Defeat for U20 hurlers feels like the end of a magical journey
By Kevin Egan
Both the Offaly senior hurlers and footballers are in action tomorrow (Saturday) but it would feel shockingly ungrateful to give top billing to any group other than the U-20 hurlers this week.
What for most supporters has been effectively a four-year-long journey – romance is probably a more accurate term for many fans – came to an end last Monday in Newbridge, when Dublin recorded a 4-12 to 0-17 win in the Leinster U-20 quarter-final.
To dismiss the result as the product of injuries is perhaps unfair to a Dublin group that showed no end of character and who could have scored a lot more but for some shocking inaccuracy.
Still, the four-nil goals tally can hardly be said to be unrelated to the fact that three men who would have started in corner positions – Caelum Larkin, Ruairí Kelly and Daniel Hand – were all absent through injury, while the fourth (Adam Screeney) sustained an early ankle injury and was clearly not fully healthy, as he hasn’t been all year.
It’s of little consolation to some of the younger players who weren’t part of the same panel in 2024 and who didn’t get to experience that incredible Saturday in Nowlan Park last year, but it’s a lot easier to make peace with this defeat because these players got the All-Ireland medal they deserved.
More than any trophy, however, when historians look back on this period in Offaly GAA, if they look beyond the bare results and scorelines, they will see that this was the group that made Offaly people really and truly believe in greater things again.
The 2021 U-20 football campaign was a joyous time, but that campaign was two narrow wins over unheralded opposition, a shock victory against Dublin, and then surfing that wave through Cork and Roscommon, all in the space of a month and a half.
By the time Daniel Bourke lifted the James Nowlan Cup last June, those young hurlers felt like central characters in many people's lives. The mayhem of Portlaoise in 2022; the heartbreak of the final; the electricity that rippled through Carlow as Offaly were backed by huge levels of support against Wexford in that memorable 2023 Leinster decider; that roller-coaster against Kilkenny in Tullamore; and of course everything about the rematch with Tipperary. If we’re lucky, their journey as Offaly hurlers is only getting started.