Sligo's promotion hopes un-Dunne by late Offaly leveller
Sligo's Sean Carrabine scored 0-4 n their draw against Offaly. Picture: INPHO/Tom Maher
Sligo’s slim chances of promotion came to an end on Saturday afternoon as Offaly’s late surge denied Sligo from a fourth win in the division.
A win for Sligo would have kept them in hunt for promotion with a final game against Westmeath next weekend.
It was visitors who started the brighter of the sides who were playing with the aid of the breeze and with rain coming down it was helping Offaly in the opening half. The Faithful County opened the scoring through the impressive Dylan Hyland and the half forward would double the lead for his side on five minutes from a mark.
The sides would be level soon on eight minutes following a brace from Sean Carrabine before Hyland put Offaly back in front on ten minutes.
A period of 11 minutes went before Sligo drew level, this time Darragh Cummins pointing after he was played in by Alan McLoughlin. The key score of the opening half was a penalty awarded to Offaly for a foul on Ruairi McNamee by Sean Carrabine and the resulting spot kick was scored expertly by Anton Sullivan as he sent Aidan Devaney the wrong way to put them 1-3 to 0-3 ahead after 24 minutes of play.
Patrick O’Connor was on hand to reduce the gap to two points but Offaly captain Lee Pearson had three between the sides once again. Sligo got a period of dominance before the break with a brace coming from McLoughlin to cut the gap to just single point at half-time, 1-6 to 0-7.
Sligo came out flying at the start of the second half with scores from Paul Kilcoyne and a free from Carrabine to leave the sides level once again.
By the 44th minute, Sligo had gone from two points behind to two points in front with Niall Murphy and Nathan Mullen both on the mark for Sligo.
The second half was close throughout and when Keith O’Neill reduced the gap to just a point with 11 minutes to play, it looked all in Markievicz Park would be in for a close finish.
Murphy added another point to leave two points between the sides when he added a free with 11 minutes to play but the home side would fail to score for the remainder of the match as they sat back and would eventually be punished by the visitors.
O’Neill reduced the lead to just the minimum and the levelling point came from Nigel Dunne on 69 minutes and despite both teams looking for the winner in injury time, both teams would have to settle for a share of the spoils which suited an Offaly who are looking to avoid relegation to Division 4.
