At the end of a memorable year which saw the county win its first National Football League title and subsequently lose their Leinster crown in the big championship collision with Meath, Offaly dropped the curtain on 1998 last Sunday in Tullamore with their first defeat in a regulation League match since February 11th, 1996.

The exploits which bridge the gap between that wintry setback in Baltinglass against Wicklow and the weekend's defeat by Dublin have been impressive - a 100 per cent drive through Division Four in 1996-97, leading to a narrow quarter-final loss to Kildare, a Leinster title the same year, followed by an unbeaten run in last season's league, culminating in triumph last May - but they have also been draining.

This rapid rise from the basement of the league has taken place under the direction of manager Tommy Lyons and his selectors Paul O'Kelly and Eddie Fleming. O'Kelly believes Offaly are operating at "between 20 and 30 per cent below the fitness level of last year" because "we had to recharge our batteries and take the pressure of all the guys until Christmas".

The team has been engaged in a lot of experimentation in order to address areas of weakness in the team, such as full back where Larry Carroll, Barry Malone, hurling full forward John Ryan and, on Sunday, converted wing back Tom Coffey have all been tried without complete success. Ryan, though, gave a good account of himself in the two big matches this year, the league final and the championship match with Meath.

"I think we've a lot of work to do to develop one of our players into a top-class full back," says O'Kelly. "There still may be a role for Barry Malone and John Ryan may still be able to do a job. I think Tom Coffey did well."

What? Dessie Farrell gave a man-of-the-match performance at full forward.

"When Farrell was in possession, he didn't do too badly, but the problem was he was letting him get the possession. A lot of that came from us not having Dublin under enough pressure in the half-back line and midfield and they kept putting good ball into him.

"John Ryan is still developing as a footballer. But what we have to do is experiment. Every match is a learning match. We've taken in Weir, Connolly, tried Moran, played Ryan, even Barry Malone at centre back."

This seems unusual given Finbar Cullen's high standing as defensive pivot, but O'Kelly explains the reasoning.

"We've got to understand what each player's absolute best position is and just because Finbar Cullen has done very well for us at centre back doesn't mean that that's his best position if we could get someone else for it.

"We're building towards next year, doing a bit of experimentation with individual players. We've John Kenny, a potential All Star, at half back and he was a half forward when we came along. We have to do the same amount of work with four or five players and see what their best position is.

"There's also a lot of talent around the middle of the field with Ciaran McManus, the two Grennans, Ronan Mooney all potential midfielders. "More importantly is if we're going to be playing Kildare in the first round of the championship next year and we intend playing Meath in the second round, they'll be playing two different types of football and we'll have to have answers for both. What has caught us out in the past is that we built a style which was very disciplined, very well-organised, but we have to be able to play different types of football."

All the talk of trial and experimentation sounds like the usual winter alibi for poor form in the League, just as `stamina training' is in the spring. O'Kelly says, however, that the League has served its purpose for Offaly in recent years and is no longer as prominent a priority.

"It'll be the greatest accident since the sinking of the Titanic if we win the League this year. It's not part of the plan. The good thing about us getting into this division is that we're getting topclass games. Players like David Connolly and Frank Weir are getting the opportunity to develop their game in very competitive situations.

"When we came first two years ago, we were doing that against teams from Division Four. The work we did in the League over the past two years is paying off now.

"It's not as exciting. It's exciting when you're going out with a genuine wish to win every game. We don't have that wish now. Our desire is to build our team and we don't have to win every game to be All-Ireland champions. In fact one of our big disadvantages over the last two years is that because we had to win every game, we couldn't learn from defeats.

"We won Leinster in 1997 because Kildare beat us in the (league) quarter-final. We learned more from that game than all the previous games in the League."

Presumably the learning curve leapt off the graph after the Leinster championship defeat by Meath last May.

"It was a lesson for management, it was a lesson for our organisation, it was a lesson for our thinking about how we play the game. That was very, very valuable. It was also an incredible motivation for the players. For the first time in a couple of years we lost a game and had a summer free and that was important because the guys are very committed now and looking forward to getting down to work after Christmas."