It was his longest summer. After Meath finished them in the first hours of the 1998 Championship, the Offaly boys, Leinster champions of '97 and National League winners in '98, packed their bags and went their own way. Tommy Lyons' plans and expectations danced before him in mockery.

"It was just a horrible, horrible feeling. It's the only way I can describe it," the Offaly manager reflects.

Elimination from the football championship is by nature brutally swift, but losing a provincial title on your first outing is especially severe. Those dreary nights, the dieting and planning, the phone calls and vows, all for one lousy hour of football.

"We didn't really meet again for two or three months. I was writing away with the (Evening) Herald for the summer and I think without that I'd have been lost altogether. It kept me interested and in a sense, with Offaly gone, I suppose I began to enjoy the games more than if I was watching potential opponents.'

One day in July, the Offaly team met went on the batter together "just to say hello", but only last month did they begin kicking a ball again.

"The optimism had returned by then, it's human nature," says Lyons.

"Nothing has changed, we'll go out and play the games before Christmas and then get down to business early in the New Year."

Offaly are defending their league title this year but according to the manager, the emphasis placed on the competition won't have changed.

"Well, we never placed any huge emphasis on the league last year. We played the games and got to the quarter-finals and once you reach that stage, I think every team wants to win."

"Attaining a league title for the first time is a brilliant achievement. I said at the time that it will matter more to the lads in 10 years' time. It's easy to forget that it's only three years ago that we were a Division Four team."

But isn't there a theory that maybe a team is as well off languishing in the underworld of winter football, unknown and unwatched? Weren't Offaly setting themselves up for a fall, hightailing it around Croke Park just weeks before the serious stuff began?

"Well, it did give Sean Boylan an opportunity to run the slide rule over us for three games in a row. He saw what we had. But the reverse occurred the year before that. It's all swings and roundabouts," he says.

Lyons has modest ambitions set out for the league. Wants to see his players perform reasonably, maybe blood a few talents. He professes himself confounded by the experimental rules, refusing to bow to the purists' argument that the old game is dying.

"Who cares? Who cares if high catching and kicking is going. Look, Gaelic football is about a bunch of amateurs coming together, getting extremely fit and playing the game at an incredible speed. It is more difficult to field cleanly now."

But, ultimately, he feels that the hand-pass won't overshadow the game because it simply isn't effective enough.

"I know the Games Development Committee have put a lot of thought into this and they are carrying out great work. But you can't dictate a style. I think the real case against the hand-pass lies in the fact that Kildare and Mayo lost All-Irelands with it while Galway, Kerry and Meath won with the direct game. "

Lyons believes that persistent rule-juggling undermines the league format and is convinced that the key to improving the game lies with the implementation of the championship rules.

"I think we saw that last year and it led to one of the best championships in years. No off-the-ball stuff, very little pulling and dragging, less sendings off, less intentional fouling. Galway won the All-Ireland with a set of small forwards because defenders couldn't haul and drag at them as used to be the case."

Offaly play Cork in Tullamore this Sunday and, as usual, the faithful will turn up in numbers. But a lot has changed. The county's hurlers have rediscovered themselves, a feat which Lyons believes will further motivate his own squad.

He went to Croke Park the day the hurlers completed their startling late-summer and autumn march, listened as Hubert Rigney said his bit. A magical hour, he says, during a frustrating time.

But no matter, it's over now. The power bases may have shifted slightly during Offaly's absence, but Lyons doesn't care. In fact, he can't remember when last he greeted November so readily. Because the cold month brings a gift: "Offaly are back in the pack now. Thanks be to God."