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\n Offaly captain Amy Byrne is excited to get going for the season.\n <\/p>\n
Offaly get their All Ireland Senior Camogie Championship campaign up and running this weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Faithful welcome Wexford to O\u2019Connor Park tomorrow as part of a double header with the men\u2019s clash.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wexford come into this game off the back of winning the Leinster title against Dublin last weekend, while Offaly are competing for the first time since being beaten by Dublin last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Throw in from O\u2019Connor Park is at 4:00pm tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Amy Byrne grins at the mere mention of that day in Croke Park last August.<\/p>\n
The Offaly captain was back on Jones\u2019 Road this week for the launch of the 2026 Glen Dimplex Championship, the site of the Faithful County\u2019s dramatic intermediate final triumph last summer.<\/p>\n
She played a starring role in that 0-14 to 0-11 victory over the Kingdom, anchoring the Offaly defence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great being back,\u201d she smiles. \u201cThat was the highlight of my career playing here last August, and hopefully it won\u2019t be the last time!\u201d<\/p>\n
League and championship silverware from 2025 is now parked. Offaly are mixing it with the big guns this season, and are prepared for the step-up in standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was such a high last year and coming in this year, we really got slapped into reality,\u201d she says, reflecting on a league campaign which saw them stay afloat in Division 1B thanks to score difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we hit the league, like it\u2019s such a step up in standard at senior.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where we want to be. The main thing for us, our goal for the year isn\u2019t just to stay up, [we want] to be competing at the highest standard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re focusing on the Wexford game this weekend, and we\u2019re really going to aim for a win there and then push on for next week. But we\u2019re definitely aiming for [All-Ireland] quarter-finals this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
A tweak to the format this year sees a group of six and a group of four in the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Senior Championship.<\/p>\n
By virtue of reaching last year\u2019s semi-finals, Galway, Cork, Tipperary and Waterford find themselves in Group 1. The top two in this seeded group will go straight through to the last four, with third and fourth sent to the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
The other two quarter-finalists will come from the top two teams in Group 2, consisting of Kilkenny, Dublin, Clare, Wexford, Limerick and Offaly.<\/p>\n
Byrne sees this as an opportunity for the Midlanders to dig out results over the coming weeks:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to make it competitive. The six that are in the group, I think they are going to be really competitive games. Hopefully we can step up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where you want to be, it makes us grow as a team. This year we had a few players that didn\u2019t come back from last year for different reasons, but we\u2019ve had a new bunch of players come in, and it\u2019s great there\u2019s that turnaround. But still the standard of camogie in Offaly is great and the girls that have come in now they\u2019re bringing new things to the team and we have such a wealth of knowledge throughout our whole team.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully now when we play the bigger teams, it will all come together and we\u2019ll start getting wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
The small ball in Offaly is humming along nicely. The county\u2019s hurlers have enjoyed thrilling draws with Dublin and Kilkenny in recent weeks, sending Johnny Kelly\u2019s side into the mix for what originally seemed like an unlikely top-three berth in the Leinster Championship.<\/p>\n
The camogie side\u2019s recent success points to a similar trajectory in the female code.<\/p>\n
Both teams welcome their Wexford counterparts to Glenisk O\u2019Connor Park on Saturday for an intriguing double-header.<\/p>\n
The camogie tie kicks off the 2026 Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Championships, with the fixture brought forward to coincide with the counties\u2019 hurling showdown.<\/p>\n
Double-headers are paving the way for big crowds. The Munster Camogie Championship is also being played alongside hurling ties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a double-header a few weeks ago, it was great to get a crowd in before [the hurling]. It\u2019s the same thing, hopefully people can make a day of it, and come an hour early for the [camogie] match, and support us as well. It means so much when people come, and it really does drive on the team,\u201d Byrne outlines.<\/p>\n
\u201cPromoting the game is so important. I think the double-headers are definitely a step in the right direction. When people come out and if they see a camogie match, they might not have gone to a camogie match in years and then they come now and they\u2019ll see how much the standard has come up and there are great games to be played, so we\u2019d hope that if they see one match maybe they\u2019ll go to the next match the week after.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery game you can\u2019t take for granted, like they\u2019re so tough like the hits you\u2019re getting, the physicality and the speed of the game has gone up, like everything has just gone up, which is great to see. It\u2019s taken years to build that, but it\u2019s so good to finally see it kind of come to fruition.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, Offaly eyes are trained on the Model County, who sealed a remarkable Leinster title with wins over Kilkenny and Dublin. Byrne knows they will need to be at their best against the in-form Yellowbellies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re after coming off a high there after beating Dublin last week,\u201d she notes. \u201cWe\u2019re focusing on ourselves and working on our strengths and what we can do well, and then hopefully we can get the win and drive on from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Progress has been steady up to this point. Saturday evening will offer the clearest indication yet of how far this Offaly side can go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Offaly captain Amy Byrne is excited to get going for the season. Offaly get their All Ireland Senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3279,319,61,60,2673,8285,1529,8284,8282,8283,43,8286,700,59],"class_list":["post-450040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-broadcast","tag-broadcasting","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-news","tag-laois","tag-local-news","tag-local-radio","tag-midlands","tag-midlands-103","tag-news","tag-offaly","tag-radio","tag-westmeath"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450040","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=450040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}