It’s tempting to suggest that as Offaly hurling rises again, the county owes a debt of gratitude to the Kilcormac/Killoughey club.
The club contributed eight players to the matchday panel for last June’s All-Ireland Under-20 final success. Three more were on the extended panel.
Yet if Offaly’s first Leinster SHC outing since 2018, against Dublin at Parnell Park on Saturday evening, is to go the way they hope, it’ll probably be Durrow men that the senior team lean heaviest on.
Six Durrow players started the recent National League Division 1B final against Waterford with two more, Sam Bourke and Jack Fogarty, on the bench and extended panel respectively. There was a Durrow player in every line of the field, apart from midfield, with Ciarán Burke captaining the team from full-back.
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We’ll not go into why they’re listed as Durrow players for intercounty purposes and called Ballinamere when playing within Offaly. That’s a local curiosity with a few different angles to it.
The really interesting bit is how a group of elite hurlers has developed in a little pocket of north Offaly between Kilbeggan and Tullamore where small-ball success had rarely been known.
“There was one pitch on the road and nothing else really around so you were just always down in the pitch, pucking around and hurling,” said skipper Burke of his sporting education. “That was really number one for us and that was it.”
Burke, Brian Duignan and Ross Ravenhill are all close friends, having grown up in each other’s pockets. Brian’s father, county legend Michael, had a big influence on them all, gathering them up as under-10s and moulding them throughout their teens. Burke credits Jim Troy with putting in the hard yards too.
“They have been huge influences on our careers,” he said. “I remember going back years ago, I’d say we were seven, eight or nine, Michael would have been bringing us to Munster and Leinster championship matches so I’d put a lot of it down to his influence over our careers and having people like that involved in the club.
“Michael managed us from under-10s right through to under-20 and then became county chairman. And he’s back involved this year with the senior manager.
“It’s savage because there was no hurling really in the area, we were intermediate for years and just to be in the senior championship and competing really well now is class. There’s a great buzz for hurling around the place and everyone loves it.”
It was a defeat to Dublin at Parnell Park in the summer of 2018 that cost Offaly their place in the top tier at that stage. Relegation sent them plummeting on a downward spiral that bottomed out with two seasons in the third tier Ring Cup.
Offaly gained a modicum of revenge during this season’s National League campaign, beating Dublin narrowly at Croke Park to help secure promotion to Division 1A.
They will be underdogs nevertheless when they return to Parnell Park, a smaller pitch that Dublin teams have typically used to their advantage over the years.
“Parnell Park would be a lot more compact,” noted Burke. “The crowd would nearly be on top of you. It’ll be a savage atmosphere at the venue. I felt the game we played at Croke Park, there was a lot of loose hurling because there’s so much space. There was a lot of space for us to move into but I think at Parnell Park it’s going to be more about trying to win your own ball, forwards winning their own dirty ball. It’ll come down to that, I think.”
You could argue that it is a crucial game for Offaly, who, just back in the Leinster SHC, are desperate to stay there.
“I wouldn’t put any weight on the Dublin game compared to other games,” said Burke. “Every game is going to be absolutely massive in the Leinster championship.
“We want to be as competitive as possible. We don’t want to be going out and having those performances that we had for 45 minutes against Waterford in the league final. We want to be very competitive in every game and see where that takes us.
“I feel like if we do play to the level that we can play to then we can be really competitive.”
Like top-three competitive?
“I would think so, yeah,” said Burke. “There’s no point going into the championship if you don’t think you can compete with the best and try to be the best. Yeah, why not?”
