Banagher may only be five miles from the Tipperary border, but it’s a rivalry that’s unfamiliar to Offaly’s Ben Conneely.
The fact that the counties are in different provinces means that their Championship meetings have been few, with all five coming since 2002 and none since 2014.
With Offaly having fallen from their All-Ireland winning heyday in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Tipp have won each of those but with the vagaries of the League and Offaly’s spells in Division 2A, meetings in the secondary competition have even been scarce in recent years, the last coming in 2017.
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It means that the St Rynagh’s man will play against his near neighbours for the very first time in tomorrow’s All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final in Tullamore.
Conneely said: “For me, it's been people telling me about Tipp. It hasn't been, I've grown up not being too much of a rival with Tipp because I knew, sure we never got to play them.
“In the last eight years, I wouldn't have seen them as rivals, I've been looking at closer teams like Laois and Westmeath, seeing teams like Carlow.
“So for me, it's been nearly other people saying, ‘Like you're playing Tipp now this weekend, you know what that is, that's gonna be the big game’, you know. Kind of people probably still reliving the ‘90s and early 2000s more than anything.
“But, yeah, look, it's just more so because they're neighbours, you know. I went to school with one or two lads from Tipp and they always give it that they're from Tipp and they're delighted to be from Tipp.
“So look, we're looking forward to having that bit of a bite in it.”
Offaly come into the game on something of a downer having lost the Joe McDonagh Cup final but the recent emergence of strong minor and under-20 teams fuels optimism that their stay in the second tier will end in the not too distant future.
“There was a long time there where clubs in Offaly were looking at even sending lads in, they were nearly telling them, ‘Like, why are you going in there?’” Conneely explained.
“Luckily now we're finally getting away from that and we are, it's becoming a thing to do, it's becoming what it should be, which is playing with your county is a big thing and no doubt the under-20s and minors, especially last year, was bringing a bit more into it.
“If we can only get a handful of them each year, each age group, it'd be brilliant, just to drive it on.”
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