Where will the shark be?

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Lone Shark
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Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2004 5:21 pm
Club: Ferbane
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Sunday's Call to Arms

Post by Lone Shark »

Friday morning, and the players will have met up last night for the last time before Sunday. Their preparations have been done, both in recent weeks and ever since they started training again last winter. They’ve made the effort, and now it’s time we do too.

Experienced supporters will know what we’re facing into on Sunday – we will be outnumbered. It has been lean few years for Offaly support, dining on the gristle of ignominious exits in provincial venues such as Limerick, Wexford and unhallowed Mullingar. As a result what you will see on Sunday, with the exception of a few younger daytrippers looking forward to the boozing sessions in Berminghams and the Hideout, is a hardcore of support that will look pretty threadbare when put up against the Daz-ed up masses of Kildare, and the Leinster Bandwagon brigades from Leix and Wastemeath. Verily their cups will be overflowing, while our glass will only look half full to the most optimistic of observers.

But to these observers who are not worrying about the quality as they happily feel the width, I point out one observation that has become very apparent in recent years. Our glass may be thinly filled, but our support has been distilled into the most driven, passionate and involved unit of followers that will be in Croke Park on Sunday, and so those who taste of it will realise that though the Biffs may be scant, they pack a punch and have a way of burning your throat and unsettling your stomach. The UíbhFháileans who will saunter down Jones’ Road on Sunday will be those who have been there through thick and thin, and they will realise the gravity and historic significance of this occasion, a facet of the day lost on all those maroon and blue clad hordes who will be descending on the GAA with all the vim and vigour of those who feel that they own Croke Park having squatted in it for all of two or three years, blithely unaware that they reside in the domicile of an aristocracy that has been since long before any of their current Leinster medallists were born.

This is the Leinster Championship, a clash against Southerly neighbours Laois and a fable in the making. Now as Offaly supporters, it is our duty to play our part, and to be not the 16th man, but an entire second fifteen, our lungs straining and exhorting to each and every player playing for the cause so that every single one of them feels our cries rallying them on.

Every county has support that looks to raise the roof – but they will look on in awe as we raise not the roof but the clouds themselves. We have the heart, and we have our Zulu-esque chorus that both inspires our own and terrifies our adversaries in equal measure. These tools that are at our disposal should not be allowed to rust on the shelf. We should wield ferociously and often.

Our county needs us. Sign in on Hill 16, section be, and let the Faithful Shark and the Biff Brigade lead you and our team on to greatness. The stands are for minnows. Your county needs Sharks.

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