All-Ireland SHC Qualifiers Round Two/Clare 1-12 Offaly 1-11: Offaly hurling still breathes. This entertaining match may have lacked the quality required for an All-Ireland quarter-final but still produced plenty of positives in the driving rain in Portlaoise on Saturday night.
"Mac wants a break," said Offaly manager John McIntyre when asked for a few words afterwards.
And who could blame him? Offaly came agonisingly close to erasing the Carlow league defeat and the drubbing Kilkenny recently inflicted with a passionate display. No breaks here and now they must forage into the relegation mire.
Leading by six points at the start of the second half, and facing into a swift breeze, hurling utopia was almost discovered when Aidan Hanrahan looped the sliotar over Clare goalkeeper Davy Fitzgerald's head, only to see it ricochet off the crossbar. That could have broken Clare's back but alas McIntyre, a sports editor at heart, had to imagine another headline.
"I'm just after learning there are semi-finals in the relegation play-offs," he said. "It may be easy lifted for tonight because we've been getting such a hammering from everybody but now we have to regroup and win a match we are expected to win. That's going to be a difficult challenge as well.
"I thought if we got over Dublin next Saturday we could park our hurleys for a few months and heed the lessons of this year and move on, you know? The relegation trapdoor is bigger than I thought it was.
"The Division Two league campaign was absolutely no value to us because there was no intensity to it. It was like we had to start all over again in the past six weeks. Every game we've played we've improved but we've run out of time now."
For Offaly this was a performance borne out of anger. Even before the throw-in Ger Harrington was forced to flash two yellow cards after Michael Cordial clashed with Colin Lynch.
"We went out to the back field to have a few pucks and warm up beforehand and they were above the other field and, Jesus, you could hear them down there," said Clare manager Anthony Daly.
"I'd say they were forced to be fired up to be fair to them, you know. They may not be the greatest team that ever played but their pride was at stake and they showed a fair bit of that tonight. I knew that, it was trying to convince everyone else in here you know."
Four points in the opening 10 minutes whistled off Offaly hurleys with the only reply coming from Niall Gilligan. Brendan Murphy and Stephen Brown landed the confidence scores. The consensus had the wind as an eight-point advantage but Gilligan refused to allow Offaly pull away. He finished with 0-7, two from play, in a relentless performance.
Hope came with a goal on 28 minutes. Brian Carroll dropped a ball into the square that Brian Lohan and Mick O'Hara scrapped for to allow Dylan Hayden to shake the net.
The Offaly contingent in the 4,000-odd crowd were cheered before the break thanks to three successive points from Hanrahan, goalkeeper Brian Mullins - from 20 yards inside his own half - and a cracker from Gary Hanniffy to make it 1-10 to 0-7.
It took most of the second half before Clare eventually turned the screw. Old reliables Tony Griffin and Seanie McMahon saw their contributions separated by 18 minutes of static. Not a score in sight.
Griffin reduced arrears four minutes into the half when poor marking afforded him a chance to kick to the net. McMahon chipped in with two vital placed efforts, the second coming three minutes from the finish to put Clare in front for the first time after Hanrahan had needlessly picked from the ground.
One point in the second half, a free by Carroll, is also an indication of how far Offaly still have to travel. Clare bombarded the full back line expecting it to eventually crumble.
To Offaly's credit they held it together but the clearances were like a game of pinball.
CLARE: 1 D Fitzgerald; 2 F Lohan, 3 B Lohan, 25 G O'Grady; 22 C Forde, 6 S McMahon (capt, 0-2, 65, free), 7 G Quinn; 8 B O'Connell, 9 C Lynch (0-1); 10 D McMahon, 12 B Nugent, 5 A Markham (0-1); 13 T Carmody, 14 N Gilligan (0-7, 5 frees), 11 T Griffin (1-0). Subs: 20 D Forde for Nugent (inj, 24 mins); 18 D Hoey (0-1) for G Quinn (50 mins); 15 A Quinn for D McMahon (61 mins); 21 D O'Connell for D Forde (65 mins); 26 D O'Rourke for T Griffin (71 mins).
OFFALY: 1 B Mullins (0-1, free); 2 K Brady, 3 G Oakley, 4 P Cleary; 5 B Whelahan, 6 R Hanniffy, 7 B Teehan (capt); 8 M Cordial, 9 G Hanniffy (0-1); 10 B Murphy (0-1), 11 M O'Hara, 12 S Brown (0-1); 13 B Carroll (0-5, 4 frees), 14 A Hanrahan (0-2), 15 D Hayden (1-0). Subs: 21 D Murray for D Hayden (52 mins); 17 J Brady for M O'Hara (59 mins).
Referee: G Harrington (Cork).
