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townman wrote:is there many on the team who were under 21 last years team that beat kildare in Athy.

By my reckoning, the ones in bold are all available again:

OFFALY: Conor Clancy; Seán Moriarty, Joseph O’Connor, Darragh Corbett; Keith Mullally, Philip Foy, Conor McNamee; Declan Byrne, Eoin Carroll; Jason Gethings, Peter Cunningham (0-3), Aaron McDonagh (0-3); Joe Maher (0-6, 0-2f), Luke Kelly, Sean Doyle (0-1). Subs: Adam Shelley for Byrne (29), Rúairí McNamee for Kelly (37), Nigel Bracken for Cunningham (55 – B/C), John Kavanagh for Maher (60).

team named - took this from the Tullamore Tribune website

OFFALY: Jamie Colgan (Tubber); Jim Hendy (Bracknagh), James Lawlor (Raheen), Aaron Whelan (Gracefield); Darragh Corbett (Shannonbridge), Joe Kinahan (Tubber), Conor McNamee (Rhode); Eoin Carroll (Cappincur), Declan Byrne (Raheen); Sean Moriarty (Edenderry), Joe Maher (Ferbane), Jamie Evans (Gracefield); Ruari McNamee (Rhode), John Kavanagh (Tulamore), Luke Kelly (Clara).

Is Peter Cunningham injured?

He had a shoulder operation a few week ago. Im sure he will start... He's too important not to start. Wouldn't be too confident of some players there but the best of luck to the faithful men

Kildare team as announced

Heaney,
B. Byrne, Maguire, Mescal,
Houlihan, Connell, Hyland,
Moore, D. Fitzpatrick,
Fenner, Sherry, N. Kelly,
McMonigle, O Flaherty, N. Flynn.

No D Duke, Chris Healy and W Fitzpatrick.
Or Luke Flynn, Liam Healy.
Luke Flynn was out with a broken Finger and Missed a fair bit, and then I believe opted out or dropped for disc reasons ?.
Leavy is in Cadet Training, so not totally available.
T. Kinsella and W. Fitzpatrick may also miss out due to Army Training.
L. Healy has a broken Finger and is probably unavailable.
& of course Paddy Brophy is in Australia

Not a great Kildare side. Fancy us to win......

Best of luck to the U21 tonight.

Good luck to all involved tonight , give it socks.

Bad result from Portleash, Kildre 3-12, Offaly 0-9. Hope we win on Sunday, our U-21s will be able to give their full attention to the league now.

Moriarty sent off early enough in second half didn't help things when we were making a bit of a come back where we scored 4 points in a row . Dublin still the team to beat and can't see any team stopping them in Leinster .

Very dissapointing especially when considering last years win In Athy.

Good start to the second half but Kildare reasserted and then to finish it off Moriarty does something totally stupid.

Eoin Carroll was lucky not to join him escaping with a yellow for what was at least black.

Discipline needs to improve.....

Only bright spot was Peter C back playing but he probably needs a few weeks to be ready for National League

Very disappointing result last night. Although there was a fair breeze in the first half, we still left ourselves a lot to do going in 7 behind at half time. 4 unanswered points at the start of second half brought the game to life albeit very short lived. An easy turnover by Kildare saw them score a sloppy enough goal followed by 2 more points left the game over as a contest as earlier as the 10th minute of the second half.

Overall, I felt that Kildare were much sharper, showed much greater pace in attack and they certainly made much greater use of their sweeper than we did of ours. That said, we didn’t help ourselves with the quality of ball that we kicked in at times. Niall Kelly showed his class in the first half with some excellent scores for Kildare – we just didn’t have anyone to confidently kick over points from 30/40 yards. Peter Cunningham tried hard, got on the ball a lot but without any real end product. Eoin Carroll was probably the only Offaly man that could hold his head high leaving the field but was fortunate to escape with only a yellow late on. Pure stupid from Moriarty hitting off the ball – deserved red card.

All that said, I wasn’t overly impressed by Kildare and don’t see them causing Dublin too many problems.

Doon Exile summed it up well. Very poor stuff from Offaly, poor use of possession, too many unforced errors, poor in the tackle, lack of discipline. Eoin Carroll was the only player to take the game to Kildare. The decision to play Peter Cunningham as sweeper when a man down, seven points behind and playing with the wind was bizarre. Overall the team did not seem fully prepared for championship football. It raises the question as to the advisability of having the under-21 and senior panels under the one manager. Surely it means the under 21's don't get the required level of attention or preparation.