by Kevin Egan

For those who live in frontier territory, every county boundary feels like the 38th parallel across Korea, or the Maginot Line. Home is where the light touches, what lies beyond is nothing more than “that shadowy place,” or an Irish equivalent to the elephant graveyard about which Lion King Mufasa warned his son Simba.

For supporters and players alike, winning matches and championships might be the primary ambition, but keeping the neighbours in line is a close second. And when the border itself is a source of acrimony, that feeling is multiplied.

Ballaghaderreen and Ferrybank are among the most prominent stories of disputed zones, but nowhere are the waters more muddy than along the Offaly and Tipperary border.

Truncating the story of that boundary into a handful of sentences is akin to doing the same thing to the history of Ireland’s relationship with Britain, but among the key points are that Ballyskenach (now part of Ballyskenach-Killavilla GAA club and Naomh Bríd Camogie Club) started life in Tipperary before moving to Offaly.

Hurlers from Shinrone were known to take part in Tipp championships with Knockshegowna, while both Lorrha and Coolderry each looked to cross the border in 1925, though neither succeeded. Then there are the two major flashpoints.

Carrig & Riverstown is mostly located in Tipperary but is part of the Birr parish and hurls in Offaly, as does the St Cillian’s camogie club, which takes in the village of Crinkill.

Then there’s Moneygall. Though the pitch is in Tipperary, most of the catchment area is Offaly, including Dunkerrin.

Dunkerrin was the club that represented the parish in 1910, winning the inaugural Offaly junior hurling championship before being thrown out following an objection. Two years later, Moneygall were affiliated in Tipperary and Barack Obama’s ancestral homeland has been a Premier County stronghold ever since.

Except in camogie, where the dual identity of the area has been recognised. Caithlyn Treacy of Moneygall joined Ciara Brennan of St Cillian’s in the Tipperary senior panel this year, while Ciara Maher and Mairéad Teehan (both Moneygall) will be central to Offaly’s bid to join their neighbours in the senior grade for 2026.

Offaly take on Kerry in Croke Park this Sunday in the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland intermediate final (3pm, live on RTÉ2) and even though both players lined out for Tipperary at underage level, with Teehan winning All-Irelands at U16 amd minor level, if the sharpshooting forward is anything to go by, there are no doubts about where they stand on the border issue.

“Offaly people are just proud to be from Offaly, it’s just lovely to be from here. I’m delighted to be from Offaly,” beams Teehan, before offering a very diplomatic but still unequivocal answer to whether or not she supported Tipperary against Cork in the All-Ireland hurling final a fortnight ago.

“Ah no, I wouldn’t say I was supporting them now! We played with the two lads (Seánie Kenneally and Joe Fogarty) in school and we grew up with them all along so I’m delighted for them. In fairness to Tipp, the way they won the match, you wouldn’t begrudge them. They just were the better team, they brought the work, they had the right attitude.

“It’s just great that we’re in an All-Ireland final as well, that we can say we’re here too, don’t forget about us!” she laughs.

“So let’s have a few Offaly flags flying around home; it’s time to take down all the Tipp ones and put up the Offaly tricolours!”

After competing for Tipperary throughout the underage grades and then making the adult team as a teenager, Teehan stepped away in 2017, citing burnout. However, when her home county came calling, it was a different story.

“When I was U12 and U14, playing for Offaly just wasn’t an option. If you were lucky enough to be selected from the club, you were sent for Tipperary trials and at that age, you just want to go and play.”

Her club colleague, Niamh Larkin was the trailblazer, seeking and receiving permission to tog out with the Faithful County. And after Larkin changed colours, Teehan was delighted to get the call to ‘come home’.

“Niamh paved the way, and I was very happy to be asked in. I love playing for Offaly, always have.”

In 2024, it wasn’t an accident of geography that prevented her from wearing green, white and gold, but an injury. Teehan’s cruciate ligament gave way in 2023 and while she intended to come back into the fold in advance of last year’s intermediate championship, by the end of April she knew she physically wasn’t ready.

A young Offaly team eventually fell short to Cork in a competitive All-Ireland semi-final at FBD Semple Stadium the same day that Kerry lost to Kilkenny. This year the championship structure changed with second teams removed from the intermediate and junior competitions. Offaly and Kerry knew that they had a glorious chance to go even further though initially, many would have said that the door was open for Antrim to bounce back up to the top flight.

Instead Offaly knocked over the Division 1B winners from Ulster by a single point, 1-16 to 2-12, with Teehan scoring the all-important goal in a player-of-the-match performance in Newbridge last month. She feels that having a solid platform on which to build was crucial to the county’s progression.

“The girls getting to the semi-final last year brought a lot of positivity to Offaly camogie in general. When teams are successful, people want to be part of it, so it was a matter of building on last year and bringing that to this year.

“I think there’s a good core group that has stayed from last year into this year, which is not always the case. There’s a few more, myself included, has come back in and hopefully added to it. But to keep that consistent core group is a really big thing, and the same with the management, that you keep a consistent management team as well really helps build.

Given that Teehan’s absence in 2024 was injury-enforced rather than a case of the part-time lecturer and substitute primary school teacher opting out, it would have been easy for manager David Sullivan – himself no stranger to the vagaries of the border, having grown up in Lorrha and gone to school in Banagher – to look at Teehan as a potential captain for 2025.

Instead, he placed the responsibility on the broad but young shoulders of full-back Orlagh Phelan, who has been a tower of strength and dependability for the midlanders in just her third year out of the minor grade. So much so that Teehan is happy to stick to playing, with little or no onus on her to take on a leadership role.

“Orlagh is our captain, she’s very young still, but she has a serious head on her shoulders. I feel like all the girls have good heads on them, they’re well able to manage themselves, so I don’t need to do too much in the dressing room in that way,” she says.

“All I’m doing i trying to make the girls aware that it’s a massive game, it’s probably the biggest game for all of us that we have had in our careers and it’s okay to enjoy it, it’s okay to look forward to it. You can be nervous, but to enjoy the nerves as well.”

One suspects that Mufasa’s advice to “remember who you are” is also central to Teehan’s philosophy on life, home and camogie.

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