Lyons already focusing on Meath game

We are getting used to these exploratory ventures into the Offaly dressing-room, there to be greeted by the genial Tommy Lyons and a flow of fluent quotes. From the basement of Division Four to National League and provincial championships is a journey which attracts romantics and journalists alike.

Tommy is standing there with a grin unshrunken by diets or weather.

"Well, what was that game like, lads? Tell me. I thought we were twice the team in the first half that they were. Maybe just a bit of anxiety in front of the goals, maybe we had more room than we thought we would have. We should have been seven or eight points ahead coming in at half-time."

Indeed in the sheets of rain Offaly had strung together some moves which suggested that on dry days they will be a treat to watch. Tommy Lyons, though, has moved on to the second half.

"In the second half, well every team is going to dominate and they dominated and didn't get the scores. We have a stronger team this year. I thought we played great football in the wet at times. They had a great 15-minute spell but couldn't get the scores. Our corner backs today were unbelievable. Vinny Claffey was dynamite up front - he was on Keiran McKeever, who is acknowledged to be a great back and he destroyed him."

Then to the theme of the post-match dressing-room. It's on everyone's lips and by the time you leave you will be humming it yourself.

But there was the odd caveat. "We have more homework to do. This means nothing till the 24th of May. It will be something for the lads to look back on in time. In 10 years' time they will be the first team to have won a National League for Offaly. But come the 24th of May it will just increase Meath's will to beat us. We are going to have to really put in savage work sharpening up and getting ready for the battle."

So to the problems of focusing. First the manager. Then his team.

"I haven't thought about it. There is no point in talking till it becomes an issue. When they are getting jarred tonight I will be getting my head around next week and getting them focused. It's good for Offaly, they have put in the work. There is great euphoria in Offaly about this team and in fairness we are playing football. I think the way we set out our stall it's great that Offaly did win a national title."

Lyons was asked if, after another attractive performance by his side, he worried about days when they come up against outfits with more evil intent?

"That's the way I believe the game should be played. I thought today was a good physical contest, men going in hard for the ball. That's the way we play our game. We are not going to change. If we get beat by Meath because we are not going to resort to that, fine."

John Ryan, the burgeoning dual star of the Offaly scene, has a problem not entirely of his making to consider. Offaly's hurlers and footballers both begin their championship campaigns on the same day in May. Both against Meath.

Starting his first league game for Offaly. "I'm not sure what will happen yet," he said. "Hopefully there could be some alteration, maybe a Saturday evening match. They never clashed before now, the bigger games, they were always played at different time. I am not sure what I am going to do. I just hope there will be some change."

Jimmy Stewart, the former wing back now recycled as a centre forward, already had his brain tuned to a certain day on the calendar. "We will focus now on May 24th. At last now maybe people will start taking notice of Offaly. We just kept going, especially the defence, Derry rallied very strongly. We weren't getting the scores we should have and the ball wasn't coming out as well as we should have, but John Kenny came out of defence well a couple of times.

"We kept plugging away today. That's the credit to the half back line, we were very conscious of them getting the loose man inside. We made a conscious decision during the week to avoid that and we did it."

Ciaran McManus's day finished better than it might have. A missed penalty in the first half might have proved quite costly. Instead he could afford a rueful look back.

"The penalty? I struck it very badly really. I looked up before I even kicked it. That's a crucial mistake if you are hitting a penalty. I was hitting them well up till now. I will have to learn to take them on big days.

"We all knew the formation for today about a week ago. It worked. We dominated the first half, we should have been further ahead for the amount of possession we had. I never really worry about how we are ahead if we are playing well. I knew it wouldn't be a draw, it would have been a bad thing for us to have to play again two weeks before the Meath match."

The star of the show arguably was Vinny Claffey whose astonishing acceleration once in receipt of the ball left Kieran McKeever flailing after him more than once.

As befits somebody who has been around for as long as Claffey he reflected on the longer-term progress. "Going up from Division Four to win a Leinster final and a league final this year, it shows what can be done. After this amount of time it is nice to have a league medal to put beside the Leinster medal. In the second half I took a few wrong decisions at times but in the first half I was reasonably happy with my chances."

As for Derry, defeat will hardly be a cataclysmic setback to their intentions. They have been around the block quite a few times with the league. Joe Brolly, the Derry corner forward, found his loquaciousness undiminished by defeat.

"The ref was really bad I thought, but Offaly, there's a romantic sort of notion about Offaly that they're a lovely football team and there's no pulling or dragging and it's all beautiful football, the aesthetic pleasure of the game. They definitely benefit from that. If Cathal Daly got touched at all it's a free out. You could definitely see that in the second half, one time he actually tripped over it and it was a free out, but I mean you take that."

"Offaly just benefited from that a wee bit today, the romantic thing that they appeal to purists. But I would say they played in the first half and that's when they won the game."

"You could see we have a fair bit to go. We were using the league as a platform for the championship. You could see we were not too disappointed - we have three league medals already and very little to show for that in terms of the championships. There's a bigger picture. We've a long way to go."

So it went. A National League final played out under the shadow of the volcano that is the championship. Everybody making preparations.