Christy Ring Cup Preview: Offaly, Derry, Roscommon And Sligo Fight For Two Semi-Final Spots
CHRISTY RING CUP PREVIEW
By Daire Walsh
20 years on from their clash in the All-Ireland senior hurling championship quarter-final, Derry and Offaly will face off in a pivotal Christy Ring Cup Round 2B encounter at Pairc Esler in Newry on Saturday.
Back then, the two counties were operating at two very different ends of the hurling spectrum. The 2000 championship saw Derry winning the Ulster title for the first time in 92 years – breaking up the stranglehold that Antrim and Down had held in the northern province for several decades.
They were given little chance of success in their subsequent meeting with the Faithful County, who had claimed the Liam McCarthy Cup two years earlier and were still regarded as one of the top teams of the country. Yet Offaly found it difficult to shake off the challenge of the Oak Leaf men and found themselves on level terms with just 13 minutes of normal time remaining.
Eventually, Pat Fleury’s men secured a 2-23 to 2-17 victory and proceeded to reach that year’s All-Ireland decider with a terrific semi-final win at the expense of Cork. Flash forward to 2020 and Offaly find themselves in a very different position.
After seeing their unbroken stay in the senior championship coming to an end in 2018, they also suffered relegation from the Joe McDonagh Cup 12 months later with four straight defeats. In his first inter-county managerial post, Kilkenny legend Michael Fennelly has been tasked with moving his old foes back up the hurling ladder.
Their first step on this journey was disrupted by an outbreak of Covid-19 infections within the Offaly camp. As a result of 27 players being regarded as close contacts to a squad member who had a positive test, they were forced to hand an opening round walkover to Kildare.
Their delayed induction to the Christy Ring Cup is finally set to arrive, however, and Fennelly will hope the disruption to their training schedule won’t have an undue effect on their performance levels.
It is now over eight months since Offaly saw competitive action – a 4-29 to 2-14 Division 2A league victory over Wicklow at O’Connor Park, Tullamore on March 1. An earlier defeat to Kerry and a draw with Antrim had ruled them out of contention for a final spot, but it was a strong end to the campaign for Offaly nonetheless.
In the absence of the talismanic Shane Dooley, the Faithful relied on the likes of Liam Langton and Eoghan Cahill for scoring power in the league. In three appearances during the spring, Langton accumulated a tidy haul of 18 points.
Cahill was even more prolific, finishing the group stages with 0-50 to his name in five games. This included double figure tallies against Antrim (0-11), Mayo (0-12) and Wicklow (0-17). David Nally also stood up to the mark in the round four win over Mayo, nabbing 3-2 in an emphatic 5-29 to 1-13 triumph.
Strong performances from all three of these players this weekend could go a long way towards confirming a semi-final spot for Offaly. Dooley is also set to be involved, having featured for Tullamore in both the hurling and football club championships in recent months.
Their opponents Derry will be seeking an immediate response to their first round reversal to Down at Ballycran last Saturday. When sporting activity was halted in mid-March, the northerners had booked their spot in the NHL Division 2B final with an unbeaten record of four wins and one draw from five group matches.
However, Down get the better of them in the rescheduled divisional showpiece on October 18 before doing the same in their championship meeting 13 days later. This ratchets up the pressure ahead of their neutral showdown with Offaly, but there was some green shoots to emerge from last week’s game.
Wing-back Mark Craig, Conor Kelly, Mark McGuigan and ace marksman Cormac O’Doherty all produced strong displays, while Brian Óg McGilligan put in a strong shift over the course of the tie. Much of the focus will be on Offaly for this game and with the gap between the teams nowhere near as substantial as 20 years back, they will fight tooth and nail to pull off a major coup.
In Athleague on Sunday, Roscommon will play host to Connacht rivals Sligo. Like Offaly, the latter will be featuring for the first time in this year’s competition having given a walkover of their own to Derry for their proposed meeting on October 25.
Roscommon did face Wicklow on the same day at Dr Hyde Park and were close to claiming the most dramatic of comeback triumphs. Facing into a stiff breeze during the opening half of the action, the Rossies trailed 2-11 to 0-4 at the interval.
A brace of Christy Moorehouse goals saw them staring into a seemingly insurmountable deficit, but Cathal Dolan also rattled the net twice on the resumption and Roscommon suddenly sensed the game was there for the taking. Eamon Flanagan’s powerfully struck free led to another green flag being raised as the final whistle approached.
While Wicklow held out for a 2-19 to 3-14 win, if the Rossies can replicate their second half showing against Sligo, it may well be enough to help them to advance.
Traditionally, Roscommon have been viewed as the second best hurling county in the west behind Galway. They competed in the Connacht Senior Hurling Championship for a number of years, giving a good account of themselves in the 1995 and 1996 deciders.
There has been a major development in hurling across the province over the last decade or so, with Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim all getting their hands on championship silverware in recent years. Sligo are competing in the Christy Ring Cup for the first time, after their respective successes in the Lory Meagher and the Nicky Rackard Cups in 2018 and 2019.
The Yeats men were comfortably the stand out team in Division 3B of the National Hurling League, winning all four group games and the subsequent final against Leitrim on October 18. Gerard O’Kelly-Lynch was one of many heroes in the Nicky Rackard triumph at the expense of Armagh last year with a scoring haul of 2-1.
He surpassed this tally in that recent win over Leitrim, finishing with an outstanding haul of 3-4. This was Padraig Mannion’s first game in charge of Sligo, following his appointment just two weeks earlier.
Between getting to know his troops and dealing with a positive Covid-19 case – which led to that earlier postponement – Sunday’s encounter with Roscommon will be a mental as well as physical challenge. However, the Sligo hurlers have developed a winning habit in the last few years and won’t be dismissed without a fight.
The winner of these second round fixtures will join Kildare and Down in the penultimate rounds, with the competition’s final pencilled in for the weekend of November 21/22.