Enda Mcginley: Leinster pair can give us best game of weekend

The curtain-raiser may well turn out to be the main attraction on Sunday afternoon when the Leinster SFC semi-finals take place at Croke Park.

Kildare will swallow hard, raise their shields and dash headlong into the seemingly unslayable beast that is the Boys in Blue at 4pm. But before that, Mickey Harte will look to take Louth past an Offaly side who, fresh off a big win over Meath, are on a mission of a different kind this season.

Either way, if the outcome of the latter fixture appears preordained – with the necessary apologies to a talented Lilywhites group – the fate of the pair in the opening game is certainly up in the air.

Louth are more or less guaranteed to be playing Sam Maguire football for the summer, but Offaly, despite their win over the Royals, could yet find themselves in the Tailteann Cup. We could be in for a cracker just after lunchtime Sunday at headquarters.

"This could potentially be the game of the weekend," reckoned Enda McGinley, speaking on this week's RTÉ GAA podcast.

"The energy, enthusiasm, the positivity. You can't beat it. That's why the provincial club championships are so good, because you've got both teams coming in on an absolute crest of a wave and you get a really great game of football.

Dublin have collected the last dozen Leinster titles in an unparalleled show of dominance of this or any other province. But outside of the vast shadow cast by Dessie Farrell’s squad, Leinster is possibly the most open province in the game.

"The Leinster Championship, for all its faults, it is the best second-place championship in the country," former Tyrone ace, McGinley, decided. "If you remove Dublin, down below that there's brilliant games going on.

We need your consent to load this YouTube content We