In front of a crowd of 5,602, made up almost entirely of Offaly support, Johnny Kelly\u2019s team sensed the opportunity at hand and dominated pretty much throughout.<\/p>\n
They led by three points at half-time but any chance Kildare had of playing the role of party pooper evaporated in the 37th minute with the sending off of Cathal McCabe after an off-the-ball clash with Ciaran Burke.<\/p>\n
Although Kildare were already relegated before a ball was pucked, they met Offaly head-on in the opening exchanges. The first eight points were evenly shared before Offaly went ahead for the first time in the 15th minute through the outstanding Eoin Cahill.<\/p>\n
There was still a point between the teams after a superb effort from distance by Cian Boran in the 22nd minute, but Offaly then put daylight between the teams for the first time with five points in a row.<\/p>\n
![\"Offaly's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GB36ZLDMLU7MPNJTCWPRCFGAAE.jpg\")
Offaly’s Patrick Taaffe is tackled by Kildare’s Cathal Dowling. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo\/Inpho <\/p>\n
Kildare had a spell of three successive points themselves as half-time neared, but Cahill had the final say to leave the score at 0-13 to 0-10 for the break.<\/p>\n
Just seven minutes after McCabe\u2019s second-half dismissal, Offaly got in for the only goal of the game when Kildare goalkeeper Paddy McKenna delayed his clearance allowing Brian Duignan to nip in and dispossess him before scoring into the empty net.<\/p>\n
It was routine after that for Offaly and the biggest cheer from their sizeable travelling support came when news filtered through of Donal Burke\u2019s goal for Dublin against Kilkenny.<\/p>\n
At the final whistle, the crowd invaded the pitch in Newbridge, but it was only when the result at Parnell Park was confirmed minutes later that the celebrations really began. <\/p>\n
KILDARE: P McKenna; L O\u2019Reilly, R Boran, D O\u2019Meara, D Guerin, C Boran (0-1), S Leacy (0-1); C Boran (0-2), C McCabe (0-1); J Travers, C Dowling, G Keegan, D Melville (0-2), M Curtin (0-1), J Sheridan (0-5, 4f). Subs: R Hogan for O\u2019Reilly (41 mins), T Ryan (0-1) for Curtin (47), P Dolan (0-1) for Dowling (52), C Kehoe for Hogan (57), T Power for Travers (63).<\/p>\n
OFFALY: L Hoare; C Burke (0-1), B Connelly, P Taaffe, R Ravenhill, K Sampson, T Guinan (0-1); C Spain (0-3), C King; S Rigney (0-2), C Doyle (0-1), D Bourke (0-4), E Cahill (0-15, 9f), B Duignan (1-2), A Screeney. Subs: O Kelly for Guinan (23 mins), D Nally for Screeney (41-42), D Nally for Rigney (60), J Mahon for Taaffe, E Burke for Screeney (both 63), Cleary for Duignan (64).<\/p>\n
Referee: M Kennedy (Tipperary).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leinster SHC: Kildare 0-15 Offaly 1-29 Offaly have caused a sensation in the Leinster Championship after getting a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,3771,183120,6398,43,8067],"class_list":["post-464973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kildare-gaa","tag-leinster-hurling-championship","tag-match-report","tag-news","tag-offaly-gaa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464973","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=464973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}