Offaly seek return to hurling"s top flight

KEVIN EGAN argues that achieving promotion by winning Sunday"s NHL Division 2 final against Wexford is of vital importance to Offaly, so that they can really compete with the leading hurling counties in the coming years. If we cast our minds all the way back to 2008 and remember Leinster in its original form when it didn"t contain counties like Antrim and Galway, one would recall that it was a relatively straightforward province to assess in a hurling sense. Kilkenny were the best team and every other county were essentially nowhere. Certain interlopers from the west may have changed the goalposts a little this year, but hurling followers in Offaly, Wexford and Dublin will each be keen to establish their own place as high up the pecking order as possible, albeit despite the additional hurdle that has been placed between them and a highly sought after provincial title. There have been several instances over the past decade when people have suggested that Dublin were all set to overtake Offaly and Wexford in the Leinster hurling hierarchy, but, in the absence of an all important championship win over either of these counties, the Dubs couldn"t really claim any such standing and many would argue that they still can"t. Let"s be clear about one thing - if Dublin go the whole way through the 2009 Leinster and All-Ireland Championship without registering a win over either Offaly or Wexford, it will almost certainly be because the counties never meet. With or without a championship success, Dublin are now a better team than either of Sunday"s division two final protagonists and this summer is very likely to reveal quite how far the men from the capital have come under the guidance of Anthony Daly. Equally, the fear is that it will also show how much both Wexford and Offaly have regressed due to playing uncompetitive and unattractive hurling in Division Two. The fixture list in this year"s NHL was very kind to Dublin as they got the perfect fixture to open their campaign - an away tie against Cork, while the big name players were still in dispute. Logic will have told them that the win was of little merit since their opponents were very weak, however it was still a win in Páirc Uí Chaoimh against the blood and bandages, a hugely morale boosting result which inspired Dublin"s best league campaign in living memory. Now think of week one in division two and what Offaly and Wexford were doing at the same time. Offaly were scheduled to play against Carlow at home, with Carlow yet again in the midst of civil unrest with players declining to take part and others not putting in the necessary commitment, while Wexford travelled to Kerry to take on one good hurler and fourteen very average ones. Joe Dooley has said that this Sunday"s game 'will be good preparation for the championship', but it"s safe to assume that the Clareen man knows that this game is about much, much more than that. The perils of division two hurling were starkly illustrated to Offaly in 2005 when Kilkenny shattered countless records with their 31-point mauling of the Faithful County in Croke Park, and Wexford bagging five goals in Wexford Park some weeks ago will have sent a shiver down the spine of any Offaly supporter with a memory of that fateful day four years ago. Put simply, hurling is all about executing the core skills of the game at a high tempo and in the face of constant pressure from tough and physical opponents. It is only by hurling the best teams that one can learn to execute those skills in that fashion, while hurling weaker teams inevitably leads to slack habits being formed, habits which get found out in no uncertain terms in the summer. Offaly and Wexford will have the benefit of hurling each other first this year and that should mask the problem to a certain degree, but with a Leinster title looking farther away than ever for either team, Sunday"s game could very easily be argued to be of immense importance, much more so than any championship game that either side is likely to play next year. Hurling remains an amateur game and the idea of a 'CEO' of hurling in any county is, as yet, fanciful. However any CEO who came in with a view towards developing Offaly hurling in the long term would not be long in prioritising goals, and promotion would certainly rank considerably higher than a Leinster quarter-final success. A win on Sunday would lead to a huge bounce in team confidence, the prospect of three or four well attended and keenly contested games in O"Connor Park next Spring, the increased visibility and prominence of hurling to younger people within the county and a proper setting in which to prepare for the 2010 Championship. A defeat on Sunday would consign Offaly to a second consecutive year of coasting through games in the spring at 50% intensity, a second consecutive year of inadequate preparation and an increasing disconnect between the team and the supporters who would lose interest in travelling to watch uncompetitive fixtures. Losing to Wexford in the championship would also be a setback, but the existence of the qualifiers and the removal of the looming spectre of meeting Kilkenny in the later rounds would sweeten the pill immeasurably. Of course the goal has to be to compete with and ultimately to overtake Kilkenny, but that"s not something that will be achieved in 2009 regardless, and neither will it happen even in the longer term without this young Offaly team learning their trade against the best players in the game. Looking at Sunday"s game, speculation exists that both David Kenny and David Franks have resumed training and both men look likely to play a part in Sunday"s tie. If this turns out to be the case, Joe Dooley will once again have a full-back line in place that he can depend on and a repeat of the horror show in Wexford Park of last month is likely to be avoided. The forward unit has been erratic so far this year with no single player stepping up and proving their worth on a weekly basis, but the players will know that this game will be of critical importance for the county and also that it will be the main form guide when the championship team is being selected, so there is plenty of basis for presuming that there should be an increased level of intensity on display this Sunday. With the division one decider also on the card, hurling aficionados are set for an excellent day of entertainment. However for those who crave a return to the glory days for Offaly, this is about a lot more than entertainment - this is a vital milestone. All that remains to be seen is what direction we are all heading.