Offaly hurlers to put best foot forward for Tipp challenge

BARRING a major upset, the curtain will wind down on the Offaly GAA inter-county season next Saturday when Tipperary come to Tullamore for an All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship preliminary quarter-final.

After a season of wildly fluctuating emotions, this is the last chance saloon for Offaly and they are up against it with Tipperary red hot favourites.

It will be an interesting test for Offaly. While they will be dreaming of a famous success, the real focus is on their performance and to be as competitive as they possibly can be.

Shocks are always possible in hurling and Offaly have performed at a very decent level this year but it will still be the upset of the season if they pull off the win. You certainly can't make a viable case for Offaly winning but there will still be a lot of interest in seeing how they get on.

Both sides enter the game with big points to prove. Offaly are smarting after their Joe McDonagh Cup final extra time defeat by Carlow while Tipperary need to lay down a marker after a particularly poor display in their defeat by Waterford in their last Munster Senior Hurling Championship round robin game.

It has been an exciting season for Offaly hurling. The U-20 hurlers created a welter of excitement as they went to the All-Ireland final and while that ended in a defeat by Cork, there is new optimism for the future.

The senior hurlers did almost everything that was asked of them this year as they won promotion back to Division 1 of the National Hurling League and reached the Joe McDonagh Cup final. Unfortunately they just couldn't get across the line against Carlow in the final and that defeat was a big blow to Offaly.

Irrespective of whether you feel Offaly were ready for the top tier or not, they could have done with winning that. The All-Ireland U-20 hurling final defeat a week later has left Offaly hurling nursing a bit of a hangover and a good performance on Saturday would help lift that.

They could very easily have been approaching the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final from a very different place. A win over Carlow would have resulted in a game against Dublin and success in the U-20 would have created a massive buzz.

The U-20 hurlers performed really well against Cork and were not that far off the mark. They were particularly good in the first half and the development of these young players has opened up new possibilities for Offaly hurlers.

The seniors have been performing more or less at their potential the whole year and that is all that can be asked of them. While there is a considerable gap between the top tier and the Joe McDonagh Cup, the top teams in the second tier are still performing at a high level. You have to be surpremely fit and well able to hurl to thrive here and Offaly have played well.

They will be without Dara Maher for this game. The corner back was controversially sent off against Carlow after coming into contact with Paddy Boland's helmet. A one match ban was upheld in an appeal to the Central Appeals Committee last week and it looks like the Shinrone man will have to sit this one out.

Tipperary approach this game with questions hanging over them. They flirted with disaster in that 1-24 to 0-21 defeat by Waterford, requiring Limerick to edge out Cork to keep them in the championship. A defeat and early exit would have been an unmitigated disaster for them and it was very close to happening.

Tipperary wre missing Cathal Barrett and Jake Morris for that game but gave a strangely subdued display. For whatever reason, they didn't get their performance up to the level that was needed for a game where the stakes were so high but they survived and didn't pay the maximum penalty.

Before that Tipperary had seemed to be motoring well. They beat Clare by 5-22 to 3-23 in a high scoring shootout in their first game and then drew with Cork and Limerick.

The Waterford performance means that Offaly could be facing them at the worse time. While winning will be their first priority, Tipperary will be very keen to make their point, to produce a really good performance. Players will be expected to play close to maximum capacity.

It is hard to know what way Offaly will go. The county footballers displayed very little appetite for the Tailteann Cup after their Leinster championship campaign ended and exited very innocuously against Wexford last Saturday.

Their Tailteann Cup displays were a symptom of a condensed season with a lot of high intensity games coming on top of each other . There is also a possibility that Offaly hurlers will be flat after a similar schedule of games.

It is a slightly different story though. Whereas the footballers were into a round robin competition, the hurlers are in knockout action with one bite at the cherry. They won't want to be annihilated while the game provides a welcome opportunity to see where they are against a top tier team with some chance of an All-Ireland win.

Expect Offaly to be fully tuned in and to fight for everything, to produce a good performance. You would imagine that Offaly will be competitive for a while, that they will stay with Tipperary for most of the first half and possibly fall away coming up to half time. Tipp really should win and Offaly's initial target is to make that very difficult to achieve.