Offaly can expect to face a very different Longford team in this weekend’s Leinster championship opener in Tullamore from that which they dismantled by 13 points in last month’s Division Four Allianz League final in Croke Park.

The defeat left Jack Sheedy’s team with plenty of soul searching to do, and now after almost a decade of yo-yoing form this Longford team say they are determined to find some consistency in this summer’s championship.

Utility man Mickey Quinn, now 25 and very much becoming the team's go-to player, feels that his team learnt more from the defeat than their opposition did in their impressive victory.

“Playing the same team three times in such a short space of time, you take what you can from each time you play them,” explains the former AFL player with the Essendon club.

“It’s not that we didn’t want to be showing our hand, but in the two games so far there was a bit of wanting to change things up and show them that you have different strings to your bow.

“At the end of the day though we lost to them in Croke Park because we didn’t bring any intensity and that’s the number one thing. Whatever about game plans you have to make sure that the workrate and intensity is there on the weekend.”

Earlier in April the two sides met for the first of what will be three games between them in six weeks, with Longford edging an Offaly side reduced to 12 players by three points to secure their promotion to Division Three.

Longford topped the division but as has been the case over recent seasons for them, one good result was sharply followed by disappointment.

Familiarity has certainly bred contempt between the two midland counties and Quinn is expecting Offaly to bring the same all-action approach to Tullamore on Saturday.

“At the end of the day, especially in Croke Park the team that are most revved up and want to win it will. And we probably took our eye off the gameplans. I think though that we learned our lesson from it, we would have learnt a lot more from that game then they did.

“It’s much of a muchness with them, they won’t venture too much away from what they were at, they’ll feel ‘why change it?’

“This is the biggest game of the year so far for Longford football. It’s a huge game, for me personally Longford football, the last four or five years as long as I’ve been involved at least, any time we seem to make progress we seem to throw it away.

“I don’t think that’s a Longford mentality or anything, but we seem to venture away from the gameplan and what works in the big games and we get into individual stuff. That consistency has been lacking for Longford football.”

The DCU Sigerson Cup winner has had to overcome a niggling hamstring complaint for much of the season so far, but he’s now feeling fresh and ready ahead of what could be a big season for him. Strangely overlooked on both of the last two occasions for the final International Rules selection, Quinn’s dynamism will be integral to any progress his county make.

“It’s hard to put your finger on what has been the problem over the years, if you look at the leagues the last few years – Division Three, then up to Two, then Three then Four – it’s just up and down. But we’ve had that consistency this year in the league and hopefully we can build on it.

“For me last year was a long season that led into this season – so the injury actually gave me a bit more time to rest up and go again. I’m feeling fresh and raring to go.”

Quinn’s previous team, AFL side Essendon– for whom he set the record of making the quickest debut as an international rookie – have been surrounded by a doping controversy stretching over the past year.

The GAA world was itself hit last week by a doping controversy of its own, albeit to a much smaller extent, when the first GAA player tested positive for what’s believed to have been a performance-enhancing steroid.

Does Quinn see any culture which may have existed elsewhere creeping into the GAA?

“It’s a difficult one especially because players may be in an environment where they trust a nutritionist or a doctor or whoever is in charge of their supplement programme. That’s generally not a problem though, but it can be when players go about it on an individual basis.

“I haven’t seen anything (like what emerged last week) in the GAA, and it was a shock. To see amateur players tested to the same level as professionals, I felt it was contentious.

“But the GAA is constantly developing, and players need to be stronger and quicker and fitter, looking for that edge.

“The message has to be though that whatever you put in your body you need to be responsible for. But looking at other situations recently in other sports, if you put your trust in a nutritionist it’s very hard to blame the player.

“So you can become extra conscious – you can’t take a Lemsip plus or a Berocca – at the end of the day though you are an amateur. So there is a need to educate the players.”