Despite the two-week delay to this game, both counties would have taken the inconvenience at the beginning of the competition. And both will fancy their chances with the golden carrot of a Leinster final just 70 minutes away.

It's almost two years to the day since they met in the All Ireland series and most will recall the scenes of jubilation at Wexford Park that evening.

The crowd was swelled with the parading of the Bob O'Keeffe trophy by the Wexford hurlers and those who turned up witnessed the true emergence of the Wexford footballers.

They surprised Offaly and came out with a five-point victory and nobody will forget the contribution of Matty Forde . . . he walked away with a personal tally of 2-10.

While Forde surely won't match that total today, Wexford will look upon this as a real opportunity to catapult themselves towards one big day out. Last year they flopped against Dublin at this stage when it looked like an upset was on the cards and question marks still hang over their ability to eke out a victory.

Far too much emphasis has been put on the league within the county, but this year, with Paul Bealin in charge, the focus has changed. Since he came in last winter, he's made it clear that championship success is all that matters and the Dubliner has stated on the record that he will have failed with Wexford unless they capture a provincial title.

In Banville, Colfer, Deely and Forde they have the forwards to do it, but their defence has been shaky at times.

Against Meath, goalkeeper John Cooper was called into action on numerous occasions. He put in one of the displays of the year when he stopped four certain goals and only for those contributions, Wexford may not have pulled through.

With the substitution fiasco now behind them, Offaly will be very glad of the opportunity to finally kick some football. It has been nine years since they reached a Leinster final but they have the uncanny knack of producing the goods when it counts. Karol Slattery is in fine form and picked up the GPA Player of the Month award earlier this year while Damien Hunt has also impressed since the Kildare game.

Like Wexford, they'll have to shore up their defence. Even with Shane Sullivan fit, Offaly's fullback line is penetrable, and it will be interesting to see if Forde remains close to the posts, or forages along the 40 as he did against Meath.

The two-pronged attack of Thomas Deegan and Niall McNamee has worked well so far this year and if Alan McNamee and Ciaran McManus can find enough ball for Offaly around the middle of the field, expect the inside two to get some joy.

With two decent sets of forwards, this one holds plenty of promise and the outcome will be tight. Offaly, though, have more of a pedigree when it comes to finding a higher gear.

OFFALY P Kelly, G Rafferty, S Sullivan, N Grennan; P McConway, S Brady, K Slattery; A McNamee, C McManus; D Hunt, N Coughlan, J Reynolds; T Deehan, P Kellaghan, N McNamee

WEXFORD J Cooper; C Morris, P Wallace, N Murphy; R Barry, D Murphy, P Curtis; R Stafford, D Kinsella; C Deely, P Colfer, D Fogarty; L Murphy, PJ Banville, M Forde

LEINSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL OFFALY vWEXFORD Croke Park, 2.10 Referee J White (Donegal) Live, RTE 2, 1.45