Daithi Regan believes Dublin and Offaly will not progress past the round-robin qualifying stages of the All-Ireland Championship.
The Offaly man believes Dublin will find the turn around hard after losing a close fought battle against Kilkenny. Dublin lost out to “the Cats” by a single point in last week’s opening round of the All-Ireland Hurling Championship.
“Pat Gilroy was extremely disappointed because Dublin put so much into last weekend. Dublin expected to win; privately Dublin really expected to win. They thought they were ready to take Kilkenny,’ said Regan.
The birr man says Dublin’s expectations were so great going into that game, they may struggle to rise to the occasions against Wexford, especially after last week’s dissapoinment.
“They had a huge amount of homework done, a huge amount of aggression. Playing Conal Keaney up front with his strength and physicality, along with Liam Rush, and Sutcliffe in that forward line as well. They really fancied their changes.”
The former inter-county player doubts if Dublin will be able to turn around such disappointment in such a limit period of time. He believes Wexford will be relishing the proposition of facing Dublin.
“So, within seven or eights days you’ve got to lift yourself to be at that level again. If Dublin aren’t up to that level again, Wexford will be. Wexford will be up for this in a huge way because they’ve been pre-warned now. “
The former Birr player doesn’t fancy his home county Offaly, or Dublin to make it past the round-robin stages, with Galway and Kilkenny in the mix.
“The difficulty here now is that you’ve got Dublin and Offaly as make weights in the group because I don’t believe, with respect to Dublin - that Dublin will beat Galway. I don’t believe that Offaly will beat Wexford. “
Wexford play Dublin and Kilkenny host Offaly simultaneously at 3 pm on Sunday afternoon.
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