London blitz Offaly to begin Tailteann in fine style

London had one of their greatest ever days as they roasted Offaly alive by 16 points at a sun-kissed Glenisk O'Connor Park

It was a shockingly poor performance by Offaly, who were a country mile off their championship intensity.

They never got going the whole day, never generated even a couple of minutes of real momentum and the fallout from this defeat and performance will not be pretty in the Faithful County.

Through home eyes, it was quite shameful but to concentrate on this is to do a disservice to London, who played some superb football on the day. The Exiles were the better side from start to finish, they were brilliant once they got a true scent of victory in the second half and the fact that they were not one bit flattered by their 14-point winning margin shows how superior they were.

London really put it up to a very stagnant Offaly in the first half and fully deserved to lead by 0-08 to 0-06 at half-time.

Cathal Donoghue had given Offaly the lead after one minute but everything London touched turned to gold in the next few minutes. They got four points in a row, three of them from Ciaran Diver and one from Ruari Rafferty to lead by 0-04 to 0-01 after eight minutes.

Offaly really struggled to break down a packed London defence but without doing anything special, they got the next three to level it up after 20 minutes. The equaliser came from a Jack Bryant free after full back David Dempsey had been black carded while Keith O'Neill was unlucky to have an 11th minute goal disallowed for overcarrying.

London responded well, breaking forward at pace and three in a row but them 0-07 to 0-04 up after 30 minutes. A Dylan Hyland point and Eoin Carroll mark brought the gap down to a point before Daniel Clarke's point gave