 1972, 1978, 2007, 2017^[77]
• Leinster Under-20 Football Championship
  • Winners (1): 2021^[78]
• Leinster Minor Football Championship
  • Winners (7): 1947, 1960, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1989, 2025
  • Runners-up (13): 1948, 1957, 1959, 1961, 1966, 1976, 1985, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2020^[79]