Offaly’s Ellen Regan Defies Injury As Heatwave Championship Battle Heats Up

Offaly take on Clare this Saturday in the Senior Camogie Championship.

The country has been in the grip of a heatwave and inter-county championships across the codes are warming up too.

Players have trained all year to be out on the pitch for season-defining contests, and any obstacle they meet is being smashed, because now is not the time to be on the sidelines looking on.

In the case of most players, that’s a figure of speech. For Offaly’s Ellen Regan, it’s a bit more literal.

Back in April, she broke her thumb in four places at the end of a training game and after being referred to University Hospital Limerick, her hand was put in a cast for eight weeks.

That diagnosis and recovery plan, if followed to the letter, would have left her effectively ruled out for the entirety of the Faithful County’s Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Senior Championship campaign.

After she missed huge chunks of their successful run to Croke Park in winning the intermediate crown in 2025 with a broken ankle, that wasn’t something the tenacious defender was willing to contemplate.

“I was supposed to be in the cast for eight weeks but it’s awful being injured and just being there on the sideline watching, so after six weeks I cut it off myself at home,” she says, in a manner that implies anyone would have gone into the shed for a hacksaw and done the same thing.

“After a few days I went back to UHL for an X-ray and they said it’s not really healing the way it should, but I told them that was probably because I had been back pucking a ball with it, and that it felt grand.

“They told me to stay doing a few physio exercises and not to do too much ball work, but I think they knew I wasn’t going to listen to them anyway.”

Regan, who will this Autumn begin her final internship year to conclude her training as a nurse, should be more qualified than most to make a home diagnosis like that, but her excitement at the prospect of tomorrow’s crucial clash with Clare on her home field of St Brendan’s Park in Birr is palpable.

As the former Offaly captain talks about the season, this is a player who wants to be out there, in the thick of it.

“The last time we played senior was in 2023, and the League and Leinster Championship will tell you, it took us a good while to find our feet at this level again. We know the depth we have and we know where we can go, and we know that we’re well able to compete in games like this, as long as we bring the work rate and physicality required for senior level.

“But there is a special excitement about games in Birr. We had a great first day in the Championship when Mairéad (Teehan) scored that late winner against Wexford in Tullamore, but we believe this is the best pitch to hurl on in Offaly.

“It’s where most of our club games are played, most of our families are around the area and it’s great for them to come in and support, and that win over Dublin last week was definitely the best we played all year. Playing here in Birr was a big part of that.”

To most neutral observers, Offaly’s 0-18 to 1-13 win in that game was perhaps the most eye-catching result of the year so far. Dublin had been comfortable winners over Offaly in both the League and the provincial championship, where “they bullied us, and we just took it”. This time, the script was flipped in a spectacular fashion.

“I think our tackle count at half-time was 120, and because of how easily they walked over us in the two games before, they weren’t ready for it.”

Clodagh Leahy hit 0-12 for Offaly and while relegation is still not off the table if they lose to Clare and Dublin beat Limerick in Cappamore, it means that this clash with Clare is effectively a knockout contest for both teams.

There is the caveat that Offaly need to win by six points to have a chance of sneaking second spot in Group 2 and securing a return to Croke Park and that would have seemed very unlikely at the beginning of the campaign, given that Clare were Division 1B League champions

However, while the Banner have shown great character in tight battles to secure three wins, Lorna McNamara’s injury robs them of a significant scoring threat, and they struggled to compete with table toppers Kilkenny last week.

Regan’s optimism doesn’t emanate from anything to do with Clare however, only her excitement at how Offaly have turned a corner over the past couple of months.  

“The Dublin match was our best performance of the year so far so if we can bring that same intensity and work rate to the game, I think we’ll be right there and in with a shout..

“When we played Clare in the League, we started very slowly and we gave ourselves too much to do, but once we settled down we were competitive. After going eight points down, there was six in it at the end. They have some very good players but it’s for us to focus on ourselves and make sure we perform, we can’t be thinking about the opposition.”

Regan was in Thurles last Sunday to see the county’s senior hurlers perform the role of Icarus against a rampant Cork side, as they crashed to earth in a spectacular fashion.

Ellen travelled with her father Daithí, who himself won the Liam MacCarthy Cup with Offaly in 1994, as well as a couple of All-Ireland club titles with Birr, and it didn’t go unnoticed among the pair that Offaly’s camogs share a similar profile to the hurlers in a lot of ways.

They’ve moved up the ranks in recent years, exceeding all external expectations for the group, and are now in elite company. Clare were senior quarter-finalists last year and if Offaly were to come through tomorrow’s game against the Banner, they would take on one of 2025’s top four for a place in a semi-final.

Even if it would be a formidable challenge on paper and potentially a chastening experience in an unforgiving arena on Jones’ Road, and despite the way things unfolded for the Offaly hurlers despite the notable achievement of reaching hurling’s final six, this is precisely what the camogie panel want and need, in the mind of their formidable wing back.

“These games are where you want to be hurling. Some days it goes really well for you, some days it doesn’t, but they’re the best place to learn, and whether we’re taking on Clare, Galway or whoever, that’s where we want to be.”

And no crushed digits or Plaster of Paris will stand in their way.