Some anxious moments, but Offaly hurlers did enough

By Kevin Egan

For 45 minutes last Sunday, Offaly’s hurling was unspectacular, but the quality offered by players like Ben Conneely, Charlie Mitchell and Donal Shirley elevated the home team to a level that Antrim couldn’t quite match.

With Niall O’Connor sent off for a stamp on Mitchell after just eight minutes, Offaly hurled into the breeze for the opening half and got the goals they needed to leave them six points up with 25 minutes to play. From there, it should have been plain sailing.

Instead, the next 23 minutes made for painful viewing, as Antrim made light of the wind and their numerical advantage to cut the lead to a single point, with Offaly registering just one score, a stunning point from Mitchell on the stand-side touchline that broke a 20-minute drought.

The lack of shooting attempts from distance seemed baffling, all the more given that Antrim continued to have an extra man in front of the Offaly full forward line. The lack of substitutions to freshen up a tiring team was every bit as surprising and Eoghan Cahill’s crucial contribution to set up Killian Sampson’s decisive goal demonstrated that some level of impact from the sideline was badly needed.

But when it was all said and done, Leinster championship hurling for 2026 has been secured, even if the level of anxiety along the way felt unnecessary.

In all likelihood, Offaly will have the dream set of fixtures for next year’s campaign. Dublin, Kilkenny and Wexford are all due to come to Tullamore, while a road trip to either Portlaoise or Newbridge is nowhere near as challenging as a fixture in Belfast. Division 1A will be a serious testing ground in the spring, there should be very little crossover with the U-20 hurlers, and with the experience from this year on board, that’s the time for this group to make their mark.

For now, it’s time to exhale and unwind after a tough campaign. Give it a few weeks, and the task at hand will be to review the year that has just unfolded, and to assess where the improvements can be made off the pitch that will facilitate further development on the field.

Joe McDonagh Cup in the crosshairs again

Like nature, certain topics of conversation arise at the same time of the year, every year. In May, those conversations usually centre around how such a large percentage of the hurling season is done by now, and how it’s not good for the game to have so many teams done and dusted with most of the summer still ahead. The fact that right now, both Laois and Kildare are still involved in the race for the Liam MacCarthy Cup while Waterford, Clare and Wexford are done for the year, is usually the focal point of that frustration.

Now to this untrained eye, it seems somewhat counterintuitive to on the one hand have this phenomenally successful competition (the Munster Championship) that is filling out large stadia at a time when attendances across the board are falling, and to at the same time want to take away the jeopardy that makes that championship such compelling viewing.

But if Munster counties want to shoot the goose that has laid this stunning golden egg, so be it.

However no traditionalist from Cork or Tipperary would argue that someone from Laois, or Offaly, or Carlow, should have an equal say to them in how to run their championship, with good reason. But why then, do the same people from strong Munster counties feel that they should have an equal say in the Joe McDonagh Cup, and whether or not the finalists from that competition get passage back into the All-Ireland series?

Like it or not, those preliminary quarter-finals were part of the package when it was sold to counties like Offaly originally.

The attraction of those games was about so much more than just the theoretical possibility that the Joe Mac winners might come through and win the All-Ireland, even though pundits love to simplify it down and just talk about results in this fixture (speaking of which, they’ll never forgive Eddie Brennan for guiding Laois to that win over Dublin, as it greatly undermines that argument).

But these fixtures are also about the prospect of a big day for a smaller county; a chance to pick off a scalp to compensate for the fact that this structure takes that possibility away within the provincial system. It was about exposure for teams who otherwise are forced to play all their games on Saturday afternoons in front of tiny crowds, not to mention their sponsors.

It was about the value that a team can get from a game like Offaly’s home tie against Cork last June in terms of their hurling development.

In society at large, the rich and powerful are very good at making sure the debate is framed according to how they want it to go, and how inconvenient truths like those above are not raised at any time. The same is true in the GAA and the onus is on counties like Offaly to come together with the other eight counties that have played at least one season of Joe McDonagh hurling with a view to ensuring that any adjustment to the deal that was offered to them originally is acceptable to that group, and not just passed on the back of support from perennial Liam MacCarthy teams at one end, and a host of Lory Meagher and Nickey Rackard counties at the other.

Democracy is all very well, but if you put five people in a shared house and ask them to vote on whether the electricity bill should be paid by all five people equally, or if one person, let’s call him Jimmy, should have to pay for it by himself, then it’s a fair bet that the latter option will be carried with 80% support. That doesn’t make it right.