Brian Whelahan's Championship Diary in the Times

[Bord na Mona man]

Seeds of our decline were there to be seen

Brian Whelahan's Championship Diary: Everyone respects that Offaly hurling is in a very different state than it was 10 years ago and they know after last Sunday it's going to take a really long time before Offaly are back as one of the premier counties.

I don't really have a huge problem with Kilkenny dominating at underage in Leinster. Both Offaly and Wexford have very strong football areas. We're totally a pocket of hurling - the populated part of the county is all football, which gives them a good base to pick from.

In 2000, we beat Kilkenny on the way to winning minor and under-21 Leinster titles. I thought there was a perception in Offaly that, "lovely, we have a team coming through".

My problem at that time was that there were about 25 guys between those two teams and no one was asking: "What are we going to do with them to ensure that they come through at the same sort of level?" We failed them on that.

The county board, in their lacklustre approach, failed to build on that. In the 1980s we got enough hurlers from the three minor All-Ireland winning teams to keep the seniors going through the 1990s. I know that's a lot different from winning one Leinster, but there was a continuity going through under-21 and up to senior. We weren't losing players.

The difference between then and 2000 is that Ireland has changed. The importance of putting yourself through a hard regime for the sake of your hurling isn't accepted. Fellas don't want to do that anymore so the county has to work harder to keep them. There are players we shouldn't have lost and we're suffering the effects of that now.

The minors of 2000 came out at under-21 and Kilkenny wiped the field with them. Why did our standards drop so drastically over a couple of years from being the best in the province to togging out at under-21 in Portlaoise? That's the major disappointment - that we didn't work hard and intensively with those players, didn't say, 'let's make the best of these guys'.

There's an outcry now, but the writing was on the wall five years ago. We had an opportunity to do something about it five years ago. We didn't and we have to now. It's not going to change overnight. I always felt that Offaly were up against it on Sunday. Everyone did. I was hoping that we'd tear into them and throw caution to the wind, rattle them, hit them hard and show that we could compete with Kilkenny at that level, albeit for a certain amount of time.

That's what I wanted and what the management wanted, but it's difficult to do all of that when you're coming out of Division Two. I know they lost the Leinster semi-final last year, but the biggest motivation for Kilkenny players is who's going to be picked for the next day.

What happened was exactly what we were all afraid of - Kilkenny getting early goals. The heads would go down and that would be it. Maybe we needed to play something like Clare did last year and stop them getting easy scores early on and see what way the lie of the land was. You don't score much yourself doing that, but you can stay in the game. We didn't and got a beating that's not going to help the team in the qualifiers.

What brought me back? I had switched off totally from the idea of going back and doing hard training. I'd been out of it since October and had other things on my plate and just wasn't prepared to go and do the work necessary to get back into shape for the county.

I had always enjoyed going training and I used to look forward to meeting everyone and having the crack.My attitude this year was totally different. This year I felt the time was right to finish up.

I'd been tipping away with the club and it was harder to get my head around the idea of going down on whatever day it was to training with the county. The enjoyment wasn't there, especially on dark evenings when all you were doing was the running and physical stuff.

Then the long evenings came in and we started to do the bit of hurling with the local championship coming up and maybe that led to a change of mind. The chore aspect went out of it. I had told John (McIntyre, manager) I wasn't going back. That was at the group stages of the league. In fairness to John, he did say that if the club championship showed up anything we could reconsider things.

If it had been the old knockout system and we were drawn against Kilkenny I would have found it very hard to come back. Division Two didn't help my appetite. I was very disappointed after last year's league. I felt that relegation was a major step backwards for Offaly hurling.

The seeds of last Sunday go back to that. It was glossed over at the time because we came within a puck of the ball of winning a Leinster final. But getting relegated really summed up what had happened last year and where Offaly hurling had gone.

We didn't have the best of luck in that we played quite well in phase one and then had a lot of injuries in phase two. But going down was our own fault. We shouldn't have lost to Dublin and Laois. Offaly needed to be up playing in Division One in this year of all years - playing Kilkenny.

League hurling's not remotely related to championship hurling, but it gives you a sense of the urgency that's required. It's still three or four steps up though and that's from Division One. So how many steps is it from Division Two? You'd want to be in the county this week. There's radio talk shows blaming this and blaming that. Everyone is being blamed. The local papers are out now and that'll be another ripping for another day.

Waterford on Saturday means we're up against one of the best three or four teams in the country. But we have to get on with and try and regain a bit of self-respect. If we take another big drubbing it'll be a disaster.