Leinster GAA Senior Football Championship semi-finals
SUNDAY
Kildare v Louth (1:45pm, Croke Park)
Dublin v Offaly (4pm, Croke Park)
“When you see Dublin 1/500 and the handicap -20, I’m glad Laois lost that match to Offaly.
“Prepare for the Tailteann Cup without the public humiliation.”
To borrow a phrase from Eddie O’Sullivan, the Leinster Championship was about as handy as “a trapdoor on a canoe” to Laois and Offaly this year.
The above quote is from former Laois footballer Colm Parkinson. You could say he doesn’t hold out much hope for an upset.
Those any way au fait with ‘X’ will know that he is no stranger to a hot take or a drastic opinion. But it’s hard to argue on this occasion.
Offaly are set to be put in a jackeen’s strait jacket for 70 minutes. The physical effects will last days. The mental scars possibly longer.
It’s not a Leinster semi-final. There’s a gulf in class so broad it translates into a wild goose chase of shadows down the blindest alleyways.
The best case scenario for Offaly is likely a defeat of eight, nine, ten points. To that they’ll say kudos, and the aptly-named, journey-making Faithful supporters will ramble of a lack of belief amongst their couch potato comrades.
Oh ye of little faith, but much wisdom. Dead certs are few and far between in sport. This feels like one of them.
Tuesday is the Tailteann Cup draw where Declan Kelly’s men will be pulled out as a second seed should all go according to script and the GAA world doesn’t implode in Dublin defeat.
Even in that scenario The Dubs would of course be safe from the Tailteann’s talons, but the same can’t be said for Kildare and Louth, who meet in what promises to be a clinker.
The Lilywhites have a rather simple task at hand: Win or bust.
This time last year they would have been fairly fancied, with Ger Brennan now on the line for their opponents. And that’s not the only thing that’s changed.
The All-Ireland finalists of 1998 have had the whole win or bust thing already this year. Seven defeats from seven in the league, including a round seven defeat to the Wee County, can be labelled quite simply as mission failed.
A win over Wicklow was an absolute necessity, and it did come, but there’ll be no gold stars handed out there either. The Garden County’s Matt Nolan is likely still haunted by a golden opportunity that slipped wide of an empty goal at the death.
Louth went about their business a little more quietly. Four goals normally suggest a whitewash, but Wexford more than held their own, as they navigate their own upward trajectory.
The Yellow Bellies struck the crossbar early on, and led by four at another stage, with Sam Mulroy’s exquisite penalties masking a game that was lower on quality than Brennan would have anticipated.
It’s been a bit of a running theme with Louth. They seem capable of keeping tabs with higher quality teams, but equally they struggle to put teams away. An annihilation of Fermanagh and last year’s heavy defeats to Dublin and Kerry are red herrings in the form book.
They averaged just 14 scores a game in this year’s league if we remove the outlier against The Ernemen. They also made a habit of losing games they could have won. And games they should have won.
There’s an ominous feeling about this one. Kildare, underdogs, shackles off.
There’s a good team in there somewhere. It’s been hiding for some time now, but Glenn Ryan and his management team likely know a loss here could signal the end of the line for them.
That would leave Louth requiring Armagh and Dublin wins to salvage their path to the Sam Maguire last 16.