Ballinamere and K-K tipped to set up final clash

By Kevin Egan

Kilcormac-Killoughey’s first round defeat to Coolderry has looked more and more like a distant memory with every game that they play in this year’s Offaly SHC. And the news that Adam Screeney is expected to return to action on Saturday evening in Tullamore (throw-in 4.30pm) makes it even harder to try and make a coherent case for St Rynagh’s pulling off an upset in the first of the two big games this weekend.

No matter what happens in this game, 2026 has still been a year of positive momentum for the Banagher club. They’re still not where they want to be at underage level, but the younger generation of senior players has stepped up and taken on more responsibility, led by Shane Rigney who produced his best performance of the championship so far in their quarter-final win over Shinrone.

Their half-back line is solid and robust, Ben Conneely has reproduced his outstanding county form in the blue and gold colours, while Evan Houlihan has been a revelation up front, breaking tackles and generally causing headaches for opponents with his relentless energy.

When the two sides met at the end of the round robin stages, K-K fully deserved their win and the two-point margin (0-25 to 2-17) was slightly flattering as the champions added another 21 wides into the mix for good measure.

They are generating a ridiculous amount of shots on goal and while the injuries are mounting up and will probably catch them out at some point (in Leinster, if not in Offaly), Cillian Kiely at centre-back and Colin Spain at midfield are simply dominating games right now, and it’s hard to see what Rynagh’s can do to try and mitigate the influence of those two key men.

If both sides play to the form that they’ve shown in their recent games, then Rynagh’s have maybe six or seven points to find, either through their own improvement or through underperformance from K-K. That seems like too much.

Sunday’s semi-final in Birr (4.30pm) looks like the more interesting contest of the two as it’s easier to make a case for the underdogs to cause an upset.

The story of Belmont’s season so far is that they’ve beaten the teams that they should have been able to beat, while they just didn’t quite get there against Shinrone and Ballinamere. The latter result could potentially be costly for the Ferbane footballers as if they had scored from either of their two late goal chances in that Ballinamere game, they could have kept Tullamore in the championship and prevented the Tullamore footballers from enjoying a longer spell of time with exclusive access to all their dual players.

For now, however, the takeaway from that narrow defeat in Banagher will be that they aren’t that far off Ballinamere, and that was in a game where David Kelly was the only Belmont player that really weighed in with sufficient scoring support for David Nally.

The key to Ballinamere’s success this year has been that more balanced attacking unit, with most players from midfield up having had at least one day out where they shot the lights out.

There are some conundrums for Belmont to answer – if Dan Bourke goes out to midfield again, do they take Jack Clancy out of the half-back line to follow him, knowing that they need someone with the physical ability to stand up to the Offaly player?

If Joe Maher goes into the inside forward line alongside Brian Duignan, that’s an aerial mismatch with any of the possible Belmont corner backs, and then there’s the issue of whether Oisín Kelly goes into the edge of the square to be picked up by Ciarán Burke, or if he’s needed elsewhere.

Here too, the underdogs need a lot to go right, and while it’s more plausible that they could bridge the gap, the more likely outcome is that there are one or two too many fires to put out and Ballinamere prevail.