Derry reality check could prove timely as Louth test awaits

By Kevin Egan

When Offaly’s decision to play the Division 3 league final against Derry was announced a little over a week ago, it was widely heralded as a sensible move.

It was a good chance to play decent opposition instead of a meaningless challenge game, it was a rare opportunity to play in Croke Park and to win silverware, and it gave Offaly supporters a precious chance to come out and support the county, having been forced to follow the team through streams, radio broadcasts and other channels for the majority of the league.

Of course, last week was far too early to tell whether the decision to play the game was premature or not.

When Offaly lost that league final so comprehensively, it was widely said that playing Derry was a bad idea. Momentum and confidence will have been shattered by the manner of the defeat; the strong performance of players like Conor Glass and Gareth McKinless in central roles will force the management to rethink the make-up of the key diamond sector, which is hardly ideal in the space of a week; and Mickey Harte has been given a roadmap as to how to unlock this Offaly defence, as he’s watched Derry kick 0-21 and spurn several great goal chances into the bargain. Add in injury concerns about Bernard Allen, and the cost of playing the game looks very high.

Yet even now, it’s still too early to tell whether the decision to play the game was premature or not – and when the final whistle sounds on Sunday afternoon in Navan, it’ll also be too early to make a clear and definitive call on the matter. It’s only as time progresses and we see how this Offaly team evolves that we’ll be able to identify whether the 0-21 to 1-6 defeat was an inflexion point in the wrong direction, or an eye-opening contest that will have imparted valuable lessons ahead of a seven-game league programme in 2022 that will be packed full of similar challenges.

The simple truth of it is that this Offaly football group isn’t necessarily very young by modern inter-county standards (at least not relative to counties outside Division One, where there is far more player longevity), but it is relatively inexperienced. Since gaining promotion from Division Four five years ago, there’s been relatively little fluctuation in the fortunes of the team.

They’ve been just about too good to get relegated but not quite good enough to get promoted, they’ve played well in some championship games without quite making a breakthrough (Clare 2018, Meath 2019, Kildare 2020) and underperformed in others (Westmeath replay 2017, Wicklow 2018), but generally, they’ve found a level and stuck to it.

Moving up the ranks isn’t easy, and given the dramatically improved standard of opponent that lies in wait in 2022, every opportunity to take on better opposition and to acclimatize to the higher altitude needs to be taken.

Ignoring the long-term picture for the moment and changing focus back to the Leinster championship on Sunday, it's likely that confidence levels in Offaly have been rocked by the Croke Park experience. But if that game hadn’t been played, the confidence that the group and the county’s supporters would have been carried to Navan would have been false, and brittle.

During the league, Offaly tended to use David Dempsey as cover for the defence, even though the Ballycommon man was notionally a centre-forward. Because of the natural reluctance of other centre-backs to bomb up the field and leave the heart of their defence unoccupied, Offaly’s approach worked. Dempsey was free to move about the place and offer support to his defensive colleagues, while playing a significant role in the team’s ball-carrying activity and transition play.

Gareth McKinless had no such hesitation or fear when he was left unmarked on Saturday. Offaly invited him to come forward and attack the game, and he did so spectacularly, opening up gaps time and again.

Anthony Williams of Louth is the very same type of player, and now Offaly have some chance to be prepared for him, rather than get blindsided in the same way they were last Saturday.

Conor Glass is an unknown quantity to a lot of people outside of Ulster, but only because the AFL has been his playground in recent years. He’s gradually found his feet over the course of this league game and was widely heralded to have given his best ever performance in a Derry jersey last Saturday. It’s early to suggest that he will turn out to be a player in the Brian Fenton class, but already he’s in the All-Star nominee conversation, so for Offaly to struggle to match him is not quite cause for crisis.

Louth don’t have a player of that calibre, but they are comparatively well-endowed at midfield with Bevan Duffy and Ciaran Byrne. Byrne, another ex-AFL player, kicked three points in their win over Carlow to secure promotion, wins a lot of his own ball under the kickout, and is cut from similar cloth to Glass in a lot of ways. Here too, the contest against Derry will make for good preparation as if John Maughan and his management team can study the footage from Saturday and come up with possible remedial measures, there’s every reason to believe that they can put together a tactical approach, even if it’s just a ‘Plan B’ or ‘Plan C’ that might stem the bleeding if Offaly start to haemorrhage possession in that sector again.

Until Saturday, Offaly hadn’t played an elite opponent, and be under no illusion, Derry were elite. When they were relegated to Division 4 neither Glass nor McKinless were in the team, and Shane McGuigan was still new to the inte-rcounty scene and was nothing close to the deadly attacker he is now – even though Eoin Rigney did a good job of masking McGuigan’s gifts and keeping them under wraps.

Louth are not at that level, but if they were in Division 3 in 2021, they would have represented tough opposition for the Faithful County. They are powerful in the middle, have lots of scoring talent up front in players like Ryan Burns, Conor Grimes and of course Sam Mulroy. Defensively they have been suspect in recent years, but this is an area where Mickey Harte will both demand and expect improvement. They’ll be a formidable opponent, and on the back of three wins in a row, they’ll bring plenty of confidence down the N52 on Sunday.

Offaly, for their part, won’t have the same confidence levels, but that might be no bad thing. Better to have your eyes opened, than to be see nothing other than the light at the end of the tunnel.