Minor hurlers bow out with heads held high

By Kevin Egan

Enda Mulhare’s Offaly minor hurlers produced a hugely competitive and impressive hour’s hurling against Kilkenny last Sunday, despite eventually losing out by 2-15 to 0-14.

It’s not being disrespectful to this group to say that underage and development squad results through the years were underwhelming, and so expectations were low coming into this season.

There were some very poor performances in last year’s Celtic Challenge before the ship was eventually steadied towards the end, and just one survivor from the 2022 minor starting team – Caelum Larkin – suggested that they might be underpowered coming into this campaign.

After hurling well for some of the game against Dublin after a bad start, the next couple of outings against Kerry and Wexford were patchy, before there were signs of things coming together against Westmeath, also in patches.

Everything was geared towards this game, however, and there was a lot to like about the hurling that they produced on the day. It was a physical and clever display, and while there were limitations - most notably with regard to being able to spring game changers off the bench and the range of scoring forwards up front - the approach to the game and the quality of the hurling was admirable, even after getting rocked by two first-half goals, one of which was entirely preventable.

If the goal of underage hurling and football is to develop players and panels, then this has to go down as a very successful season. Expectations will be much higher for these players from now on, but more importantly, these players will and should have much higher expectations themselves.

If they can be supported in their bid to continue improving at this rate, they have clearly shown an appetite and scope to make immense progress, and they’ll be well worth watching in what should be a very competitive minor hurling championship in Offaly this year, and on into the future for both club and county.