Interview Gary HanniffySeán Moran finds the Offaly captain philosophical about his team's relegation and confident they can put recent problems behind them as the season unfolds

Offaly captain Gary Hanniffy is steady under fire. At yesterday's championship launch in Croke Park he would have guessed what was coming in the wake of as embarrassing a month as the county hurlers have endured for quite some time.

Next February Hanniffy will be one of the players bringing All-Ireland decorations around the down-market haunts of Division Two. Relegation came late in injury time of the final league match against midland neighbours Laois, who will also be their championship opponents at the end of this month.

This all triggered some local hue and cry, with reports of scarcely a dozen turning out at training.

"There were a lot of injuries and exams and things like that but all teams have difficulty with that sort of thing at this time of the year," said Hanniffy when asked about the mood in the panel.

"As a result of injuries we were slightly affected. We'd be hopeful that if we have everybody in a fit state we'd be able to compete with most teams. That would be the feeling within the camp."

The lengthy injury list comes close to home, with his brother Rory the one absentee with no hope of making the throw-in against Laois.

"He went over on his knee. He's had a scan and nothing is torn but the whole knee would appear to be buckled, medial, cruciate, the whole thing. He's certainly out for the Laois game and unlikely to be back for the one after that.

"He could possibly be back for the Leinster final but it's hard to know with the knee; he's walking now and not able to run. It depends on recovery and how the physio goes."

With one of their best players in dry dock for the initial stages of the championship Offaly are looking under a bit of pressure to develop the progress made last year, when the county reached the All-Ireland quarter-final, an incremental improvement on the previous season.

Hanniffy dismisses a question about how he would assess where the team stand facing into a championship with an inviting route to the Leinster final.

"It's more the way media would look at it. We never stand back and say 'where are we now?' We survived Division One last year and didn't this year. Compared to last year we've more injuries and a different type of training - probably more rigorous, physical training last year, a case of maybe lads being a little bit fitter this year. But we're still training as often."

Relegation came as a particularly nasty shock given that the campaign started well with a win over Tipperary, and in the theoretically more difficult environment of the first phase they were unlucky not to qualify for the top group in phase two.

"We did well in the first phase of the league and were just pipped at the post by Limerick from going through to the later stages," says Hanniffy. "We were beaten by Kilkenny subsequently and after that things just went badly for us in the remaining two games and we end up in Division Two.

"Relegation's a lot different in hurling than in football and no one wants to go down to Division Two. We lost the last three games having competed well in the first phase, which maybe gives a clearer picture, but the fact is that we lost to Laois. And we lost to Dublin."

These inescapable facts led to some hard words from within the county, with former All-Ireland captain Pádraig Horan openly criticising current manager Michael McNamara. That can hardly have helped morale among the panel.

"It doesn't impact on the players really. When people see us not performing to the levels they know we're capable of they get disappointed and it's their right to criticise.

"No one likes to get criticism but you try and deal with it, but the fact that we have a lot of injuries was certainly a contributing factor so it was certainly unfair to criticise Mike McNamara in the way it happened. To be honest it doesn't bother us. You've got to be thick to be in this game."