Brigid’s look the more rounded package in intermediate final
By Kevin Egan
Whether or not Cian Farrell will be asked back into the Offaly fold under new management is a question that only Mike Solan and his selectors can answer, but for the moment his return to Offaly club football after picking up championship honours in New York has transformed the landscape in the intermediate grade, turning Edenderry into strong contenders for silverware this Sunday (Glenisk O'Connor Park, 1.45pm, live on Clubber).
In what is a notoriously difficult championship to predict at the start of the year, if you asked 100 people around the county to guess the eventual semi-finalists, then Raheen, Ferbane and St Brigid’s would probably have been three of the top four answers, most likely alongside Gracefield.
Now the Reds made their way into the last four without the help of their returning star, but now that he’s been added to a group that already has plenty of quality in Alan Harte, Seán Moriarty, Seán Doyle, Peter Butler, Ciarán Farrell and several others, he elevates their game up to a different level.
For all that, however, St Brigid’s look like a more rounded side that can thrive in different types of games. A shootout would give Edenderry a great chance, but Brigid’s come into this game on the back of one terrible performance against Raheen, and with a record of conceding 0-40 in their other four games combined. Even in O’Connor Park in benign conditions, it’s hard to envisage a team like that getting drawn into a Rocky versus Clubber Lang style bout where there’s haymakers being landed both ways.
Ben Kennedy is looking more and more like the player that was forcing himself into consideration for the county before his injury. Seán Briody and Dan Molloy is a midfield pairing that could thrive at a much higher level, and it doesn’t matter how dangerous the Edenderry forwards might be, if St Brigid’s control the ball.
The biggest danger for the Croghan club is that, similar to Ferbane in the later game, the memories of some harrowing defeats, including last year’s final against Tullamore, are very fresh. However, it’s easier to see a path to St Brigid’s taking a cushion into the closing minutes here.