\u200bLeinster senior hurling championship, Round 3<\/p>\n
Kilkenny 1-21 Offaly 0-24<\/p>\n
By Paul Keane at Glenisk O’Connor Park, Tullamore<\/p>\n
Offaly remain alive and kicking in the Leinster SHC title race after a historic draw with holders Kilkenny, Eoghan Cahill the stoppage time hero with an equalising point from a 65.<\/p>\n
Cahill was recalled to the lineup by boss Johnny Kelly and more than repaid the show of faith with 15 points overall.<\/p>\n
The last of those, in the 76th minute, will be remembered for a long time by Offaly supporters in the 6,066 crowd as it broke a run of Championship defeats to Kilkenny that stretched all the way back to the 1998 All-Ireland final.<\/p>\n
It’s Offaly’s second draw in the round robin having earlier tied with Dublin though nobody, outside of Kilkenny at least, would have complained had they pulled off a landmark win.<\/p>\n
They took the game to the seven-in-a-row chasing Cats from the off and the scores were tied a whopping 14 times across the blood and thunder encounter.<\/p>\n
Offaly will host Wexford next Saturday in a huge Round 4 fixture knowing that a win will give them a fighting chance of nailing down a top three position. After that, they will round off their campaign against Kildare.<\/p>\n
From Kilkenny’s perspective, they’re still right in the race to hold onto their title too with ties against Kildare and Dublin still to come.<\/p>\n
On a day when they blasted 16 wides, they had an unlikely goalscorer in defender Mikey Carey while Cian Kenny top scored with seven points.<\/p>\n
Kilkenny were unchanged from the side that put 5-21 on the board against Wexford but if boss Derek Lyng was banking on picking up where they left off in Round 2, he was let down.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t quite the first half underperformance that Galway exhibited in their clash with Kildare in Newbridge yesterday afternoon, but it was still below par.<\/p>\n
The Cats drilled a dozen first-half wides with TJ Reid accounting for three of those, including a 65 and a relatively easy free that seemed to sum up their sluggishness.<\/p>\n
Reid wore number 14 and played most of the first half in the full-forward position, with Ben Conneely for company. But he came out deeper towards the end of the half as Kilkenny tried to make something happen.<\/p>\n
They pushed for goals whenever a chink of light emerged in a well drilled Offaly backline.<\/p>\n
Kenny drilled a shot wide in the 13th minute, Martin Keoghan had an effort blocked by a defender and Reid controlled a loose ball and then pulled on it close to half time, only to be thwarted by goalkeeper Liam Hoare.<\/p>\n
After all of Offaly’s hard work, they winced at the soft goal they did cough up, a 27th minute Carey shot taking enough of a deflection off Ciar\u00e1n Burke to deceive Hoare and trickle in beneath him.<\/p>\n
With Kenny sniping three points from play, Kilkenny just about led at half time, by 1-9 to 0-11, but it was unconvincing and travelling fans were still waiting for their team to catch fire.<\/p>\n
Offaly were more efficient, drawing five fouls that Eoghan Cahill comfortably converted. Brian Duignan swung a beauty over from out on the left wing and Dan Bourke caused the Cats plenty of trouble, registering two first-half points.<\/p>\n
Crucially, Offaly would have the wind behind them in the second half so opportunity knocked.<\/p>\n
And when they reeled off four points in a row between the 38th and 43rd minutes – one of those coming off a morale boosting Ross Ravenhill interception ahead of Reid – they led 0-15 to 1-10.<\/p>\n
Reid was taken off the frees and eventually replaced for one of the few times in his storied career.<\/p>\n
It highlighted just how badly things were going for the Cats though they can take credit for refusing to lie down in a game that was level for the 14th time when Cahill nailed the late 65.<\/p>\n
There was drama around the awarding of the puck as it was initially waved as a wide before referee Johnny Murphy conferred with his umpires and gave the 65.<\/p>\n
Kilkenny scorers: Cian Kenny 0-7 (0-2f), Mikey Carey 1-0, Martin Keoghan 0-3, TJ Reid 0-2 (0-1f), Tom Phelan 0-2, Killian Doyle 0-2, Eoin Cody 0-1, Darragh Corcoran 0-1, Stephen Donnelly 0-1, Liam Moore 0-1, Fion\u00e1n Mackessy 0-1.<\/p>\n
Offaly scorers: Eoghan Cahill 0-15 (12f, 1 65), Dan Bourke 0-3, Brian Duignan 0-2, Charlie Mitchell 0-1, Conor Doyle 0-1, Shane Rigney 0-1, Ter Guinan 0-1.<\/p>\n
Kilkenny: Eoin Murphy; Ivan Bolger, Mikey Carey, Mikey Butler; David Blanchfield, Darragh Corcoran, Paddy Deegan; Killian Doyle, Jordan Molloy; Cian Kenny, Eoin Cody, Tom Phelan; Martin Keoghan, TJ Reid, Liam Moore.<\/p>\n
Subs: Richie Reid for Carey 10-12, Stephen Donnelly for Reid 49, Fion\u00e1n Mackessy for Moore 53, Timmy Clifford for Phelan 59, Richie Reid for Molloy 68.<\/p>\n
Offaly: Liam Hoare; Patrick Taaffe, Ben Conneely, Ter Guinan; Ross Ravenhill, Killian Sampson, Ciar\u00e1n Burke; Colin Spain, Luke Watkins; Shane Rigney, Daniel Bourke, Conor Doyle; Charlie Mitchell, Brian Duignan, Eoghan Cahill.<\/p>\n
Subs: Cathal King for Watkins 53, Dan Ravenhill for Spain 53, Ois\u00edn Kelly for Doyle 66.<\/p>\n
Referee: Johnny Murphy (Limerick).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200bLeinster senior hurling championship, Round 3 Kilkenny 1-21 Offaly 0-24 By Paul Keane at Glenisk O’Connor Park, Tullamore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-442786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}