Victory over Longford sets up glorious opportunity for Offaly

By Kevin Egan

If you follow Offaly GAA across both codes, you know exactly what it’s like to be the county that every upwardly mobile team sees as the “low hanging fruit” just above their heads.

For well over a decade, the Offaly hurlers were that team. One by one, teams that would never have dreamed of matching up with the county during the 1980s and 1990s took huge value out of one-off league and championship victories at adult and underage level from the early 2000s onwards.

Right now, Meath are that football team, so they represent the ideal opposition for Offaly next time out in the Leinster football championship. Their reputation and history elevate them to a level that their standard of player doesn’t merit, while there are serious teething problems with Colm O’Rourke’s reign, as he attempts to reverse the usual path to progress of sorting out the defensive side of things first, before then working on an attacking identity.

Their play this year has frequently been defined as naïve by pundits watching on, and while there is plenty of scoring potential in their forward division, they also cough up possession far more frequently than any other Division Two side.

Undoubtedly, Offaly will have to show real progress from their performance against Longford to put themselves in a position to knock them over, but there is genuine cause for optimism.

Defensively, there was a lot to like about what the team produced against Longford last Sunday, while the re-emergence of Cian Farrell as an attacking threat was huge. The Rhode duo of Anton Sullivan and Ruairí McNamee didn’t have their best day, but they’ve played well enough in 2023 to be able to shake that off, dismiss it as a solitary bad day, and get back to their best for the next outing. Other forwards having a bad day would be far more concerning in that regard.

Simply getting a win on the board and being able to reset after a dreadful showing against Down will be very valuable up against a Meath side that finished the league with five poor results in a row, and looks to be headed for the Tailteann Cup.

Add in home advantage, and this is the best possible fixture that Offaly could have hoped for at this stage of the championship, so hopefully that opportunity won’t be wasted on Sunday week.