OPINION: Size doesn't matter! Offaly U20 team proves you just need to have the hurling!
Positives will be taken from the year as a whole though for Tipperary with this appearance in the showpiece U20 final a year ahead of schedule with 20 of the 24-man matchday panel eligible for the grade next year. And one could argue, some of Tipperary's best players were in the stand.
Who could begrudge Offaly that U20 All-Ireland last Saturday in Nowlan Park in Kilkenny?
If that Offaly team continues into senior level this way, they will change the game. That's a big if!
At the minute, hurling at the top is all about bulk and muscle.
It's also hard, and Tipperary is a perfect example, to translate underage success into senior success.
Not all the players transition to senior level and that's a challenge or a question mark over the respective County Boards and football and hurling management. How do we better transition the talent from underage into the senior grade?
Anyway, back to Offaly and their place in the modern senior game...
The speed of hurling is still there sure and the entertainment value is through the roof of late, in Munster and Leinster, but the small, nippy corner forward doesn't have a place in the modern game.
You must be big and fast. And even at U20 level, there is a huge emphasis on the gym.
Well, this Offaly team has proven you just need to have the hurling.
Adam Screeney 0-12 (8f and 3 65s), Dan Bourke 1-3, Barry Egan 1-2, Shane Rigney and their Offaly compatriots could change the game, back to what it once was.
Screeney is small and weighs much less than his rivals, but yet he held his own against Podge O'Dwyer on the strength side of it on more than one occasion.
Having said that, Podge did some job on "le petit General" from Offaly. But when Screeney was kept quiet from play, others stood up.
It is hard to begrudge the Faithful County this All-Ireland. Many people say, although I don't, that they were robbed in 2022.
But they won an All-Ireland in 2024 at U20 level with pure hurling and a team the whole county seems to be behind - which had to have only added to the pressure.
Pace, good old-fashioned speed and skill, won the day. Tipp had no answer for the Offaly speed.
Hurling is all about touch and being on the training ground, from winter to summer.
Offaly had the touch at the key moments, Tipperary did not.
Every puckout hit with little or no delay between the score or the wide. Everything was done at pace and Tipperary could hardly breathe.
As fans rushed the field at the full-time whistle, you could see it meant so much to the people of Offaly.
And remember, they outnumbered Tipperary in the stands and terraces nearly four to one by one man's reckoning.
The Offaly fans were clearly hungrier to snap up the tickets and they won that contest before the ball was even thrown-in.
And the crowd played a role too on the day.
It felt like a home fixture for the Faithful County.
Many of these players could well do battle again next year in an All-Ireland Final, and what a spectacle that would be.
Positives will be taken from the year as a whole though for Tipperary with this appearance in the showpiece U20 final a year ahead of schedule with 20 of the 24-man matchday panel eligible for the grade next year.
And one could argue, some of Tipperary's best players were in the stand.