Pat Flanagan says he will not be making excuses if his Offaly side come up short in next season.

The Faithful County have been hit by a player exodus over the past few seasons which has seen Ross Brady, Sean Pender and Richie Dalton all walk away from the panel, while Michael Brazil and David Hanlon have also confirmed that they will not be available for the 2015 season.

Star forward Niall McNamee has also hit out over the lack of facilities in the county, but Flanagan is keen on putting an end to the excuses as he prepares to lead his native county into a new era.

"The bottom line is that when things are not going well everything can become an excuse. When things are going well you probably wouldn't hear anything about training facilities," Flanagan told the Irish Independent.

"We need to knuckle down as a unit, I'm talking about players, supporters, the whole lot. What we have has huge potential and we need to use them to get ourselves to a better position. The time for making excuses is gone because basically all it is doing is hiding behind a wall."

As for the players not making themselves available for the county, Flanagan believes that the supporters are the ones losing out.

"My point to those guys is that we need fellas who want to play for Offaly," he said.

"The guys that didn't come back I suppose you would hope they would have changed their mind but they didn't. Offaly supporters would have wanted to see all of those guys back in but we have to work with what we have."

Tweet

Most Read Stories