Offaly on both sides of tight margins last weekend

By Kevin Egan

The knife edge nature of sport is never too far from view, and the Offaly footballers and hurlers felt that keenly last weekend. The two teams fell on opposite sides of very marginal calls in the dying minutes, decisions which turned out to make the world of difference in their respective results.

In Croke Park on Saturday, Dublin's Dara Parcell was pinged for an illegal handpass in the last minute of play, and that led to the free that Dan Ravenhill hoisted over the bar from somewhere closer to the Clonliffe car park than it was to the Davin End goal.

Was it the right call? By the rule book, certainly, but at that stage in the game, with the scores level, the whistle doesn’t sound more often than not.

Then in Ederney, Offaly had dug their way back into contention from a seemingly impossible position at half-time, and with just one point between the teams, Dylan Hyland is penalised for crossing the halfway line and thus leaving just two men upfield, though the Offaly bench were adamant that Keith O’Neill got across the midfield line on the other side of the pitch to free up his colleague to go after that ball.

Again, was it the right call? Possibly, but even if it was, that decision wouldn’t always be given to the side that is one point up with stoppage time looming.

Stepping back and taking a broader view, while both teams were markedly better in the second half than they were in the first, the hurlers weren’t that far off the mark for the opening 35 minutes in Croke Park, and they couldn’t have done much about some of the outstanding strikes that we saw from players like Fergal Whitely and Diarmaid Ó Dúlaing on the Hogan Stand side of the pitch.

The footballers, on the other hand, were shockingly poor, and asked very few questions of the Fermanagh defence. Even after half-time, they still only scored seven times, so it wasn’t a case of putting the home side on the rack and not quite getting there.

Similar assignments this Sunday

While the mindset in the two camps will be very different this week, both sides face very similar challenges on Sunday, the type of challenge that Offaly teams haven’t met very often in recent years. The general public, both within the county and around the country, will expect that Leitrim and Westmeath should be brushed aside with relative ease this Sunday.

The memory of that bleak and traumatic day in Tullamore last May when Offaly lost out to London in the Tailteann Cup should be too fresh for this group of footballers to be anything other than very wary of any underdog, regardless of how weak they seem to be at first glance.

If that mindset is brought to Ballinamore, they should be absolutely fine, because there is a strong argument to say that even though they are playing in Division Three, Leitrim are the weakest inter-county senior football team in Ireland right now. The group that earned promotion last spring has been gutted, and Antrim were the latest county to comfortably pick up two points at their expense, racking up four first-half goals last Sunday in Corrigan Park.

Offaly have got their wake up call now, and because Fermanagh have a somewhat straightforward run in, they are the team in the driving seat when it comes to the second promotion spot. Anything less than a big win on Sunday would take promotion off the table entirely for Offaly, and that stick, allied to the carrot of wanting to build up momentum in advance of what already looks like a massive home tie against Kildare, should be enough to ensure a straightforward away win.

The Westmeath hurlers, like Leitrim, have yet to pick up a point in the league so far and they are running out of chances to avoid the drop to Division Two. They had the week off last week but their previous outing, a home tie against Laois, was one they really should have won. Enda Rowland left the Laois panel under a cloud and Pádraig (Podge) Delaney was also dropped from the team after going against team orders not to tog out for Garda College in their Ryan Cup final win over TUD.

Even after conceding four goals, two of them very poor concessions from a Westmeath perspective, they had an extra man for the last half-hour and were just two points adrift (4-11 to 1-18) on the back of a run of six points in a row going into the closing minutes.

From there they collapsed, and when that result is stacked alongside Offaly’s win over Dublin, predictions across the board will be quite dismissive of the visitors’ hopes.

The crucial difference between this and the Leitrim game, however, is that even if their form is stone cold, this is still a talented Westmeath group. Tommy Doyle was pulled out of the side at the last minute against Laois but he should play on Sunday and when he’s put into a group with Johnny Bermingham, Robbie Greville, Niall Mitchell and David Williams, not to mention Peter Clarke and David O’Reilly, two hugely promising young players, there is no shortage of quality there.

If Offaly start well and build up momentum, Westmeath’s lack of confidence and belief may take a toll on their challenge. But it’s not even a year since these sides met, here in Tullamore, in the Joe McDonagh Cup in a game that was level after 65 minutes.

Joanne Cantwell’s incorrect assertion on RTE last Sunday night that Offaly are just one point away from guaranteed promotion might only further feed the idea that this game will be something of a coronation, rather than a contest. Keeping any such thoughts away from the training pitch and dressing room will be crucial this week, because while the long-term projections for the two counties are quite different, right now it’s only form, a temporary thing, that separates the sides to any significant degree.