Minors can win another rollercoaster battle as Mayo await
By Kevin Egan
Any nervous energy or pre-match tension that will be felt tomorrow in advance of the New York game will be amplified many times over on Sunday, as the county prepares to travel west to Dr Hyde Park to see Offaly take on Mayo in an All-Ireland minor championship quarter-final.
Right now, it feels as if the stars are aligning nicely for the group. With silverware secured, 2025 has been a memorable year regardless of what happens from here. Moreover, given the county’s standing in the Gaelic football ecosystem, any game against Mayo will always be a big game and any win over Mayo will always be a significant scalp.
That being said, this is arguably the best tie that Roger Ryan and his players could have hoped to get at this stage of the competition. Roscommon were head and shoulders the best team in Connacht this year, winning their round robin game against Mayo with a bit to spare before bouncing back from the concession of an early goal to win the Connacht final in Castlebar.
Both of Mayo’s starting midfielders went off injured in that game and while Adam Kelly is expected to be back and ready to perform, this game could yet come a little early for Cian May, who had a fracture in his arm. More significantly, corner-forward Tony Carey, scorer of 1-4 from play in that Connacht final, is also considered a doubt for the game, and if he starts, he will do so having missed a lot of preparation time.
Most importantly, this Offaly team has developed quite the knack of winning extremely tight games, and in a battle between two sides that look quite evenly matched on paper, it’s hard to see this one being anything other than up for grabs going into the closing ten minutes.
The confidence and energy that is shared across the group makes them ideally suited to exploiting that scenario, and the decent possibility that the lion’s share of the support will be behind Offaly for the game as well should be a further trump card.
Predicting minor games is tricky business at the best of times and particularly so when the two teams involved have had the best part of a month off to try and improve on what they produced in their provincial campaigns, but in as much as it’s possible to lean one way or another for a contest like this, Offaly supporters should travel up the N60 with cautious optimism.