A lot will depend on Offaly attitude towards Tipp clash

By Kevin Egan

There’s an element of symmetry about one Offaly senior team preparing to play a knockout championship match under something of a psychological cloud, hot on the heels of another Offaly senior team exiting their championship in exactly the same circumstances.

The Offaly senior hurlers will face Tipperary in an All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final tomorrow afternoon (Saturday) in Tullamore (4pm).

For many people, the very existence of this fixture is controversial. Even in the counties where there is a supposed benefit, there are mixed views on the value of getting back into the Liam MacCarthy Cup race, particularly when the price that is paid for that backdoor entry is that the Joe McDonagh Cup has to be run off at a breakneck speed.

In total, six fixtures have been played between the McDonagh Cup finalists and the third-placed teams in the provincial championships. Laois enjoyed a 1-22 to 0-23 win over Dublin in 2019, and that victory has been celebrated as the fairytale story that justifies the existing structure.

Outside of result, however, the story is bleak. Five games, all decided by a double-figure margin or more. Only once has the loser of the Joe McDonagh Cup played the third-placed team in Munster, and that yielded a 1-40 to 0-20 win for Cork over Westmeath four years ago.

In general, the side that loses the Joe McDonagh final is much more likely to struggle to rediscover any positive momentum in advance of this playoff, and when the opposition is Tipperary – a side that is scoring incredibly heavily and tends to play at full speed against counties not quite at their level – there is every reason to be wary of the value of this game, and the potential pitfalls attached.

If Offaly are able to step back and treat it like a free hit, and a chance to test themselves against a high-level opponent, perhaps even an opportunity for some individuals to put in a statement performance in advance of the 2024 season, then there could be some positives to take from this game.

That’s no small ask, however. This is a group who built their season around winning the Joe McDonagh Cup, and securing promotion back to the Leinster championship. They couldn’t have come much closer to achieving that aim without actually succeeding, but that will have made the last few weeks all the more painful, and tinged with regret.

Moreover, Gaelic games athletes are wired to build everything around their championship, and to simply switch off once that ship has sailed. There is a reason why counties have become so keen to play club leagues off before championships get underway, because they will quite often get abandoned if a team has to regroup just for a league game or two.

As a result, we’ll know a lot by 4:15pm tomorrow. If Offaly have found a way to get into a mindset of having a chance to knock over a local rival and a side that will undoubtedly have one eye down the road at what they’ll see as an inevitable quarter-final clash with Galway, then this could get interesting.

If on the other hand, players feel that this is a fixture that needs to be fulfilled and there is an element of going through the motions about their play, then a long afternoon is in store.