Tailteann Cup draw positive for Offaly but Corden Cup collapse a worry
By Kevin Egan
It is between hard and impossible to get excited about a Tailteann Cup group, but Offaly could have fared a lot worse than the group they got on Wednesday, alongside Wicklow, Waterford and Laois.
Oisín McConville has Wicklow in a good place and they will be a real test, but with the game in Tullamore, Offaly should still be favourites. Waterford are nowhere near as sharp as they were in 2024 so that’s the perfect away game, and in a competition where big crowds are rare, a local derby with Laois should be something close to being a worthwhile occasion – though for the sake of everyone, both counties should now be more or less demanding a toss of a coin for home venue, even though it is meant to take place at a neutral location.
Fixing the game for Navan or Newbridge would completely kill the crowd, and it’s notable that since the turn of the millenium, Offaly’s record against Laois in Portlaoise (P5 W2 D1 L2) is almost identical to the county’s record in Tullamore (P4 W2 L2).
No team with realistic designs on winning the competition should even consider the possibility of failing to get out of their group, so it’s only as the competition progresses that it will really gain momentum. For now however, a home game against Wicklow is probably tie of the round in the competition, considering the Garden County’s excellent showing against Dublin. Crucially for Offaly, it’s a chance to reset, and start building real momentum that will hopefully bring them back to Croke Park eventually.
Perhaps the biggest red flag going into the Tailteann Cup is Offaly’s infamous disregard for second-chance competitions, a reputation that was cemented last summer when London claimed an emphatic victory in Tullamore.
It’s easy for supporters to talk about how this competition presents an opportunity to work together as a group for longer and possibly even carve out a path to Sam Maguire football in 2026, but for the players that have to do the work and who have to climb the mental mountains, it’s a different story.
Why Offaly seem to find it uniquely challenging is another matter, but the shocking 3-17 to 1-5 defeat that the U-20 footballers succumbed to against Westmeath on Tuesday evening appears to be yet more evidence that it’s hard-wired into this county’s genetic code that once the main prize is off the table, it’s time to down tools and just get back to club football by any means necessary.
Offaly are not alone in taking this approach to these new ‘Shield’ style competitions at minor and U-20 level. Galway, All-Ireland minor champions three years ago, were bitterly disappointed not to reach the knockout stages in Connacht, having started with a comprehensive 1-21 to 1-10 win over Leitrim and followed that up with a tremendous game that finished in a narrow defeat to a Mayo side that went on to pick up the provincial title. In the Connacht “B” final, Leitrim beat Galway. The difference is Galway still put in a reasonable showing in that game.
No-one would argue that Offaly are a better team than Westmeath at U-20 level this year. The two sides already met in Kilcormac and the Lake County were well-worth their six-point win, and possibly more with it. But for Offaly to turn up in Tullamore and present themselves so poorly, with so little drive or energy, is a sour footnote at the end of a campaign that never got off the ground.
Not entering the competition and letting players go back to their clubs to play league football would have been preferable to that, if it’s the case that there was any sense from management that this might happen.