NOT SINCE the heady days of the early 1980s has Offaly football been in such a healthy state. An extraordinary slump in fortunes which saw Offaly plummet to the fourth division alarmed many Offaly people and a number of attempts to put the county back on the rails were unsuccessful.

Then last summer Tommy Lyons, after a successful period with the Kilmacud Crokes club in Dublin, was appointed manager and, while Offaly are still in the Fourth Division, there is a new and vibrant spirit in the county. Offaly have now a 100 per cent record in the National League with four wins from four games and have both their matches in the O'Byrne Cup, reaching the semi finals of that competition.

Their total score in their four National League matches is 7-48 for with 3-26 conceded a scoring average of 17 points per match.

The team captain, Finbarr Cullen, believes that the arrival of Lyons has been responsible for much of that recent success. "As I see it we now have a very professional approach to things. The manager, the county board, the players and a back up team are all focussed on the same thing and we are getting the results on the field and the supporters are getting interested again," he says.

Cullen, who feels comfortable in his role as captain and centre half back, sees the priorities as promotion from the Fourth Division and a place in the play offs of the National League. "Naturally enough, if we achieve that we will want to keep on winning our matches and there's no knowing what we might do but that would be a bonus," he says.

"At the moment we are not thinking about the Leinster championship. We are playing Longford at home in the first round in Tullamore but we will not concentrate on that until our National League programme is finished," he says. He gives an interesting insight into the way in which teams, even those in the lowly Fourth Division, approach their training. "At the moment we train on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is mostly physical work. We run full out over 200 and 400 metres with short breaks in between.

"Then on Saturday we have a short session with the ball, just a warming up period and we normally have a match on Sundays," he says.

For some players that is not regarded as enough. Some of the lighter players "do weights" as well to build up their strength or help recover from injury. The idea is that five or six of the players need to build up their body weight. Cathal Daly, who broke a collar bone some months ago, has made excellent progress through this regime.

There is now a settled squad of 32. Cullen says that when they started there were about 40 but some of these dropped out because of the stiff training. "Nobody was dropped by the management. It was just that people found the going very tough and dropped out themselves."

The Christmas period resulted in a mere week's break in the training schedule. "The lads were enthusiastic about getting back training as quickly as possible and we all decided that alcohol was out from then on. It was a decision worked out among the players themselves without any pressure from outside the squad. We all had a few pints at Christmas but once we got back to the training ground it was agreed that we would not indulge again during the build up to the National League," he said.

He confesses that Tommy Lyons was disappointed with the standard of fitness of the squad when he took over last August.

"He immediately put an emphasis on physical fitness and I think that is what convinced a few players that they weren't prepared to put in the effort which Tommy demanded. Now things have settled into a pattern and there is great spirit in the squad and everybody feels an awful lot better. They appreciate that the effort they have made has paid off," he says.

He sounds a cautionary note however. "We are playing Carl ow on Sunday and that is sure to be a tough one. Defeat could ruin a lot of the progress we have made but we know that we have the stamina for a big effort and it will take a good performance by Carlow to beat us."

The squad is relatively young. Two of the forwards, Peter Brady and Vinny Claffey are hovering around the 30 mark but the most of the rest are under 25. Wholesome food ("no rubbish") is the order of the day and the team doctor, Jim Quinlan and physiotherapist, Frances Daly, are always ready with treatment and advice.

It is no wonder at all that there is a new air of optimism in Offaly