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4th June 2000,
When offaly Knocked the Leinster and all Ireland Champions out of the championship.
on the score line of offaly 0-11 meath 0-7
i was a young 11 year old sitting in the back on the cusack stand.

this day will live with me forever!

Ubih fhaili abu

i hope we see offaly having wins like this in the next few years! we really need some wins like that to boost offaly again. last weekends offaly and wexford match ,that day will live with me forever too but its for all the wrong reasons

That was one of the all time great days all right - all the more so after two horrific days against Meath in 1998 and 1999. Mad to think then that after one win we were only 8/1 shots to win the All Ireland from there - I was not long started in Paddy Powers at the time so was becoming a lot more aware of all these aspects!

We beat the previous years' AI Champions in Football and Hurling that year. Remember it well...

Two things that stood out for me was Vinny Claffey's 4 points and a sensational performance from Finbar Cullen, I was convinced after this victory that Offaly would have taken Leinster but of course the Lillies put paid to that

same year as the boys beat london! ruislip some spreeeeeee that day!

God Bless you Walshisland... you have along road to go!

any 1 have any idea what the offaly team in 2000 was?????

1 Padraig Kelly (Shamrocks)
2 James Brady (Gracefield)
3 Barry Malone (Rhode)
4 Cathal Daly (Tullamore)
5 David Foley (Ballyfore)
6 Sean Grennan (Ferbane)
7 Barry Mooney (Shamrocks)
8 James Grennan (Ferbane)
9 Ronan Mooney (Shamrocks)
10 Colm Quinn (Ballycumber)
11 Mel Keenaghan (Ferbane)
12 Finbar Cullen (Edenderry)
13 Cillian Farrell (Edenderry)
14 Roy Malone (Rhode)
15 Vinny Claffey (Doon)
Sub 1 Karol Slattery (Gracefield)
Sub 2 Pascal Kellaghan (Rhode)
Sub 3 Bernard O'Brien (Ballinamere)
Sub 4 Donie Ryan (Doon)

All championship team line-ups are stored on uibhfhaili.com, just go into the result searcher on the home page.

that was a great team...

It does illustrate the some of the issues that are in the county right now though.

In my own opinion, there are at the very least ten names on that team sheet that were the kind of guys who were automatic selections - the only question was where would they play. 95% of people in the county would have named them on their theoretical Offaly fifteen of the time.

Now, how many do we have in that category - three, four maybe?

There's three or four guys on that 2000 team who would have been automatic selections for any county in Ireland, not just us.

Lone Shark wrote:There's three or four guys on that 2000 team who would have been automatic selections for any county in Ireland, not just us.

Padraig Kelly, Cathal Daly, Finbar Cullen and Jim Grennan spring to mind.

Yes it was a tremendous performance that day. Great effort from the players from the minute the ball was thrown in.

Management had a game plan and they carried it out to perfection. Finbarr playing at wing forward coming back sweeping up all the breaks. The defense went man for man and concentrated on the basics, getting in a hand to break the ball and sweeping them up.

Barry Mooney was given the job of marshalling Trevor Giles. He followed him everywhere and with that cut off Meaths best supply line. I thought he was outstanding that day. The work rate of the team in general was a joy to watch. And our jerseys of course. Great day. A long way from what our current "stars" are at.

That was the day Meath modelled their own new jersey, sporting extra-short sleeves. This must have been a request from Giles as up to this point he had been rolling up (or cutting) his short sleeves to give the jersey more of a guernsey look as in Aussie Rules. To the best of my memory, this is the one and only day that Meath ever worse this jersey.
A great day though it must be said, possibly Offaly footballers last truly great performance in Croke Park, or am I going too far with that remark?

High School Musical wrote:That was the day Meath modelled their own new jersey, sporting extra-short sleeves. This must have been a request from Giles as up to this point he had been rolling up (or cutting) his short sleeves to give the jersey more of a guernsey look as in Aussie Rules. To the best of my memory, this is the one and only day that Meath ever worse this jersey.
A great day though it must be said, possibly Offaly footballers last truly great performance in Croke Park, or am I going too far with that remark?

Not going too far. I seem to remember the score being 9 points to 7 or 8 with Meath in the lead. Then came point after point as we tied it and then crawled into the lead. We must have won every single dirty ball for the last 10 minutes. Meath men were sprawled all over thew place. Classy ball movement, great scores, 'matter of life and death' tackling. More couldn't be asked. It was a proud day.