Offaly Senior Hurlers 2025

[Gobbler]

Just going with the glass half empty option for this post and I am not suggesting this will actually happen. But we have to tease out all scenarios.

It’s widely accepted that Johnny Kelly and Leo O’Connor wouldn’t have the best working relationships (the rights and wrongs here can be interpreted here whichever ways suits your agenda). It was noticeable that more or less immediately after the U20 All Ireland was won LOC was talking about going back to back while JK retorted by saying having won that U20 All Ireland the senior team now must become the priority.

See, the problem in Offaly is probably unique compared to other hurling counties. All the rest could survive in the top tier without a huge influx of underage hurlers. They would allow them (for the most part)to see out their underage careers and then join the senior panel. But without the influx of these guys for us chances are we don’t survive in the Leinster Championship. Maybe we won’t anyways but we would be in huge bother without them.

So you could feasibly be looking at a substantial amount of current U20’s in position to be in the first 20 for Offaly next season. Liam Hoare, Brecon Kavanagh, Donal Shirley, Ter Guinan, Adam Screeney, Ruairi Kelly off the top of my head.

This could lead to A) a high workload of our U20’s and they bow out early of the Leinster U20 Championship because they just have too many games and B) a senior team that is just too young and physically unready and we suffer relegation from the Leinster championship.

As I said this is the glass half empty worst case scenario but not beyond the realms. It’s going to take strong leadership from our new chairperson whoever he/she may be to make sure both managers are moving forward with the best interests of Offaly hurling at heart rather than any personal agendas being put to the forefront.

Personally I feel anybody who is U20 should be playing U20 as a priority. Thats their age group, they only get to play it at that time for a short period and deserve that the grade and those players are respected. That U20 championship will be hugely competitive and winning a Leinster again would be a big challenge and require all going well and a bit of luck. KK, Galway, Wexford, Dublin, Laois all have very decent teams and those games will in themselves be great development for our young hurlers because it will be very tough and competitive.

We have some brilliant young hurlers and I feel we really need to be careful with them. Some of our young lads get plenty of national publicity now that other counties are only happy to see them taken down a peg or two. You see the comments from people outside the county. These lads can be brilliant seniors but lets be realistic and look at the difference between senior hurling and u20 hurling. its chalk and cheese. Physicality trumps skill unfortunately in senior now and lads need to be ready for that. Let these lads enjoy their hurling at their grade and anything they contribute outside should only be a bonus. Managers particularly outside managers have their own agenda obviously for short term success with the adult team and will naturally push to have these players.

Cork won 3 of the previous 4 all irelands between 2020 to 2023. Not many of those players from 2023 and the previous years have been thrown into the senior team yet.

[private joker]

Putting under 20 ahead of liam mcarthy hurling? The priority is to stay in the leinster senior championship and liam mcarthy. That's what all the development squads etc are geared towards. No point in winning underage titles if your seniors are floundering. I don't know how offaly will work it, but senior will get the first call on players. Too much at stake.

[faithfulfanatic]

Putting under 20 ahead of liam mcarthy hurling? The priority is to stay in the leinster senior championship and liam mcarthy. That's what all the development squads etc are geared towards. No point in winning underage titles if your seniors are floundering. I don't know how offaly will work it, but senior will get the first call on players. Too much at stake.

Agree completely with Private Joker.
When push comes to shove, Senior is the only show in town.

[ruletheroost]

Putting under 20 ahead of liam mcarthy hurling? The priority is to stay in the leinster senior championship and liam mcarthy. That's what all the development squads etc are geared towards. No point in winning underage titles if your seniors are floundering. I don't know how offaly will work it, but senior will get the first call on players. Too much at stake.

100% agree with this. The whole ethos of development squads etc is a player pathway to the senior team. In both hurling and football. If a player is good enough to make the senior team better then they should be brought up. I don't agree with them being brought up to sit on the bench for long spells though. If they aren't going to make some sort of impact in the senior set up then leave them with the 20s.

[Lone Shark]

Putting under 20 ahead of liam mcarthy hurling? The priority is to stay in the leinster senior championship and liam mcarthy. That's what all the development squads etc are geared towards. No point in winning underage titles if your seniors are floundering. I don't know how offaly will work it, but senior will get the first call on players. Too much at stake.

I would love for the GAA to adapt this philosophy and not have this idea that players should make themselves available for every "championship" team for which they are eligible. I think we can all agree however, that as an association, they don't. What you're talking about there is a soccer or rugby style system, where someone plays with youth/U-19/development teams until the senior squad comes looking for them. We're in an association where like it or not, underage titles are celebrated for generations. Will any of the 2024 Longford minor footballers ever do anything bigger in football than beating Dublin to win a Leinster title? In the majority of cases, probably not.

The fact of the matter is that underage titles do make a difference. Players experiencing big days and memorable wins over teams like Galway, Tipperary and Kilkenny does make a difference to their long-term development and mindset, and it's all very well to declare what should be more important to supporters, but people vote with their feet. And in both 2023 and 2024, supporters voted overwhelmingly to say that an U-20 All-Ireland final is a much bigger deal to them than the senior team playing in a Joe McDonagh final.

Would an U-20 All-Ireland final be bigger than a Leinster senior title? No, but the fact of the matter is that even if we pulled out of the U-20 championship entirely in 2025, allowing all the "born in 2005" lads to concentrate entirely on senior, we still have a lot of work to do before winning four games out of five in a Leinster SHC round robin stage (as you probably have to do to get to a final) is realistic. In contrast, we will start the 2025 U-20 championship as the slight favourites to win Leinster, maybe a tick or two ahead of Galway, and probably joint favourites for the All-Ireland alongside Tipperary.

So you're not comparing like with like.

Secondly, for Offaly to compete at the level we all want the county to compete at, we have to continue to punch well above our weight. We have a much smaller population than every other county that will play Liam MacCarthy Cup hurling in 2025 - and the only two counties that aren't at least double our size are Kilkenny and Clare, where there's absolutely no doubt as to what sport is number one, unlike Offaly, where we are genuinely dual.

That can only happen in the long run if we have a better culture and a deeper affinity to hurling than is the norm. Now I firmly believe we do, but if that is to continue for the next 20 years, we need to seize this rare opportunity to keep providing our young supporters with these magical, incredible occasions where packed houses of Offaly supporters roar on teams to victories that are truly special, taking on the top teams in the country. I'm a 46 year old man and the emotions I felt in Nowlan Park five months ago, or in Carlow for the 2023 Leinster final, or in Portlaoise for the 2022 minor final - they'll stay with me forever. You can't tell me that selling hurling to primary school children in Offaly hasn't got a hell of a lot easier over the last three years, we all know it has. For feck' sake, I was at the Tullamore vs Edenderry semi-final this year and more of the kids that went out on the field at half-time had hurls than footballs, even the ones in red gear. You can't tell me that's unrelated to the journey that we've all been on with the Offaly minors and U-20s for the last three seasons.

The 2005-born hurlers will, if we're lucky, have at least another decade of hurling senior for Offaly, but they need more equally talented and inspired young lads coming up behind them. For that reason, I would hope that whoever is in Michael Duignan's shoes next Spring sits down with LOC and JK and makes it clear that we want the lads to continue their development, but with the possible exception of the Antrim game, the training and match plan for these hurlers should be geared towards making sure they're at their best for the U-20 championship, not for mission-impossible style tasks against Kilkenny and Galway.

[pigeon house biffo]

Many salient points there LS, most of which I agree with. Would ask on what basis you feel Clare arent a dual county however when there footballers have consistently outperformed our own for a considerable amount of time, thats before you discuss the relative standards both counties hurling teams have competed at.

[Lone Shark]

Many salient points there LS, most of which I agree with. Would ask on what basis you feel Clare arent a dual county however when there footballers have consistently outperformed our own for a considerable amount of time, thats before you discuss the relative standards both counties hurling teams have competed at.

I would say Clare aren't a dual county because their footballers have overachieved for a long time, but the presence of a Colm Collins and a core group of under-rated players masks the fact that at best, maybe 20% of Clare is "football-first" and maybe another 20-30% is 50/50.

I'll let the census data do the heavy lifting, since we can usually say with confidence that Local Electoral Areas correspond with population. Clare has five LEAs, which are:

Kilrush (5/28 councillors, so 18% of pop) - football dominant.
Ennistymon (4/28, 14%) - a couple of powerhouse clubs for both codes, e.g. Miltown Malbay, Ballyea, but more 50/50 overall.
Ennis LEA
Ennis (7/28, 25%) - Éire Óg are a strong team in both codes, St. Joseph's decent in both, but hurling much stronger overall.
Shannon (7/28, 25%) - Cratloe strong, but again, football almost non-existent outside that, and hurling is clearly dominant.
Killaloe (5/28, 18%) - A black hole for football, hurling utterly dominant.

So overall you're talking about one LEA where football is the dominant code, one smaller one where it's 50/50, the two largest ones where hurling is dominant, and one where football basically doesn't exist.

Now given the population advantage, they still probably have as much to pick from as Offaly do, but Clare aren't dual.

And that's before we talk about the longstanding issues in the county, well-documented, where footballers have argued that they are second class citizens because of how the hurlers are considered the glamour team that needs the bulk of the funding. To be fair, we've never had that in Offaly, regardless of who has sat in the chair.

[llkj]

Clare is a dual county for sure.

[Lone Shark]

Clare is a dual county for sure.

Depends on your definition I suppose. I would consider "dual" to be a county where there is a strong tradition of players playing both sports (Offaly, Laois, Wexford), as opposed to one where it's just big enough to have distinct football and hurling areas (Galway, Waterford, Down).

I don't see how you can have a county where aside from a county town where there is a massive population concentration, the majority of the area has no decent football (or hurling) and say that it's dual.

I found these online - they're four years out of date, but I presume things haven't changed that much. (Edit: Apologies, I tried to put in the pics, but they wouldn't link for some reason, presumably my lack of technical skill)

https://x.com/ShaneLorigan/status/1211762264216424450

We won't fall out over it of course, it's only opinions after all.

[SearingDrive]

Many salient points there LS, most of which I agree with. Would ask on what basis you feel Clare arent a dual county however when there footballers have consistently outperformed our own for a considerable amount of time, thats before you discuss the relative standards both counties hurling teams have competed at.

I would say Clare aren't a dual county because their footballers have overachieved for a long time, but the presence of a Colm Collins and a core group of under-rated players masks the fact that at best, maybe 20% of Clare is "football-first" and maybe another 20-30% is 50/50.

I'll let the census data do the heavy lifting, since we can usually say with confidence that Local Electoral Areas correspond with population. Clare has five LEAs, which are:

Kilrush (5/28 councillors, so 18% of pop) - football dominant.
Ennistymon (4/28, 14%) - a couple of powerhouse clubs for both codes, e.g. Miltown Malbay, Ballyea, but more 50/50 overall.
Ennis LEA
Ennis (7/28, 25%) - Éire Óg are a strong team in both codes, St. Joseph's decent in both, but hurling much stronger overall.
Shannon (7/28, 25%) - Cratloe strong, but again, football almost non-existent outside that, and hurling is clearly dominant.
Killaloe (5/28, 18%) - A black hole for football, hurling utterly dominant.

So overall you're talking about one LEA where football is the dominant code, one smaller one where it's 50/50, the two largest ones where hurling is dominant, and one where football basically doesn't exist.

Now given the population advantage, they still probably have as much to pick from as Offaly do, but Clare aren't dual.

And that's before we talk about the longstanding issues in the county, well-documented, where footballers have argued that they are second class citizens because of how the hurlers are considered the glamour team that needs the bulk of the funding. To be fair, we've never had that in Offaly, regardless of who has sat in the chair.

Kilrush is in West Clare, As is Milltown Malbay , but Inagh Kilnamonagh is hurling a few miles from Milltown. Ballyea is near Clarecastle adjacent to Ennis.

[llkj]

A nicely presented map in fairness. Would love to see something similar for Offaly.

If we are to take the top 2 grades and U20 as the comparison in each code, I would imagine you would end up with something very similar.
In football, you could nearly draw a line straight across the county as you would have no club south of virtually the middle of the county at all. In hurling, it is a little more spread, but still the entire East of the county is going to be blank.

[jimbob17]

Many salient points there LS, most of which I agree with. Would ask on what basis you feel Clare arent a dual county however when there footballers have consistently outperformed our own for a considerable amount of time, thats before you discuss the relative standards both counties hurling teams have competed at.

I would say Clare aren't a dual county because their footballers have overachieved for a long time, but the presence of a Colm Collins and a core group of under-rated players masks the fact that at best, maybe 20% of Clare is "football-first" and maybe another 20-30% is 50/50.

I'll let the census data do the heavy lifting, since we can usually say with confidence that Local Electoral Areas correspond with population. Clare has five LEAs, which are:

Kilrush (5/28 councillors, so 18% of pop) - football dominant.
Ennistymon (4/28, 14%) - a couple of powerhouse clubs for both codes, e.g. Miltown Malbay, Ballyea, but more 50/50 overall.
Ennis LEA
Ennis (7/28, 25%) - Éire Óg are a strong team in both codes, St. Joseph's decent in both, but hurling much stronger overall.
Shannon (7/28, 25%) - Cratloe strong, but again, football almost non-existent outside that, and hurling is clearly dominant.
Killaloe (5/28, 18%) - A black hole for football, hurling utterly dominant.

So overall you're talking about one LEA where football is the dominant code, one smaller one where it's 50/50, the two largest ones where hurling is dominant, and one where football basically doesn't exist.

Now given the population advantage, they still probably have as much to pick from as Offaly do, but Clare aren't dual.

And that's before we talk about the longstanding issues in the county, well-documented, where footballers have argued that they are second class citizens because of how the hurlers are considered the glamour team that needs the bulk of the funding. To be fair, we've never had that in Offaly, regardless of who has sat in the chair.

Kilrush is in West Clare, As is Milltown Malbay , but Inagh Kilnamonagh is hurling a few miles from Milltown. Ballyea is near Clarecastle adjacent to Ennis.

I would disagree with the notion of Clare not being a dual county. They are obviously stronger in hurling, in the same way Cork are stronger in hurling. Clare have had strong football teams over the years and in any other province, would have won more provincial titles. They just had Kerry and often a strong Cork to contend with and have been a strong team in football over last 10 years or more and challenged with the best. They played a couple of Munster finals in the 90s winning only one in 1992, famously. Prior to that, (1992 was first year of open draw) the draw was stacked with Cork and Kerry being kept on opposite sides of draw so they would meet in Munster final. In essence, any team to win Munster would have needed to beat Cork and Kerry in same year which proved impossible for the other counties.

Little or no hurling in West Clare for years and has only come about in last 20 years or so and only in very small pockets where football is totally dominant. The Kilrush electoral area is all football. Ennistymon electoral area would be much stronger in Football too and only for Inagh and Kilnamona joining together with a large span of area with large population, both would probably be junior or intermediate hurling as they mostly were for years. In fact Kilmaley would fall in there also probably and their players would have played senior football with Lissycasey, who would have won and contested senior football finals up to maybe 10 years ago, while Kilmaley yoyod a bit between senior and intermediate hurling. The closer you get to Ennis the more hurling there is, but there is still a lot of football around Ennis and in Ennis. Both Eire Og and Doora Barefield are much stronger in football than they are in hurling and Eire Og Ennis won senior football in 3 of las 4 years including this year.

Ballyea is a small area of Clarecastle parish and all hurling but would be weak without the extra support from West Clare permission players and they are very reliant on some of them, probably 5 or 6 of whom came from football clubs to hurl with them from likes of Cooraclare, Kilmihil and Clondegad. All round I'd say Ennis area is 50/50 and the clubs in around the town are stronger in football than hurling currently.

East Clare (Killaloe electoral area) is all hurling and has little or no football.

Shannon electoral area would be way stronger in hurling with exception of Cratloe who are equally strong at both and Wolfe Tones Shannon who won both intermediate hurling in football this year and will play in senior in both next year.

So to tot that up i'd say football is actually stronger than hurling in 2.5 if not 3 of the electoral areas currently, (Ennis close to 50/50 and would have higher volume of hurling even if the football clubs are stronger and doing better than hurling clubs there currently). Two of the areas (Shannon and Killaloe) are way stronger in hurling, have little football and would make up a higher percentage of population (43% v 32% by stats given above) than the 2 areas in the west of the county and generally would house the co senior finalists in hurling in most years - ie Feakle and Sixmilebridge in 2024 are both from these electoral areas. That said there are anomalies and Cratloe from Shannon electoral area won senior football last year and other years and contested lots of finals while Inagh Kilnamona from Ennistymon area played in hurling final a couple of years ago.

So all in all, Clare is a dual county and would consider itself so. Up to the mid 90s it had similar success in hurling as it did in football - ie little or none and there is a bit of recency bias going on here with regards to perception. In more recent times, the hurlers got success and moved the perspective to people considering it a hurling county, in the same vein that Wexford moved from being perceived a football county to being perceived as a hurling county despite winning 4 All Ireland senior championships in a row in the early 1900's. There is likely more players playing hurling in Clare than football for population spread reasons for the same reasons there is probably a little more playing football in Offaly than there is hurling - for population spread reasons.

[hamstrings]

A nicely presented map in fairness. Would love to see something similar for Offaly.

If we are to take the top 2 grades and U20 as the comparison in each code, I would imagine you would end up with something very similar.
In football, you could nearly draw a line straight across the county as you would have no club south of virtually the middle of the county at all. In hurling, it is a little more spread, but still the entire East of the county is going to be blank.

Below map is a start

[llkj]

Nice map also. Did you just make it or where did you find that?

Also, am I right in saying that they area at the very tip of Offaly is all Moneygall catchment area?

[hamstrings]

Nice map also. Did you just make it or where did you find that?

Also, am I right in saying that they area at the very tip of Offaly is all Moneygall catchment area?

A website called pride in the parish sells them for a few counties , yes that's dunkerrin/moneygall. Nice chunk of an area