This could be Ballinamere’s best chance as K-K eye further glory

By Kevin Egan

For a brief but glorious window of a few years, the Offaly senior hurling championship was a gloriously democratic race. As many as seven or eight of the starting ten teams strode into July each year with legitimate aspirations to win the big prize.

Now, suddenly it feels like another era of monopolistic dominance is upon us. Kilcormac-Killoughey look ideally poised to write their names in the record books alongside the St Rynagh’s teams of the late 1960 and early 1970s, or even the all-conquering Birr sides from a generation ago.

For the reigning Seán Robbins Cup holders to legitimately stand in comparison to those sides, winning provincial silverware – at the every least – is a prerequisite. And by moving away from one of their own in Shane Hand and then handing the reins of the operation to Declan Laffan, the message from the club executive is that their ambitions are now built around winning big games in November and December, not just September and October.

Such a statement would of course be met with a wave of “one-game-at-a-time” rebuttals if it were to be uttered at training in Mountbolus, but it is both possible and admirable to think big while also respecting the quality of the opposition that is lined up here in Offaly over the next few months.

With players like Cillian Kiely, Ter Guinan, Charlie Mitchell and Adam Screeney likely to be gradually reintroduced to action over the course of the Offaly championship will ensure that the champions get better as the year goes on, building naturally towards a Leinster campaign.

If K-K are to be tripped up, the unimaginative but obvious prediction is that Ballinamere are the most likely club to do the tripping.

It’s not all positive. John Murphy’s absence is a blow to their range of scoring threats, particularly since his late surge against St Rynagh’s last year felt like a return to prominence for a player who showed immense potential at underage level. Neither is it clear where they will get the extra couple of players that they need to bolster a group where just 16 players were used until the 59th minute of both their semi-final and final last year.

Nonetheless, they will take a considerable amount of heart from their performances in those two games, there is a natural spikiness to the team that will be necessary if they are to make that breakthrough, and the natural trajectory of a group with that age profile is upwards.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the club will be to get to grips with the likelihood that 2025 could be their best chance of success. Kilcormac-Killoughey have wave after wave of underage talent coming up to bolster their current croup, the same cannot be said in Ballinamere. It’s not that another county final defeat would be justification for folding up the tent, but the gap they have to bridge this year is perhaps less than it will be at any time in the next four or five years, barring something unusual happening.

The most intriguing contender, however, is Shinrone. We’ll go on a brief tangent here to explain. Since his retirement as Dublin senior football manager, Dessie Farrell has been widely lauded in the media as an under-rated manager who added two senior All-Irelands to his strong track record at underage level. But even if we’re not supposed to say these things out loud, there is a sense that putting Dustin the Turkey in charge would have yielded the very same outcome. Dublin were better before Farrell, and it’s very possible they will be better after him – which is a sharp contrast to the Trevor Fletcher era in Shinrone.

If Shinrone don’t deliver something special this year, then it’ll be hard to escape the conclusion that Fletcher was the biggest single factor in their famous county title win of 2022. Before him, they were always full of talent but completely unreliable in the heat of knockout championship hurling.

They now have both Adrian and Ciarán Cleary back and alongside Ballinamere, they look like the only other club that might, if all the stars align, beat Kilcormac-Killoughey on a given day. Admittedly the league final shows how much needs to go their way for that to happen.

For anyone else outside that trio to win the big prize, they probably need someone else to knock out the champions, and then to swoop in and pick up the pieces in a final.

That might read harshly to a significant cohort of St Rynagh’s players for example, given how many of them already hold three or four Offaly SHC medals. But the loss of Dermot Shortt due to emigration is a significant one, and it’s very hard to win a championship with a good hardcore group of veterans, some promising young players, but as few as one or two players at the peak of their powers.

Luke O’Connor’s absence for the summer is also important, since the blue and gold outfit might be done and dusted by the time he comes back. Defensively they’ll be fine, but it feels like a disproportionate amount of pressure rests on the 20-year-old shoulders of Shane Rigney to carry their attack. If Rynagh’s are to finish second or third in the group, one suspects he’ll have to play like a county senior star, rather than a talented U-20 player. Not at all beyond him, but not a fair expectation either.

For Birr, their biggest trump card must surely be Eoghan Cahill’s need to prove that his lack of playing time with Offaly in 2025 was an injustice. Their dependence on their sharpshooter is ostensibly a weakness, but the other side of that coin is that he is prolific, consistent and reliable. Other clubs lean heavily on men who are less trustworthy when it comes to carrying that type of burden.

The return of Barry Whelahan as manager should be a positive step since the former county man is both a proven manager and a club stalwart while players like Eoin Hayes and Ben Miller can be dominant figures in defence alongside the evergreen Barry Harding.

But for Birr to step forward, creative players like Emmet Nolan, Luke Nolan and Morgan Watkins have to take their game to a completely new level.

Coolderry supporters, and indeed the players, must be tired of the trope that they are maxing out every time they go out on the field, with the unspoken implication that there is very limited scope for improvement. Even at their best, the club has never needed to line out with half a dozen county men to win championship matches and when you have a panel of intermediate hurlers, many of whom will have the ambition to prove that they can compete at a higher level, replacing impressive hurlers like Billy Burke should be realistic.

Outside of that top six, simply reaching the quarter-finals would represent a positive year. It feels like the decision of Leon Fox to transfer to Louth at club level is a tacit confirmation of the unsaid truth that the championship window for Belmont has closed for good. Paddy Clancy is back in Ireland and will bolster the group, though it is believed he is currently injured and won’t feature this weekend in Moystown, but they could have done with Eamon Maher and Ruairí Woods being eligible this year.

Likewise, Kinnitty will find it hard to overcome the loss of Paddy Delaney, and it would be no surprise to see them in yet another relegation showdown alongside a Seir Kieran side that badly needs an injection of talent.

Tullamore should have enough to consolidate their senior status with Shane Hand now taking over the town side, and the decision of Luke Egan to concentrate on hurling is an interesting one. The Blues have never had the dual culture of some of the other parishes so they are always likely to be hamstrung by the clear pecking order in the club, but even allowing for Diarmuid Egan’s injury, they have the scope and the panel depth to be a couple of points better in 2025 than they were last year, and that might keep them out of the drop zone.

As for this weekend – take Kilcormac-Killoughey, Shinrone, and Birr all to win, with Coolderry vs Ballinamere the one to watch for draw punters.