Stakes rise for Offaly clubs as knockout football action arrives
By Kevin Egan
It’s been a peculiar Offaly SFC so far in that the group stages have been played out without any single contest that boiled down to a do-or-die scenario.
Even before they were fully eliminated, it was clear that neither Edenderry nor Durrow were anywhere close to where they needed to be to make a meaningful bid to avoid finishing bottom of the table, although the Ballycommon vs Bracknagh game was always going to have a huge bearing on who would extend their dreams of lifting the Dowling Cup into September, those kind of ‘championship’ contests were rare.
That all changes this weekend, starting with the relegation showdown between Bracknagh and Durrow tonight (Friday). There was nothing between the sides when they met a couple of months ago but while Durrow went on to be comfortably beaten in their next two games, Bracknagh were moderately competitive, albeit leaning heavily on Peter Cunningham to carry their scoring load.
Had Ballinamere not edged out Belmont last week, then it would have been much easier to confidently predict a win for the Kildare border side. Instead, that extra bit of time for the hurling half of that parish might just give Durrow the chance to put together their best showing of the year so far, which could make this interesting, if the motivation is there to try and stay in the top tier. The opening ten minutes in Geashill (throw-in 7.30pm) will tell a lot.
On Sunday, it’s a quarter-final double header where the merit (or the downside) of the ‘weak group’ system will be fully exposed. In theory, this new structure gives clubs outside the very elite the chance to build up form and get confidence together in advance of a tilt at one of the stronger sides in a one-off game. In practice, the experience across several counties is that it’s very hard for a side to overcome the lack of exposure to the best opponents that the championship has to offer, while a club that might on paper look to be misfiring gets all their weaknesses exposed and so they’ve a chance to tidy up loose ends and be ready for serious football.
Tullamore are that club that have looked to be a long way off their best, and the suspension of Aaron Leavy is just another concern for them in advance of their clash with Ballycommon (Sunday, Glenisk O'Connor Park, 4.30).
John Furlong got some minutes under his belt last time out and Davin Keegan looks like an interesting new recruit to the senior panel with something different to offer so there are some encouraging signs for the Blues, even though Ballycommon will come into this game with a lot more hope than anyone would have imagined a few months ago.
Defensively, they’ve put together a decent unit building around the two county men, Aidan Bracken and David Dempsey, albeit Tullamore will look to exploit a vulnerability to pace down the flanks. Meanwhile, Chris Kenny leads an attack that isn’t shooting the lights out, but does offer a range of different threats, as opposed to concentrating the scoring in just two or three players.
The psychology of a club like Ballycommon trying to win a knockout game against Tullamore’s first team cannot be ignored, but they will hope to stay in the game up to the last ten minutes and see what happens then.
Shamrocks’ last outing against Ferbane was desperately poor, but it would be a huge surprise if it wasn’t a dramatically revamped starting team for their local derby with Clara (Sunday, Glenisk O'Connor Park, 3pm), with David O’Toole Greene, Jack Bryant, Paddy Dunican, Conor Egan and Alan Heffernan among the key men that they expect to bring into the starting team.
Assuming at least three or four of those are good to go from the start, this should be a completely different Shamrocks team, and one that should have too much for a Clara side that has shown promise in sectors, most notably the closing stages of their win over Clonbullogue, but a group that looks a little bit vulnerable at the back, an issue exacerbated by Conor Doyle’s injury sustained while hurling last week.