Ballinamere must be ready to pounce if fancied K-K misfire

Kevin Egan

Going into the knockout stages of the 2022 Offaly Senior Hurling Championship, all six clubs still standing would have felt like they were in with a great chance of taking the Seán Robbins Cup that year. But with the lion’s share of the county minor team that came so agonisingly close to winning Irish Press Cup, it didn’t take a meteorologist to know that for every other club in the county, a Kilcormac-Killoughey storm was just 12 months away.

St Rynagh’s, in contrast, were slipping back a little from the form that earned them three championships in succession, so for the other four – Belmont, Birr, Ballinamere and Shinrone – this felt like a window of opportunity. As it happened, Ballinamere were a little bit green just yet, and Birr, who were still slightly hamstrung by their lack of scoring power, weren’t where they needed to be either.

So it turned out that 2022 will forever be etched in the minds of Shinrone people in the best possible way, while it will forever be the one that got away in conversations around Moystown, Ferbane and of course Belmont.

Two years on, Kilcormac-Killoughey look like they might be every bit as good as was forecast, and maybe better again. Stalwarts like Oisín Mahon, Conor Mahon, Conor Slevin and Damien Kilmartin are as dominant as every in key positions along the spine of the team, while every one of those 2022 minors is pushing on, as are a handful of other extremely promising young players as well.

Consequently, the challenge for Ballinamere this Sunday is to make peace with this reality; that unless K-K underperform, winning this final is quite probably beyond them.

When it comes to the best eight or ten players on each team, Ballinamere don’t tip their cap to anyone, as evidenced by their very strong representation on the county senior team.

There aren’t any obvious weak links in the Ballinamere starting team, but there are one or two players who might struggle to get anywhere as high up the pecking order if they grew up 15 minutes down the road in Mountbolus. And when it comes to the bench, well then there’s simply no comparison. If Kilcormac-Killoughey play to capacity, the champions will retain their crown.

But none of the above is to say that Ballinamere can’t win. Their mindset has to be that they need to go out and hurl to every inch of their potential, on the basis that if K-K maybe produce a 6 or 7 out of 10 performance, then Ballinamere must be ready to take advantage.

All things being equal, if this K-K group stays together and stays committed, they will be the favourites for every game they play for the next five years, at least. That could involve anything from perhaps eight to 12 knockout fixtures – and the law of averages says that in that set of games, they will dip from their usual high standards once or twice, at least.

Not every club would be good enough to pounce. Ballinamere are certainly good enough, but they still have to keep the faith, to appreciate the scale of the challenge facing them, but most of all, not to underperform and to allow K-K to sneak home despite misfiring.

In a nutshell, somewhere in the next four or five seasons, the law of averages says that Kilcormac-Killoughey will slip up at some point. There’s no obvious reason to believe that day will be Sunday, but if it is, Ballinamere need to find a way to pose a serious goal threat, to control their own puckout and to pressurise that of Conor Slevin, and to show elite levels of accuracy in front of the posts. None of that is impossible, or at least it doesn’t feel like it right now.