Minor hurlers need to be tuned in to avoid Kerry banana skin
by Kevin Egan
With no senior football or hurling fixtures this weekend, the focus in Offaly shifts firmly over to underage games for the next eight days. A disappointing week could well leave the minor hurlers, U-20 hurlers and minor footballers all done and dusted for the year by the time the ball throws in on the next senior fixture (the Tailteann Cup fixture in Ennis), while there is no doubt that the county’s record of winning at least one underage provincial title every year for the past five years is very much in doubt.
For the minor hurlers, who take on Kerry in Kilcormac tomorrow, Saturday, that ship has already sailed. Westmeath’s win over Dublin last weekend puts Offaly’s defeat to the Lake County in Birr earlier this month into perspective, as it confirmed suspicions that Westmeath have an excellent generation of young hurlers coming up through the ranks.
Westmeath will expect to beat Laois tomorrow and reach a Leinster semi-final, and a competitive display against (most likely) Galway at that stage will cement those high opinions about that Westmeath team.
Offaly instead compete in the Peadar Ó Liathain competition where on paper, the final should be a clash between Brian Carroll’s young charges and Antrim. Competing at this level is not what Carroll would have imagined at the start of the year, but to use that horrendous catch-all political excuse of ‘we are where we are’, at this point in the season, the only possible salvation is to win out the remaining games and then it will be easier to believe in future years that this group of players is capable of playing at a higher level.
There are signs at schools level that Kerry are gradually getting that bit more competitive and the day when they take a serious scalp at minor or U-20 level can’t be that far away. The biggest danger for Offaly tomorrow is that Kerry will perceive this fixture as a glorious opportunity to do exactly that. A tuned-in Offaly team wins this one with a bit to spare, one looking further down the road could well get snared.
Throw-in 1pm, Saturday, Kilcormac.