2025 review: Plenty to build on as hurlers stay in top tier
By Kevin Egan
There were 66 minutes on the clock in the last championship game of the year when Eoghan Cahill floated his pass into Killian Sampson, setting up the Shinrone man for the goal that would confirm Offaly’s place in the 2026 Leinster SHC.
Based on the year as a whole, there was no question that Offaly hurled to a much higher level than Antrim, but even in the modern round robin era, the nature of championship means that it can all change in one game. Consequently, it wasn’t until the net danced against Antrim that Offaly supporters could finally say with conviction that 2025 was a year of real progress for the senior hurlers.
That’s not to say that it was a season filled with high points, or low ones for that matter. Perhaps, there was quite a lack of either.
Dan Ravenhill’s gargantuan free to snatch what proved to be a promotion-clinching win over Dublin at Croke Park was the biggest feelgood moment while the collective failure to perform in Tullamore against Galway was undoubtedly the biggest letdown, considering the level of expectation that bubbled around Offaly in the lead up to that fixture. Elsewhere, it was a lot of glass half-full or half-empty moments for a group that continues to eke their way back to national relevance.
Trips to Wexford Park and Parnell Park in the championship saw Offaly produce very decent performances, while still coming away empty handed. The league game against Waterford at Walsh Park was quite competitive for long stretches until James Mahon’s contentious red card killed the team’s momentum, while the league final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh against the same opposition was a very poor display, masked somewhat by a decent finish. No unqualified successes, but no games without some signs of hope either.
Crucially, Offaly won the games they needed to win. The Antrim fixture was of course the main one, but there was a sticky trip to Portlaoise in February and the return of Killian Doyle to the Westmeath colours for a landmine of a fixture in Tullamore in the league too.
Moreover, all of this was in the context of a year where there plenty of injury issues, many of them stemming from the tug of love between Johnny Kelly and Leo O’Connor with regard to the players who crossed over between the senior and U-20 panels.
Perhaps players like Dylan Hollywood, Darragh Scully and Caelum Larkin might find themselves in the same situation in 2026 as all three – and a few others - showed flashes of immense potential in this year's club championships, but the likelihood is that they will be allowed to focus on their U-20 campaign. Meanwhile Johnny Kelly will have a free run with his group in what should be a hugely demanding league campaign, but also an ideal slate of fixtures in the Leinster championship.
The only way to describe the league slate is arduous. Barring something unusual happens, as was the case with Clare when they were hammered with a crippling list of absentees at the start of the year in 2025, Offaly will be huge outsiders in every game, and the main aim each time they go out on the field will be to acclimatise with hurling at that level, notwithstanding the prevailing view that the established powers tend to operate at little more than 50% during the league.
There will be neutral observers who will draw a circle around the round five fixture at Newbridge and expect that game to determine whether it’s Offaly or Kildare who drop back down to the Joe McDonagh Cup. But with a little bit of conviction and a little luck, Offaly have every right to target sneaking into the top three in Leinster this coming season.
There might be a lot of ground to make up but Micheál Donoghue didn’t bring Galway very far down the ‘transition’ road in 2025, with Cathal Mannion carrying an otherwise ordinary team to the quarter-finals. Home advantage will make the Dublin and Wexford games feel very winnable, the latter in particular, and if Offaly were able to pick up two positive results in those three games – Kilkenny are probably still too far ahead for anything other than a competitive showing to be realistic – then the team could well go to St Conleth’s Park with a real chance of extending their season.
In order for that to happen, however, improvement of the order of five or six points per game will have to be found. Some of that, hopefully, will come from younger players like Shane Rigney, Ruairí Kelly, Dan Ravenhill, Adam Screeney and others enjoying a better run of health in 2026. All across the board, that generation will benefit for every extra kilo of muscle that they can add in the off-season, or as near to an off-season as there is in a world where it seems like we go from one competition to another, and painful as the league might be, it will stand to the group to run that gauntlet.
From a management point of view, adding depth will be the big challenge, perhaps on a par with putting faith in that depth when it’s there. While Offaly need to lean heavily on a group of young hurlers, they need to keep them fit and fresh.
Eoghan Cahill may have come up with the goods with that sublime no-look crossfield pass into Sampson as mentioned above, but another year of giving so little hurling to players like David Nally, Dara Maher, Jack Clancy and Cahill among others will lead to huge problems by the time the summer rolls around.
Even if it’s not that quartet, the playing minutes have to be shared around much more equally among a larger number of players in order for Offaly to arrive into the Leinster championship ready to put their best foot forward.
It will always be the management’s prerogative to decide who they want on the pitch at any time, but far too many hurlers this year started every game and finished all bar one or two of them, and asking players to do that while matching up physically with the sides that Offaly will take on during the league is asking for trouble.
What will make life much easier in that regard is that absolutely nobody will expect Offaly to survive in Division 1A, while dropping back down to 1B wouldn’t be a huge issue at all. Perhaps the biggest advantages to hurling in the top tier are firstly the financial aspect - particularly the final round trip to Cork since league rules mean that gate money is shared equally between participating teams - and that it completely takes the possibility of relegation to Division Two off the table.
Let’s not forget that it’s not even 18 months since Offaly and Laois went down to the wire in a tense Joe McDonagh Cup final, and next year the O’Moore County will do their league hurling taking on sides like London, Derry and Mayo.
Overall, 2025 was a year of consolidation, and safely negotiating difficult hurdles.
From a supporter’s perspective, there weren’t any of the euphoric and emotional moments that made 2024 so memorable, but after living through years of slow and steady decline, a year of watching Offaly sidestep pitfalls and tee up a 2026 campaign that opens up a world of possibility will do just nicely.