"Ten years, I'm around. I suppose that wouldn't be all that long a time really. You've Joe (his elder brother) there, he's going a fair while now. But you'd always be afraid of what's around the corner. The next day like."

The next day. Another unguessable lurch where Offaly are concerned. Johnny Dooley is in his living-room, television set switched to mute, reflecting on the latest landmark of this circular crusade which has sustained his Offaly team-mates for over a decade. A Leinster final - again. Kilkenny again. And whatever the result, Offaly still lurking, sunny and ageless and carefree, waiting and watching and seeing what happens. The team that time forgot. Other counties well up in a furnace and blast out a legacy and find themselves vapourised by the intensity of their own effort. Life-spans in modern hurling are short.

Except with Offaly, who ignite every few years and then retreat into themselves. Even though 1998 illustrated the futility of scrubbing them off the candidates' board, the temptation grows stronger every year. So, when they came out in Croke Park two weeks ago and hurled Wexford into the ground, the praise was muted.

"Two old teams, one prolonging the agony," sighs Dooley. "I suppose it is disappointing a bit, really, I think that we've never really gotten the credit we merit. But if people want to think that way, well that's their business. It has never affected us, what people thought about us."

Quite the opposite. A myth has built up around this Offaly team that they use their 'ornery nature as an elixir, a source of revival. They are predictable only in their unpredictability, have a schizophrenic streak that leaves opposing teams at a loss as to how to gauge them. The philosophy regarding hurling is blindingly straight and executed at a brilliantly-high level, their players prefer to adopt an easygoing attitude towards hurling life, but as a whole they are thought to be driven by complex forces. You wouldn't, as the saying goes, know what to make of them.

"I suppose we are own worst enemies in a way. Any time a lot is expected of us, we seem to go out and get hammered by 12 or 14 points points. Like, last year in the Leinster final, we were half fancied and Kilkenny were just boring holes through us. And I honestly can't explain why, everything had been going well for us. Maybe it was just a revenge thing from the All-Ireland the previous year. Then when we are written off, we often put in good displays. So it's hard to figure out."

Not that Johnny Dooley is blase about it. Offaly aren't arrogant enough to think that hitting form is as simple as flicking a light switch. But they do have the reputation of not taking the league seriously.

"I suppose that's because we have less players here, we do know our championship team or most of it anyway. So what would we be killing ourselves in the winter for? There is no point in sticking our head in when it's not needed - save it for later on in the year. But for all that, I think our lack of league interest is exaggerated. First day out against Galway, we might have won it. Our only other loss was to Limerick. And that was without all the Birr lads, which people tended to forget. So we weren't all that far off the pace either."

Johnny Dooley himself flourished in the league, imperious at midfield. Four points against Galway, seven against Antrim and Limerick; an outstanding first half against Clare. But he gently denies that he was thriving during the traditional Offaly season of hibernation. His father Sean passed away just days after the Clare game and for most of the winter season, hurling had never mattered as little to Johnny Dooley. "I suppose I was only going through the motions then really, sort of asking myself what I was doing there at all," he says. When the evenings lengthened his hunger came back.

His father had been a formative influence. "He never hurled all that much, a few seasons with the club all right. But he could talk hurling morning, noon and night. It was him really that encouraged us to keep going and thanks be to God, Billy and Joe and myself got a lot out of it."

Great days. The final, impossible minutes of the 1994 All-Ireland final which was tilting steeply in Limerick's flavour. Johnny steps up and strikes a goal and over the next four minutes, Offaly turn a five-point deficit into a six-point lead.

"The goal's a blur, to be honest," he says, smiling sheepishly.

"Those five minutes, well, it's great to slap on the video at Christmas and enjoy them. They will certainly stay with me as long as I live. Just one of those things that happened."

Same as the quirk four years later, when Wexford, on an emotional 1798 revival, were spun out of the championship by a late, late Johnny Dooley goal. "Just happened to be in the right spot in the right time," he shrugs, all Offaly straightforwardness.

And after that improbable escape, the roller coaster summer of 1998 which reached a nadir with the departure of Babs Keating.

"I was sick on the Monday when that whole thing hit the papers. Any county could do without that sort of publicity. I had always got along fine with Babs but it was just one of those things, he went public and we responded and it all blew up. When Michael Bond came in we were on a low. He just kept telling us we were the best team in Ireland. And it worked, because we never doubted our own ability."

And that's how it will be tomorrow. Men have jumped into the whirlpool of intercounty hurling fresh and hopeful only to find themselves squeezed, scarred and winded a few years later. Tomorrow they will flick on the television and find themselves watching this Offaly bunch who seemed ready to quit when they first started, unrushed as ever in the madness. Offaly, see, like all the great teams, exist beyond the reaches of standard time. But not indefinitely.

Johnny Dooley has hurled for 10 years and both he and his wife Sinead have knocked a fair few laughs out of the game. Some days, though, he wants to get away from it and work - days spent on quiet canals - acts as a refuge.

So how long for Johnny Dooley, Offaly player? "You wouldn't know, it might depend a lot on Sunday. No player wants to be looking too far ahead. When February comes and all that winter training is ahead, you do wonder what's it all about. At least whenever we go, no one can say we didn't win anything. So you can't be thinking too far."

He is momentarily grave and then melts into a big grin. "Another All-Ireland would be nice in the meantime, though."

Believe him if you want. Johnny Dooley doesn't care.