Seeking reaction from intercounty managers after their teams failed to spark into life can be a difficult prospect. Rarely do they criticise the players publicly, so the conversation tends to dance around the pertinent issues.

Kevin Kilmurray's public view on the 70 minutes of error-strewn football just witnessed was that it was behind Offaly now.

"It was always going to be difficult I suppose. You know, the first round of the championship, a new manager, a new team, but the job is over and we are happy enough.

"In respect to the Offaly players they have gone through a rough time, particularly last season. I honestly credit them with the way they have worked at it. That breeze, you can feel it over here. It was almost impossible to get a shot on target today.

"I have a job done and I'm happy enough with the players. I came down today and told the players we had a job to do and that was to win - I didn't care if we won by one point or 10 points."

A safe bet here seemed like looking forward to the next challenge.

"Who do we play next?"

A nice midland derby.

"Who? Westmeath is it?"

Laois.

"Oh lovely."

But what about them?

"What about them? All year long I have been hearing about Micko trying to get expletives and descriptive adjectives for his second team so I presume he will probably put his first team out against us. We'll take it as it comes. It's just another game for us.

"Down the years we have always enjoyed playing our next door neighbours and I'm sure the next game will be no different."

A notable point put to Kilmurray is that this is Offaly's first championship win in four years, but again it failed to spark much interest.

"Statistics don't worry me. Offaly need to get back winning football and you can quote statistics next year with me if you want. I'm happy enough at the moment. I thought we were always the better team and always played the better football. You are always going to have a team like that stay with you for 15-20 minutes, which is what they did. A goal will always come out of a mistake and it did.

"They got a goal by mistake as well - a bad decision by the referee, but how and ever. The game was petering out at that stage and we will work on that. We've got to put away teams, but that will come with a bit of experience and time."

After that it was the turn of the losing manager. Val Andrews already knew the task facing Louth this year. In many respects, their championship doesn't start for another seven weeks.

"We have a game Wednesday week for Louth village church that burned down, against Monaghan. Take it from there."