Despite the uproar in some quarters, the fact that a team has now won the All-Ireland after losing their provincial final is a worthwhile development for the experimental championship format.

When delegates sit down in Wexford at the end of next month, they will have the full range of possibilities in front of them.

Last year Clare came through with a 100 per cent record to win the title in the old-fashioned way, whereas at the weekend Offaly demonstrated that a team can turn its season around even after a poor provincial campaign.

There's no need to get into the merits and demerits of the system all over again, but it's worth recalling a couple of things in the light of the hand-wringing which has accompanied Offaly's win.

This experiment was introduced for a two-year period. To become all worked-up over a natural consequence of its terms at this stage is irrational.

Secondly, there is a fundamental misconception about the All-Ireland. It is a competition, a championship to give it the status which that word bestows in the world of the GAA, but it is not a reliable arbiter of what county has the best team in the country.

Clare may well have claims on being the best team around but they were unable to translate that claim into the changed circumstances of championship play. Those circumstances call for more steadily-paced levels of performance.

Last year's champions did become the toys of misfortune but the draws with Waterford - which indirectly cost them Colin Lynch for the rest of the summer - and Offaly were their own fault - before Jimmy Cooney's error of timing - and brought about by the concession of goals at critical stages.

That aside, Offaly's achievement was significant and in some ways unwittingly so. Given that the new championship format is virtually certain to be retained with maybe a couple of minor changes, Offaly have provided the blueprint for how teams might tackle the championship in future.

This isn't to suggest that losing provincial finals will become a necessary prelude to winning the All-Ireland. The lesson for other counties is that defeated teams in a provincial final have to reinvent themselves.

The fact that Offaly changed management and thoroughly regenerated their attitude after the Leinster final was, relatively, a freak occurrence, but it underlined the new reality that the All-Ireland is now a separate and distinct target.

Within that environment, Offaly were the best team. They survived against Clare, surfed their luck in the replay (although the whole rationale behind the re-fixture was that the likely result had to be in doubt) and out-hurled a fatigued Clare for decisive stretches in the third match.

On Sunday they proved their credentials against a Kilkenny team whose extraordinary progress this year went largely unmarked because of the controversies of the summer. Accordingly, they finished the season emphatically, having accomplished everything asked of them in the All-Ireland series.

Offaly struck a couple of other blows against prevailing orthodoxies. Firstly they showed that hurling technique is still the most powerful asset a team can have. Admittedly the received image of Offaly having to be rousted out of saloon bars to take to the pitch is madly exaggerated, but even with the work the team had done, they still didn't approach the peaks of physical intensity that marked - and at times marred - the Munster final.

It is a bone of contention in Clare that they lost Colin Lynch to a disciplinary investigation whereas neither Johnny Pilkington nor Michael Duignan were subjected to similar processes. The grievance is well-founded and highlights the bizarre inconsistencies of the GAA's fractured disciplinary jurisdiction.

Munster Council decided to investigate Lynch, whereas the GAC at headquarters declined to investigate either of the Offaly players.

This point made (and not for the first time), the reaction of the players in the spotlight was a lot more dignified than the carry-on in Clare after Lynch's investigation and suspension.

Everyone would have to feel sympathy for Lynch and the manner in which he became a cipher in a bigger conflict, but Pilkington and Duignan also suffered frequent public reference to their inadequately-punished offences and in Duignan's case, prolonged booing and barracking from Clare supporters in Thurles.

Nonetheless both he and Pilkington maintained their equanimity and behaved with impeccable courtesy to the media as the controversy - which could have cost them their All-Ireland places - rumbled on. In so doing, they eschewed the paranoia which seeped out of Clare throughout August.

These matters were the low-point of the hurling year. Clare in particular, but also Wexford and to an extent Waterford, has helped the profile of hurling attain a status undreamed of even five years ago.

Most of this has been achieved by celebrating their respective counties and upholding pride in that county's identity and hurling history. Because of the many heartbreaks suffered and also the joyful connection made between them and the hurling community at large, there was widespread goodwill.

Being a tight-knit community, most hurling people take a genuine pleasure in the fortunes of newly successful counties. There was too much evidence this summer of county pride becoming a belligerent discourtesy to others - a concern raised wisely by a distinguished Clare hurling personality, Fr Harry Bohan, at the height of the Lynch controversy.

And not just Clare. Offaly stand indicted to this extent. In the chaos that followed the incomplete match in Croke Park, the county's supporters took the field and refused to allow the Kerry and Kildare under-21s to contest their All-Ireland B final.

The rules on refixture are as clear as day and a third match was an inevitability once the rulebook was consulted. Some Offaly people foolishly ascribe their perfectly legal remedy of a refixture to the actions of the people who occupied the pitch.

This is nonsense. The match had to be replayed. All that happened as a result of the occupation was that two young teams, who in all likelihood will never know the glory of sweeping all before them in a senior final before 65,000 people, were treated with contempt.

And all because of an over-zealous conviction by some Offaly supporters that their irregular behaviour was thoroughly justified - because the perceived best interests of their county outweighed any discourtesy towards others in the hurling community.

It was a common trend this summer and one we could do without in the future.