Changes made on Offaly minor football team for big quarter-final clash

OFFALY minor footballers have made one change in personnel and a number of positional switches for Tuesday evening's big Leinster championship quarter-final clash with Louth in Tullamore.

Tubber's Enda McLoughlin comes into the team in place of Niall Flannery. He is named at centre half back with Christian McKeon movd to corner back.

The other changes are positional ones with team captain Cameron Egan named at corner forward instead of wing back with Brian Carroll wearing the number 7 jersey. There are a couple of other minor positional changes in the attack, from the side that beat Longford in their last group game.

Offaly have performed well to date. After losing to Kildare in their first game, they had their best display of the season with a win over Laois in round 2 of the group phase. A win over Longford in their last game secured a quarter-final berth instead of a preliminary quarter-final.

That has given Offaly a few weeks to prepare and they will be looking forward to getting back into action this evening.

Manager Roger Ryan will be demanding improvement from their last game against Longford. Offaly won by 1-11 to 1-10 but almost lost it as they didn't build on a 1-7 to 0-5 half time lead. They missed a handful of goal chances and almost paid the price but Kaelem Bryan got a late winning point.

Louth have a decent team and beat Wicklow by 0-12 to 0-10 in the preliminary quarter-finals. In their group 2 games, they performed well when losing by 1-15 to 1-10 to Dublin, had a very good 2-13 to 0-7 win over Westmeath and then lost, 2-9 to 1-7, to Meath in their last game.

It is hard to know with minor teams. No one in Offaly is getting excited about the prospects of this team but they are solid with some very good players. Unusually, the team features two players from Ballyskenach-Killavilla, twins Fionn and Rob Carney. Rob is a physically strong player with plenty of power while Fionn has loads of skill, the ability to conjure up something special. Cillian Bourke is a real prospect at midfield where he will be partnered by dual player, Mark Mulrooney while Kaelem Bryan had a very good semi-final in the attack.

Louth have had the benefit of a game since the group stages. It is also worth noting that Offaly's best display was against Laois and the O'Moore county were trounced 6-10 to 0-9 by Wicklow in the preliminary quarter-finals.

However, minor is full of swings and round abouts and Offaly will be confident of performing well. Indeed, they have provided an example of a team performing to the best of their ability to date, albeit with some room for improvement. Getting to the semi-final would be a good achievement and Offaly will fancy their chances on home turf.

OFFALY: Donnacha Keoghan (Ballinagar); Christian McKeon (Clara), Patrick Kenna (Tullamore), Harry Goulding (Edenderry); Rory Grehan (Raheen), Enda McLoughlin (Tubber),Brian Carroll (Ferbane); Cillian Bourke (Tullamore), Mark Mulrooney (Kilcormac-Killoughey); Fionn Carney (Ballyskenach-Killavilla), Cian Bracken (Daingean), Cillian Foran (Edenderry); Kaelem Bryan (Edenderry), Robert Carney (Ballyskenach-Killavilla), Cameron Egan (St Brigid's) Subs – Tristan Dunne (Cappincur), Niall Flannery (St Rynagh's), Callum Kelly (Doon), Dara Bates (Shamrocks), Shane Marsden (Daingean), Ryan Murphy (Rhode), Craig Weldon (Gracefield), Aaron Molloy (St Rynagh's), Ricky Geoghegan (Bracknagh).