Eleven Of Offaly's All-Ireland Winning U-20 Squad Earn Senior Call Up

That's not to say they will all make the field.

Eleven of Offaly's U-20 All-Ireland winners will be part of the extended senior panel this season. 

Sean O'Toole, Aaron Brazil, Lee Pearson, Kieran Dolan, Morgan Tynan, Cathal Flynn, Cormac Egan and John Furlong have all earned the call.

They join Jack Bryant, Cathal Donoghue and Rory Egan, who trained with the team last season but didn't feature. 

The news come just days out from the faithful's opening O'Byrne Cup fixture with Dublin this Saturday. All will have been part of John Maughan's plans since the inter-county squad reconvened at the start of last month for training. 

Most will have a lot of strengthening up to do to stand up to the rigors of senior football and with a few also still eligible for the U-20 sphere again this year, you'd expect that their inclusion is to give them a head start on the conditioning side of things and potentially to lean on the input of some of the coaching staff. 

The close relationship between Maughan and Declan Kelly is well known and the latter will have given his blessing for some of the younger participants to make the step up in class. 

Cormac Egan, Jack Bryant, Cathal Donoghue and Rory Egan are the obvious choices for game-time, having been around the setup last season and arguably being further along the line development wise. That being said Sean O'Toole will probably get a look in between the pipes at some stage in the pre-season. 

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