Pressure on Offaly as hope springs

Leinster SHC Offaly v Laois:  At the end of their recent stint of warm-weather training in Portugal, Offaly manager John McIntyre gathered the players around and told them to remember their time together and the hard work they had done - particularly when tough, edgy championship matches might be going down to the wire.

The team's Guinness Leinster hurling championship starts tomorrow in O'Moore Park, Portlaoise. It's not expected that Offaly will have to dig too deeply into that reserve of bonding and close-knit team spirit to get past neighbours Laois, but that widespread presumption has spooked the favourites.

On paper it's straightforward. Back in Division One, Offaly have had a quietly impressive season to date, with McIntyre introducing new players and acclimatising the team to life at the top. Currently holders of the unwanted number-nine spot in the championship pecking order, the county have attainable ambitions to go one better and reach this year's All-Ireland quarter-finals.

Laois on the other hand were relegated from Division One after a catastrophic play-off defeat by Down.

But they have a tradition of troubling their midland rivals and new manager Dinny Cahill got some creditable championship performances out of Antrim in his first two years as manager in Ulster despite not always giving the league a high priority. Cahill, the apprehensive theory runs, is a summer manager.

On top of that was the lull that followed the training camp. Players went back to their clubs, and county training relaxed for a couple of weeks only for a severe reality check to arrive in the form of a challenge-match whacking from All-Ireland champions Cork, with whom Offaly had drawn in the league.

These anxieties illustrate the length of the road ahead for Offaly. It's eight years since the county won their last All-Ireland and 11 since they lifted the Leinster trophy.

Up until then everyone knew the story of Offaly hurling: how from a tiny catchment they had turned tradition upside down; how no one had believed when in 1980 they won a first provincial title in front of fewer than 10,000 spectators at Croke Park; how the All-Ireland followed a year later and another four years after that; how - above all - the county, taught their winning ways by Kilkennyman Dermot Healy, had become a grim, contemporary nightmare for Kilkenny.

Fired by this example and the simultaneous emergence of a whole range of outstanding talents, Offaly won three All-Ireland minor titles in four years, planting the seeds for two more senior titles in the 1990s, delivered with panache and a cavalier style that appeared - not always accurately - to owe nothing to perspiration and everything to inspiration.

It was a confident generation. Eamonn Cregan managed the county to the 1994 All-Ireland and once said his natural wariness of the big hurling counties found no corroboration in Offaly: "I remember Brian Whelahan explaining that to me. I'd be fearful that Offaly wouldn't be able to beat Kilkenny but they had no fear. It was an amazing thing."

But then came the fall and what a fall was there: no more titles, becoming Kilkenny's punchbag and falling far behind their great rivals in the production and nurture of new talent. The widening rift between the counties became the saddest indicator of decline, and last year it extended cavernously to a 31-point defeat in the Leinster semi-final.

"When the team of the 1990s broke up we didn't have a sufficient number of quality players," says Pat Fleury, captain of the 1985 All-Ireland winners and the man who as manager took Offaly to the county's last All-Ireland final six years ago.

"Kilkenny reached a new high level of consistency. They've gone to great pains to ensure the quality of their underage players and they have quality people working with them. Success is breeding more of it and they have the advantage of hurling being the one sport in the county. I know there are plenty of local soccer leagues but realistically there are no other allegiances.

"Offaly is split in two and it sometimes affects us. For instance we lost Neville Coughlan to the footballers. He's a strong lad, a good player and in and around the perfect age.

"But Kilkenny have won 14 of the last 16 Leinster minors. It's a most frightening statistic and means the rest of us are playing catch-up. When we were strong, we didn't build on that success. No decent underage structure was put in place."

Belatedly the county moved to address the universally accepted need for development squads and the close monitoring of underage talent.

Johnny Flaherty, star of the 1980s, has been entrusted with overseeing the process, but "catch-up" is very much an understatement.

The serial battering from Kilkenny - the average margin of defeat over the six most recent championship matches is more than 14 points - has been one constant trial; the other has been the emergence of Dublin as the clear number two in the province's pecking order. And Dublin have been addressing their problems for over 10 years.

Naturally Offaly's hurling community pine for better days and the type of players who made them happen - clever, instinctive players in whom technique and big-match temperament combined so naturally.

The team of the 1990s broke up as they had arrived, mostly in unison, and centrefielder Gary Hanniffy is the only survivor from 1998 who starts tomorrow; the icon of the decade, Brian Whelahan, is on the bench.

The young team who take the field tomorrow need a championship run to build confidence. Last year's savaging and 2004's humiliating relegation to Division Two have left the players with things to prove.

Having bounced back the team enjoyed a creditable NHL season. Everything has been done properly in the modern style from the diet sheets to the warm-weather training. But everyone knows the testing ground is here and now and not what happened between February and April, for all that a bad league would have probably wrecked morale, in itself a departure from past traditions.

Former Clare and Galway trainer Michael McNamara was McIntyre's predecessor for two years. He had always been intrigued by the apparent disconnection between spring and summer in the county.

"We played Laois and gave them a bit of a trimming after a poor league campaign. Offaly are strange. The championship brings out a bit extra in them. Even in the 1990s they gave some shocking league performances. I'd be surprised if they don't lift it again.

"In the past they responded well to bad defeats. In 1984 they were hammered by Cork in the All-Ireland final. If that had been Clare we wouldn't have been heard of for another 10 years but Offaly came back and won the All-Ireland the next year.

"I found resources were the problem. In Offaly you'd be struggling with the 12th, 13th, 14th places - in Clare it'd be at 26, 27 and 28.

"It's hard for a team when there's such a drastic drop on a panel from senior intercounty standard to fairly average players."

Fleury agrees: "Championships have become long affairs. You have to play quite a lot of players and must have realistic options among the 30 players on the panel."

Part of the current optimism in the county is based on the new, young players who have come through. Most attention has focused on the teenagers at full back, Paul Cleary, and full forward, Joe Bergin - a strapping 18-year-old whose raw physical style and skill have looked an intoxicating cocktail so far.

Rory Hanniffy, who had been carrying the mantle of county prodigy in recent times, relocated to centre back and his presence and ability have provided reassurance.

"Rory was a matter of trial and error," says Fleury. "We'd tried quite a few players in the position and it's very important to have a centre back. He's done well so far."

It may be very early days for Offaly but already there is pressure and expectation and not just from within the county. Leinster badly needs a team to provide Kilkenny with sustained opposition. Wexford have battled gamely and conjured up a brilliant smash-and-grab two years ago plus some competitive encounters, but failure to perform consistently has undermined the county's momentum.

The path to the All-Ireland quarter-finals is passable for Offaly. McIntyre might be feeling neurotic about the advance publicity but it's understandable. If his team can't cope with Laois, the season will be considered a calamity. Survive tomorrow and there's still pressure because if they can't beat Wexford - who have kept them narrowly at bay in recent championship meetings - no progress will have been registered.

And there's plenty of room for slippage. Fleury says the public consensus can be dangerous in providing false but plausible comfort.

"People will be saying, 'You might get it hard but you should win anyway.' When that gets into the psyche it's like a death sentence."

Then there is the real issue at the heart of Offaly's championship: how good are the team and how reliable the county's apparent renaissance? Fleury is realistic about what awaits.

"These guys haven't experienced championship occasions to any significant extent. The weather this weekend won't be good.

"When players are concentrating on the championship, the one game waiting for you the next summer, you're expecting sunshine on your back when you run onto the pitch in front of a big crowd.

"It will be different in Portlaoise in the wind and the rain with only 1,000 or so sitting huddled in the stand."

And tomorrow that's where it all starts.