Faith delivers one in eye of critics

Billed as Offaly's restless farewell, yet provider of another great comeback. Crazy how it all comes together in the end, and no one in this seasoned Offaly entourage attempts to hide the satisfaction of what it means to keep turning back the clock just when it appears that their time has run out. So you glance around the Offaly dressing-room for the man who has played the greatest role, and it's a question of taking your pick. Johnny Dooley was his ever-inspiring self, and straight away he talks about the faith.

"Well, we have this belief in ourselves, and that's the most important thing. The heart is still there and we always felt we could do it. But there's great character in the team and I suppose this is up there with the great days of Offaly in recent years.

"I mean Cork are the All-Ireland champions, and they are good All-Ireland champions. We have full respect for them but we weren't afraid of them. We knew we could do it if we all hurled today and we did all hurl today.

"Of course we were a bit lacklustre in the Leinster final and things weren't going that well for us. And you can't blame the media for writing us off because they were only going on current form. And on current form we didn't look like we'd even stay on the same field as Cork.

"But we had a serious meeting on Thursday night and made a promise to ourselves that we'd give it our best shot."

There were promises also to amend for last year, when Cork had gathered the breaks to greater effect. Ger Oakley is still catching his breath, but says a few words for the new generation.

"The thoughts of last year were definitely still fresh in our minds. That was one of the things that really pushed us today. It was deep down inside. I mean, we really wanted to beat Cork after the way it went last year."

And there's no harm in silencing a few critics along the way: "We had a few of them alright. But it was on the line there today. We were doing our talking all year and look where it got us. We had hardly put a good 20 minutes of hurling together. We said very few words before this and just wanted to let the hurling to the talking.

"And we were under real pressure in the last 10 or 15 minutes, but to see the backs pulling on balls in the air, that builds confidence."

Next to be ambushed is Johnny Pilkington and he, too, talks about attitude and spirit. "We kept fighting sure, but name any player in here right now and they all dug deep. Joe Deane gave Kevin (Kinahan) a good old match for it in the first half, but when you see him coming back out and catch a succession of balls like he did, that just lifts the team all over."

And so where do you go from here? "Upstairs to the Premium Bar. Well no, we're five weeks to an All-Ireland final and there's still a bitter feeling from the 1995 loss. But we'll have a new-found confidence for it and I imagine that training will be more enjoyable over the next few weeks. But it's great to win today and we'll just savour it for the moment."

Pat Fleury steps in and tries to keep the elation under wraps. A major victory but nothing is won just yet.

"Everybody in Offaly needed a good performance here and that's what we came here to do today. But it takes a lot of players to win a game and everybody played their hearts out today. It took everything we had and every ounce of energy we had, but we worked hard for the breaks and I think when they came we deserved them."

But how did it feel to be written off?

"I think that just helps to concentrate the players, because it does injure their pride. But I think every team wants to come in as underdogs and everybody wants to be written off and today was our turn to be complete outsiders. "But one major thing about this performance was the way it was sustained. We came in with a reasonably good performance against Kilkenny for maybe 30 minutes but we couldn't sustain it. But we're not going to get over-excited about it and go into the final in the wrong frame of mind. If that happens you come very quickly back down to earth. We have nothing won just yet."

Further down the hallway, Jimmy Barry-Murphy bids his farewell for the summer, but not without paying his gentlemanly respect to the victors:

"We always knew that Offaly were capable of a brilliant performance out of the blue. They did it against us last year and they've done it so often in the past. Of course we had our chances in the first half but we didn't take them, and I think our number of wides really were the killer in the end.

"But Offaly were on top in a lot of positions and fully deserved their victory. We got the breaks last year but they showed sheer commitment here today. But we prepared the team in exactly the same way as the Munster championship. The attitude was first class, but too many of our players didn't play to form on the day and you pay for that at this level.

"We probably lost the plot a bit in the second half, started going for goals too early. We started crowding a little too much, but in fairness we were chasing the game and never really looked like getting a goal. "But there's still a very young panel of players here and they'll certainly be back in Croke Park, I can guarantee you that."