Hyland's X factor and Raheen's greater experience can just edge out talented Ballinagar

IT may be the third tier and rank behind the Senior and Senior “B” Football Championship finals in terms of importance but the interest in the Intermediate Football Championship final between Raheen and Ballinagar shows that this is no ordinary game of football.

Sunday's senior final curtain raiser will attract attention from far outside the competing clubs and the wider Killeigh parish. There is a huge shared playing connection between both clubs, a failed amalgamation process a few years ago and all the history that goes with neighbours in the one parish. There are vast, complicated family links, all sorts of grey areas and ties in places that you wouldn't expect.

These are all outlined in other articles but suffice to say here, that it all adds to an absolutely compelling, intoxicating mix.

It will be a huge, tribal occasion for both clubs and communities but when you strip all that away, it all boils down to two groups of young lads playing a game of football and wanting to win, to bring joy and pride to their own people.

Few would have predicted this pairing at the start of the year. We knew that Raheen could be there or there abouts and that Ballinagar had the raw ingredients, the talent to do something special. But as the year wore on and the business end of the season approached, they both looked to be well off where they needed to be and St Brigid's and Tullamore seemed to be clearly the best two sides in the championship.

Yet Ballinagar and Raheen have come flying up on the rails, sending the Croghan men and Tullamore packing, and we have a parish derby final to set the pulse racing, excite the senses.

Ballinagar may have beaten Raheen by 1-10 to 0-8 in the first round but it is Raheen who are favourites for this. It is a crown that sits very uneasily on their heads and comes with a large warning sign attached but they have punched at a higher grade than Ballinagar for years. They have been an established intermediate club, annual contenders while Ballinagar just came out of junior three years ago and are building.

Ballinagar are moving in the right direction with the potential to go much further but there are a couple of big factors in Raheen's favour. They have been very close in this grade in recent years, losing finals in 2021 and 2022, their age profile is a bit better than Ballinagar's, who have a very young team with most in their early 20s and then there is their X factor: Dylan Hyland.

Hyland, a man with powerful family connections in Ballinagar, is arguably the best forward in Offaly at the moment. A volatile but brilliant player, he is capable of shooting the lights out. Hyland has had his share of disciplinary issues in recent years but he is a player to set the pulse racing. It is probably part of his nature that he has to play on the edge and if you took this out of him, he may not be as effective but he is the single most important player in this final.

He can do the unexpected, he can get spectacular scores and he has terrific vision. A great competitor, Hyland will be fully aware that he needs to play the full game here and you can be fairly certain that he will perform at or close to potential. He will be earmarked for special attention by Ballinagar, they know all about the threat he poses and his influence will determine a lot here.

Morgan Tynan is as important for Ballinagar in his own way but more uncertainty surrounds the way he will play. Tynan's talent is undeniable. He was excellent as Offaly won the All-Ireland U-20 football title in 2021 and he oozes football and quality. He has yet to take the next step from a brilliant underage player into a senior county one.

Offaly football is crying out for someone like Tynan. He is well over six foot, strong, well built, able to move and with as cultured a left foot as you will see. He opted out of the Offaly senior football panel in mid season this year after falling down the pegging order and this final will be a shop window for him, if he wishes to get the call from Declan Kelly and Mickey Harte for next year. He needs to be worked with and hopefully he will be in there but he also needs to step forward. Tynan can be brilliant for spells, out of the game at other times but he is Ballinagar's single most talented player. He has blown hot and cold for them this season but encouragingly, he played very well in the semi-final win over St Brigid's. He scored three crucial points, set up the late clinching goal, even if he may have been attempting to fist it over the bar, and equally as importantly, he matched that with work rate and an obvious desire to push on and drive his team mates forward.

If Tynan brings all this to the table on Sunday and performs with greater consistency than he sometimes does, then Ballinagar will have a great chance as they have a handful of other really good footballers, most of whom will perform reasonably well on the day.

It is all very intriguing. On paper, there is merit in the argument that Ballinagar have potentially the better team. Full back Diarmuid Finneran was on the Offaly senior football panel this year, midfielder Adam Strong was on the extended panel for a spell early in the season and Robbie Gallagher and Geordi O'Meara played U-20 football for Offaly.

Dylan Hyland was one of Offaly's best players, though he went way off the boil in the Tailteann Cup and didn't travel to the final dead rubber against Down in Cavan. Midfielder James Lalor and full forward Conor Carroll played senior for Offaly a few years ago and they are very important to Raheen,. They are vastly experienced, fiercely dedicated footballers with a physicality that Ballinagar will find it hard to cope with.

However, Raheen don't have the same volume of players making Offaly squads that Ballinagar have had in recent years and that is significant – the Geashill-Cloneygowan club have traditionally been the senior or strongest football club in the parish but the wheel has begun to turn in the last few years,.

A big plus for Raheen in recent weeks has been the form of Brian Crombie. He is playing the best football of his life in the attack. He scored a whopping 2-6 in the run away quarter-final win over Erin Rovers and followed up with 1-2 in the semi-final against Tullamore. That has lifted the weight off Dylan Hyland and given opponents another player they have to talk about.

For Ballinagar, Adam Strong will be rock solid at midfield while Robbie Gallagher is arguably their best player this year, moving very well and carrying ball forward. He has taken a definite step forward, even if his finishing is the weak point of his game and his conversion rate is not high enough – his county future, if he has one, could be back in the half back line but that is a story for another day and Gallagher clearly has something that can be worked on.

Neither side is the finished article and both have vulnerabilities that can be exposed and will be shown up in O'Connor Park.

Raheen were in crisis early in the season and Ballinagar were not far off the same. Raheen lost all three group games, following up the Ballinagar defeat with ones by Tullamore and St Brigid's. Ballinagar performed very poorly in their losses to Tullamore and Brigid's and both entered the knockout stages with clouds darkening over them.

Raheen changed manager with Edenderry's Richie Dalton replacing Tubber's Padraig Farrell. Ballinagar had no case whatsoever for seeking a change with Benny O'Brien, they were just on a bad run rather than in a full on crisis but they were not going well – O'Brien is a definite asset to Ballinagar and has enjoyed success with his native St Brigid's in Roscommon.

Both have clicked into form spectacularly in the knockout stages. Plenty of people have noted that Raheen have been the big beneficiaries of the unsatisfactory championship format with every team qualifying for the quarter-finals. They lost their three group games but now find themselves in the final. Their 3-17 to 1-7 quarter-final win over Erin Rovers ignited their season and they got the Pullough men at the right time. Erin Rovers had topped their group but Raheen's group always looked the stronger while the death of a cherished Pullough man Joe Buckley and his funeral on the Saturday certainly had an adverse impact on their preparations.

Raheen got an early run on them, Erin Rovers' heads dropped and the result was a riot but Raheen continued their good form into the semi-finals, taking out fancied Tullamore by 1-10 to 0-10: Tullamore promoted players to senior at regular stages during the season and certainly did not load their team.

Ballinagar have improved steadily since their last two group games. Their 0-11 to 0-8 quarter-final win over Kilcormac-Killoughey did not represent anything special. Solid is the best way of describing it but there was still something quietly impressive about the way they played and it was clear that they had turned a corner. The evidence for this became clear when they surprised championship favourites St Brigid's, 1-11 to 0-10, in the semi-final.

They played their best football of the year in the first half and they held on for dear life in the second before an injury time Jamie Ballesty goal sealed the win. The impression some people have that St Brigid's took Ballinagar for granted is immaterial. It was still a very good performance by Ballinagar, a fully deserved win and it sends them into the final with their confidence soaring.

It also means that Ballinagar have a great chance here. A big conundrum with Raheen is their recent displays in finals. They lost to Clonbullogue in 2021, 3-15 to 2-8 and Ballycommon in 2022, 1-13 to 2-6. In both finals, Raheen didn't perform and they were bitterly disappointed at their displays. It means that there is pressure on here, doubts about them and Ballinagar certainly have the players to ask testing questions of them.

At the same time, the intermediate is way more open this year than the last three years when Clonbullogue, Ballycommon and Daingean had very good sides and while Ballinagar are very decent, they are not as good as any of those three teams – at the moment at least, though this could change very quickly in a year or two.

It doesn't mean Ballinagar can't win this, they can. The parish derby, the local rivalry and all this entails throws more unknowns into the equation and there is more pressure on Raheen here than Ballinagar, who are in bonus territory. The Geashill-Cloneygowan club can get the job done. They have the experience of playing in those finals, competing at this level for a few years. A handful of their players won intermediate medals back in 2014 and they have Dylan Hyland.

Verdict – Raheen.