Determined Ballinagar fully focused on taking unexpected golden opportunity

THEIR season may have entered fairytale territory but Ballinagar won't be settling for any well intentioned pats on the back as they begin the countdown to Sunday's Leinster Junior Football Championship final against Dunsany of Meath.

It is very true that a defeat, no matter what its nature, won't undermine a sensational year in any way. It is also true that they are very much in bonus territory and that a Leinster club junior final was on no one's horizon in the club at the start of the season but this line of thinking won't be infiltrating their camp in any shape or form.

A trip to Navan to face the Meath junior champions will test every sinew in their make up and Ballinagar will be underdogs. They do, however, have the potential of following in the footsteps of Clara and Clonbullogue by taking this title and their form has been excellent.

Ballinagar's confidence has come on in leaps and bounds in recent weeks and the improvement of their players, particularly some of their less heralded ones, has been noticeable. This augurs very well for their prospects and they will be very hard beaten on Sunday.

Ballinagar have a huge amount going for them. They have a handful of very strong junior players. Morgan Tynan is one of the brightest prospects in Offaly football and while he has yet to make the transition from an outstanding underage player into a county senior one, his potential to do so is considerable. He was superb as Offaly won the All-Ireland U-20 Football Championship in 2021 and while Ballinagar are competing at a much lower level than county or even senior club, Tynan looks to be taking important steps forward. He is beginning to play for more sustained periods in games, rather than floating in and out, he is really standing up to be counted and a hard edge is beginning to appear in his game.

Tynan is Ballinagar's best known player but they have some others that are not far off county standard. Diarmuid Finneran was on the Offaly senior panel this year, Adam Strong trained with them earlier in the year and Robbie Gallagher and Geordi O'Meara were on the Offaly U-20 football team.  Robbie's grandfather, Trim man Dick Mee, father of his mother Geraldine, was an All Ireland senior football medal with Meath in 1954. One of the few of that great squad still alive, he will be putting home loyalty to one side and supporting his grandson on Sunday.

Full back Finneran is a great man to just go out and mark a man, Gallagher has been in sensational form in the Ballinagar attack this year and O'Meara has come good in recent weeks – his influence on games has moved from peripheral to pivotal and his calmness on the ball is having a very positive impact on all around them.

That quintet of players are the backbone of the Ballinagar team and a lot of junior clubs wouldn't have that volume of players at that standard. Ballinagar are not without their weak points and they have players that can struggle on certain days but as a unit, they are performing very well.

Ballinagar's defence has been heroic this year. They conceded just one point from play against Raheen in the Intermediate Football Championship final and Ellistown of Kildare could manage just eight points in last Saturday's semi-final in O'Connor Park.

Brian Malone and Declan Crombie have been excellent and Aaron Gorman is an example of a player who is relishing their progress and improving the whole time. Adam Strong and Morgan Tynan provide a very strong midfield pairing and while Robbie Gallagher has been the main man up front, Geordi O'Meara's play making ability has also impressed and their scores have come from throughout the front division at different stages.

It has been a great adventure for Ballinagar. They were among the contenders for the Offaly Intermediate Football Championship at the start of the year and started brightly with a win over parish rivals Raheen. They then floundered, playing very poorly in defeats by St Brigid's and Tullamore as the pressure mounted on all involved. With every team qualifying for quarter-finals irrespective of group results, those defeats did not matter and that escape chute may have been a factor in the performances but they were still poor enough to make you wonder about them.

Their season took off spectacularly in the knockout stages. They were solid in their quarter-final win over Kilcormac-Killoughey and their semi-final win over St Brigid's was a season turning one. St Brigid's were the championship favourites but an excellent start set Ballinagar up for the win and they edged out Raheen in a fiercely fought final. They gave a defensive master class that day, allowing the losers to score just one point from play, as they showed great character to win their first ever intermediate title.

They celebrated that win well but quickly focused on the Leinster club campaign. They didn't get to compete in Leinster when winning the Offaly junior title in 2022 – intermediate is the third tier in Offaly and they compete in Leinster junior with the senior “B” champions in intermediate. They embraced every aspect of the challenge and have performed with terrific consistency.

After a good first round win over Ballon of Carlow, they had to dig deep to beat Wolfe Tones of Louth and Ellistown to make the final. Those games have brought them on in leaps and bounds and there is a welter of excitement in the area.

It is great for a small rural club to experience this. Ballinagar have spent most of their existence either struggling or in downright survival mode. They had a golden era at the end of the 1980s, winning junior in '88 and losing to Doon in the '89 intermediate final. They returned to the doldrums after this and almost went out of existence a few years ago when they voted in favour of amalgamation with Raheen but were rejected at the altar by their neighbours.

Those amalgamation talks were prompted by terrific success from the parish underage club, Na Fianna from 2-16 to 2019. There was a desire by influential people and officers in both clubs to keep those young players together but it didn't happen and Ballinagar has now yielded a spectacular dividend. They had the bulk of the players on the successful minor side in 2019 and the presence of Ballinagar players on county underage squads is a recent phenomenon that has been noted by observers.

Their mentors and many supporters will have studied available footage of Dunsany and it is not the step into the unknown that it would have been just a few years ago. They will have an idea of their strengths and weaknesses, the players who require special attention. It is still new territory for Ballinagar and you just don't know how it will go. It is possible for lopsided games to emerge at this level but it is unlikely.

Dunsany beat a very good Kilcavan team last Saturday and the Meath representatives are traditionally strong at this level of competition. Dunsany may be in the small pocket of hurling territory in Meath but it is a big ask for Ballinagar: it could go wrong but the indications are that they will be fiercely competitive. We will have an idea after fifteen minutes. It was clear early on against Ellistown that Ballinagar could win and the opening quarter will also tell a lot here.

With the quality at their disposal, Ballinagar should hold their own and they have shown they have the capacity to win tight games. Ballinagar would not have feared Kilcavan one bit if they were playing them and they have no reason to fear Dunsany. They should be very close to a historic win.