The right half-back in Offaly's first Leinster senior football triumph was Tullamore's Phil O'Reilly. O'Reilly, who also became a funeral director and civic volunteer in his home town, died on August 30, 2026, at 92.

That provincial breakthrough came in 1960. Offaly GAA lists it as the first of the county's ten Leinster senior football titles. Offaly retained the championship in 1961 and advanced to its first All-Ireland senior final. With O'Reilly again at right half-back, the county lost to Down by a point before 90,556 people at Croke Park, then a record attendance. Across his inter-county career, he made nearly 60 competitive senior appearances between 1956 and 1964, according to HoganStand.

The county milestones grew from a long club apprenticeship. O'Reilly collected a minor hurling medal with Tullamore in 1950 and minor medals in both football and hurling the following year. He helped the club claim its first intermediate football title in 1953, then won senior county medals in 1954, 1956 and 1963. The first of those senior teams became the first to lift the Dowling Cup. In its tribute, Tullamore GAA called him a "fantastic player, mentor and supporter of all things Tullamore and Offaly GAA."

Harbour Street was the fixed point in O'Reilly's life away from the field. Born in 1933, he grew up there and attended St Joseph's National School and St Columba's CBS in Tullamore before studying at Belcamp College in Dublin. His first job was with P. & H. Egan. The Offaly Independent reported that he later ran newsagent and gift shops at Harbour Street and Arden Road.

In 1970, O'Reilly purchased an existing undertaking concern on Harbour Street. O'Reilly Funeral Services says the site had another family history: his father had run a bicycle shop there from 1932. O'Reilly later established one of the first funeral homes in the Midlands. Phil O'Reilly Jnr eventually took charge, continuing the service from the same street.

His community work crossed sport, business and faith. He served as an official driver for the Offaly teams that won the All-Ireland championship in 1971 and 1972. For decades he was a key organizer of the annual Meath Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes and a driving force behind the Lourdes Invalid Fund. Tullamore Chamber of Commerce recognized that broad civic record with a lifetime achievement award in 2019.

His family included his wife, Céline, and their four children, Monica, Fiona, Phil Jnr and Frankie. RIP.ie also named ten grandchildren and two great-granddaughters. They were the closest circle within the wider club, county, business and pilgrimage communities that shared his long life in Tullamore.

Across Tullamore, the evidence of O'Reilly's long service remains unusually concrete: the club history carries his three county medals; Offaly's record book begins its Leinster roll with the teams he helped anchor; and the Harbour Street funeral business continues under his son's direction. Those institutions, along with the pilgrimage work he organized for decades, preserve the scale and range of what he gave his town.