NewEra wrote:Great to give Offaly football a shot in the arm with the county representatives showing well in Leinster. Rhode did a demolition job in Wexford. MEath champs up next who have just won their first ever Meath championship so hopefully their focus has wained a bit.
Bracknagh and Cappincur both out this weekend in their Junior Semi and Intermediate Quarter Final. Both have realistic chances of progressing. Cappincur facing Rosemount from Westmeath in OCP and Bracknagh facing Kilcullen from Kildare in Bracknagh. Lets hope for a few more wins across the three competitions.
Is the Offaly club scene that far off the pace when we see progress in Leinster competitions?
Certainly would be great to see each club do well in their respective competitions. My take on it is like this:
1. Rhode - They are significantly ahead of the standard of the rest of the clubs in Offaly, so you would really expect them to do well in Leinster, which to their credit they have managed to do over the past 10 years, competing well in several Leinster finals. I am not sure if it gives much of a shot in the arm to the county team, as it is not as if there are a few Rhode players that have been over-looked for the county panel. I feel that if any other club were in Leinster at the moment, they would struggle to make much of an impact.
2. Senior B champions at Intermediate level - The restructuring of the club championship should really make an impact to the Offaly reps chances at this grade. Now that we are sending our #9 club and not our #13 club should make a big difference in the coming few seasons. I really feel that this would be a better indication of the strength of clubs in Offaly than how our Senior reps do.
3. Intermediate champs at junior level - same as above.
I think a good example of this is Clodagh Gaels in the local hurling scene. When the existing adult clubs joined forces and keeping in mind the great success and structure at underage, there is really no surprise that they became a senior club quickly (a top 12 club). What would be even more pleasing (from a CG point of view) is that they were able to get their second team into Intermediate hurling next year and have a 3rd team compete pretty successfully too. That would really be a more solid indication of their strength and long term prospects, than solely if their 1st team was senior team and their second team was middle of the road juniors or something. Now that they have found their 'true level', with the benefit of getting success on the way for 2 teams, the next couple of years should be interesting to see how far they can push on.
It is no surprise that, based on the structure of Offaly hurling, that the successful senior teams have usually have a very competitive 2nd string and a 3rd string too - Birr, K/K, Coolderry, Rynaghs. The fact that Tullamore won a championship with a mi-ranking junior team is an outlier and one of the things that made their achievement even more surprising in my mind.
Bit of a rambling post I know and a little off topic, but hopefully you get the gist of what I am trying to say.