Footballers need to avail of favourable draw in local derby
IKNOW that hurling and next Saturday’s big game is the main talking point this week, but spare a thought for the footballers who must have been very happy with the outcome of the All-Ireland qualifiers first round draw.
Getting Waterford at home represents the best possible chance of at least winning a championship game and making a small bit of progress.
And although they are going to be missing their lion-hearted captain Daithí Waters, along with full-back Jim Rossiter and corner-forward Paul Curtis, bar some minor miracles, there is no reason why they cannot overcome those losses in this south-east derby which will be played on the weekend of June 9-10.
It would mark a piece of small but significant progress to at least win one match at this level for a generally new-look squad, similar to last year when Limerick were overcome on the road before the team crashed out at home to Monaghan under the old regime.
I know there’s a growing clamour for a two-tier All-Ireland football championship structure, but I’d be slow to suggest it for the next couple of weeks in Carlow or Longford in particular.
Every so often an underdog springs a surprise result, but it’s a rarity when two teams manage it in the one province on the same day.
Sport has to be measured by more than who wins the trophies, and in these two cases it’s safe to say that the events on Sunday in Tullamore and Longford respectively will be remembered with great pride for many years to come.
As for Kildare and Meath, it’s about time they got their houses in order because both counties are declining at an alarming rate.
An ex-Dublin defender of the seventies, Robbie Kelleher, penned what I thought was an excellent counter-argument to Colm O’Rourke’s call for the capital to be split in two in a newspaper article several months ago now.
In it he highlighted the huge population growth in the counties bordering Dublin, and suggested that they have more than enough resources to be doing considerably better.
I couldn’t agree more, but sometimes it’s easier to seek a solution elsewhere rather than getting one’s own house in order.
Turning to the hurling, I think nobody envisaged the considerable ease that marked Wexford’s stroll to a second successive set of Leinster championship points in Tullamore on Sunday.
I genuinely expected Offaly to hit us with everything they had in the first 20 minutes, but instead they were crushed by that opportunist early goal from Conor McDonald and ended the game in a sorry mess after the dismissal of three players.
They looked a second rate team throughout, and that’s sad to see given the marvellous contribution the county made to hurling throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
They broke our own hearts more than once in that spell, but it’s not helping hurling to see a former stronghold gradually disappearing from view.
And that’s why I’m of the belief that relegating them down to the Joe McDonagh Cup - a strong likelihood now - is a retrograde step because they might never recover.
Surely the aim should be to increase the number of teams dining at hurling’s top table rather than losing a county with a storied history, albeit one in the midst of an apparent crisis.
And there’s a readymade solution as, with five competing teams at present, it would be straightforward to suspend relegation and still promote the McDonagh Cup winners as planned to leave six participants in 2018.
Indeed, that would also level the playing field as it would remove the necessity for byes and ensure that every county had the exact same timeframe between games.
I realise that an extra team would require an additional round and one more week to complete the round robin, but if it helps to save Offaly from the scrapheap it would be of benefit to the game as a whole.
As for next Saturday, Galway showed their intent, not that anyone every doubted it in the first place, against Kilkenny. We’ll know a lot more about our own team after the westerners pay us this visit.
minute, with Ronan Hughes collecting a straight red card for catching Mark Fanning late after the goalkeeper delivered the ball to a colleague.
Next up is the first of two immense challenges in the space of seven days. Galway have come on in leaps and bounds since their league quarter-final loss in Innovate Wexford Park, a point underlined in their dismantling of Kilkenny in Salthill on Sunday.
And after two wins against the lesser two opponents in the Leinster championship, next Saturday we will find out for sure if Wexford are on the right track to have a bigger say than last year in the race for All-Ireland honours.
Wexford: Mark Fanning (1-0 pen.); Simon Donohoe, Liam Ryan, Damien Reck (0-1); Shaun Murphy; Diarmuid O’Keeffe (0-1), Matthew O’Hanlon (joint capt.), Pádraig Foley; Kevin Foley (0-1), Aidan Nolan (1-1); Jack O’Connor (1-3), Conor McDonald (1-1), Lee Chin (1-4, 0-4 frees); Paul Morris (0-2), Rory O’Connor (0-7, 4 frees, 1 ’65). Subs. - Conor Firman for Donohoe (46), Liam Og McGovern for Morris (50), Harry Kehoe (0-3, 1 free) for R. O’Connor (50), Willie Devereux for P. Foley (54), David Dunne for Chin (65).
Offaly: Eoghan Cahill; Paddy Delaney, Seán Gardiner, Ben Conneely; David O’TooleGreene, Pat Camon, Damien Egan; Shane Kinsella, David King (capt.); Oisín Kelly (1-1), Conor Mahon, Brendan Murphy; Shane Dooley (1-5, 0-5 frees), Joe Bergin (0-1), Kevin Dunne (0-1). Subs. - Tommy Geraghty (0-1) for Murphy (HT), Colin Egan for Mahon (HT), Dan Currams for Kinsella (42), Paddy Rigney for Conneely (48), Ronan Hughes for Bergin (54).
Referee: James McGrath (Westmeath).