Little sense to be extracted from the chaos above ground and below on Saturday. Offaly backsides rooted to the Croke Park grass above. Jimmy Cooney, the thief of time, buried away in some smoky committee room below. And Offaly and Clare hurlers shiveringly stripped of the comfort of cliches as journalists came to pick the bones of the dead game.

Ger Loughnane, fecklessly mellow and jovial in a mire of somebody else's controversy, was good value though. Molten hot news flowing from the sideline of the most colourful debacle the GAA has mounted in years.

"Michael Bond (Offaly manager) was just beside me at the final whistle he showed me his stopwatch at 33 minutes 20 seconds. We've heard of the long whistle, now we have the short whistle - for Offaly it's a terrible way to lose an AllIreland semi-final. We were incredulous really. Everybody just looked around. We thought he'd blown a free."

There was a colourful little ribbon of lunacy draped all round Croke Park. People on the pitch who didn't think it was all over being told by officials that it was now. Yellow-jacketed policemen trying to poke people away off the pasture like farmers shifting recalcitrant cattle. The under-21 hurlers of Kerry and Kildare warming up for a game which had increasingly little chance of being played.

In the Offaly dressing-room Michael Duignan had heard that Ger Loughnane was calling the game a fait accompli, a bad break for the faithful folk. "I think that's a bit of a disgrace from Ger Loughnane," said Duignan. "He was on about inhumanity and fairness for all men and fairness for this, that and the other. I mean who knows whether we would have won or not, we might have been beaten by eight points, but we wanted the full time to prove whether we were the better team or not. If they had beaten us in full time we'd have had no complaints."

Nobody was inclined to dispute the point. The Offaly hurlers huffily shedding their armour on the dressing-room floor had after all rammed 2-5 past Limerick in the space of 41/2 minutes at the end of the 1994 All-Ireland final.

Poor Jimmy Cooney. Most people's man of the match was being spoken about in every nook of the dressing-room warren. Plans were afoot to get him a novel retirement present. Duignan had enjoyed some golden moments with the man himself when the end came.

"We approached him at the end of the game and initially he suggested that the time was up and then Aodhan Mac Suibhne, the linesman, said no there was time left and he accepted that and it looked like he wanted to restart the game. But he was led away by the officials right on the whistle."

Bond, who noted on the occasion of the drawn game that Cooney is a neighbour of his, wasn't about to become Brutus. No, et tu Bondy "To be honest Jimmy has made a genuine mistake, we're not singling out Jimmy. I'm not holding anything against him, we just want fair play. If we have to play another five minutes, that's it. If it has to be a replay, so be it."

In the midst of Bond's learned discourse on the issue came the rude interruption of a PA announcement from the in-house nabobs, apologising for the delay in dealing with events at the end of the match, promising the balm of a GAC meeting and urging Offaly supporters to move off the hallowed acres.

In the dressing-room, Bond listened and offered his pop-eyed audience a generous wager.

"I bet £100,000 to a ha'penny we won't get a replay. People who seem to be in the know said to me `you'll get an apology.' I don't know who they were. People don't know me and I don't know people. We had a quick meeting in here and we're going down whatever avenue. All we want is justice.

"I talked to Jimmy afterwards, I showed him the stopwatch and how much was left and he said come then, come on we'll get them back."

Brian Whelehan was standing on a bench above a thicket of reporters pondering the strangest day in this odd life of his. He had, as he termed it, been "thrown out of the backs" in the course of the match. Justice perhaps for the All Star selectors of 1994, but more immediate judicial matters were on his mind.

"Aodhan Mac Suibhne came in and I said `Aodhan, he's wrong', and Aodhon went to Jimmy Cooney and says `you're two minutes short'. Jimmy Cooney said he played three minutes overtime. We were just in total shock."

We gazed at him and he gazed back. We pondered the remedies open to Offaly. A sleep-in like John and Yoko. Pickets on Jimmy Cooney's house. Street theatre. Whelehan had nothing to offer us.

"All we can do is live in hope. If there is any justice in it at all, there should be something. We'd love to get another run at Clare. We're after training very hard for this all year.

If we were beaten over the 70 minutes, well the injury time is at the referee's discretion, but you expect 70 minutes of hurling and we weren't given that today. With everything that's gone on this summer I hope a bit of fair play will prevail."

Then he reminded us all of how much Offaly had scored in the last 4 1/2 minutes of the 1994 final.

We moved to the Clare dressingroom. Fergie Tuohy leaning on his hurl, feigning calm.

"Great to be in a final," he said. "They had to get goals to come back at us there today and . . ."

Will there be a replay?

"I wouldn't like to think there's room for a replay. We were well on top. But they knew what they were doing when they got that free and tapped it over the bar. Public opinion isn't on our side. We take it whatever way we comes. I wouldn't like to think we'd appeal if it was us it happened to."

Indeed Clare, who have been treating suspensions like an insult to their race, were to a man positive that had they seen the last two minutes of a game purloined and then lost that game they would have shrugged shoulders and headed home.

"It leaves it a bit flat for us," said Fergie. "The way things are going against us, it would have been flat anyway, we're public enemy No 1."

Jamesie O'Connor's face had the grey look of dread about it. You get to the clear blue sea of another All-Ireland final and, inevitably, given Clare's summer, there is a squall of controversy breaking over your hapless heads.

"Very unfortunate," said Jamesie, "I feel really sorry for Jimmy Cooney and the Offaly fellas, but it's outside our control. I had no idea he'd blown it short. Brian Carthy told me coming off the pitch. It's a strange way to finish. To train the way they have is hard. For us, we were three points up when he blew the final whistle - that's it. There's can't be another day out and it's going to have to stand."

And Brian Lohan, a jag of stitches on his head leaking a film of red blood which trickled down his neck. Time for one pull across the chubby thighs of the media.

Do Offaly have ground to look for a replay? "I'm sure they do. Will it go to a replay? Ye make the decisions around here boys."

If only.