Dream draw for Offaly with Tailteann Cup final place at stake

By Kevin Egan

There were only two possible opponents that Offaly could have been paired with when Jarlath Burns and CCCC chairperson Brian Carroll came to the Tullamore Court Hotel for Monday morning’s Tailteann Cup draw, and there was no doubt that coming out of the bowl alongside Wicklow was ideal from an Offaly perspective.

Fermanagh have found a rich vein of scoring form at the moment, racking up totals of 1-24, 2-20, 3-27 and 2-25 in this competition so far. Just last year they pushed Down to the wire in an Ulster championship quarter-final so they will see Down as beatable in a way that Wicklow wouldn’t have; and based on the way the two teams play, Fermanagh are a lot more likely to relish playing in Croke Park than the Garden County.

The break of the ball has favoured Offaly consistently in this competition so far. Clare had to deal with an outbreak of flu in advance of the first round tie in Ennis, which ruled out their captain and centre-back and left several others a long way short of peak aerobic capacity.

Down suffered from a tremendous dose of the yips in front of goal in Tullamore while Wexford were visibly fatigued on what was their third long road trip in the space of 15 days.

All that said, it’s still a testament to the resolve and focus of the Offaly players that they’ve taken care of business from their own side, producing slick and lively football that has ensured that they were able to exploit those opposition vulnerabilities.

Wicklow are a similar side to Wexford in that the majority of their strength – both in a footballing sense, and literally – is concentrated in the middle third of the field. Oisín McConville will know going into this game that they don’t possess the same touch of class close to goal as Offaly will bring to Jones’ Road (particularly now that Jack Bryant seems to have found confidence and form once again) so his game plan is likely to revolve around restricting Offaly's share of possession, thus negating what should be a higher conversion rate for Offaly.

Looking at the season as a whole and considering Offaly’s starting point, it will still take two more victories for it to reasonably be assessed as a year of real and tangible progress.

The development and improvement that players like Shane O’Toole Greene, Conor Melia, Diarmuid Egan and Jack McEvoy have made is undeniable, but Offaly cannot take the next step without adding depth to the panel, as injuries are inevitable in the modern calendar.

Emulating Westmeath’s success should be the immediate goal and at no stage has Mark McHugh bemoaned the absence of key players or the niggling issues that have curtailed others. A defeat tomorrow evening would increase the wattage of the spotlight that will shine on the caveats that surrounded those wins over Clare, Down and Wexford, and throw open the question of whether or not Offaly are maximizing what will ultimately prove to be a narrow enough window to try and fully exploit the golden generation of players that are just coming into their peak.

As a sporting fixture, Saturday’s semi-final at Croke Park (5pm) has none of the glamour and emotion that will come with the hurlers' trip to Thurles to face Cork on Sunday, but as a tipping point that will have a massive bearing on the future direction of Offaly’s senior football team, it’s arguably the much more consequential game of the two.