Maybe it was the hot sun beaming on their foreheads all afternoon, maybe it was just us, but both John McIntyre and Brian Cody had some heated words after what was arguably one of the more competitive Leinster hurling semi-finals in years - despite the final score.

McIntyre described Kilkenny as "a ruthless team, driven by a ruthless manager" - which we assumed was meant as a compliment.

Cody described the "assessor in the stands, screwing referees" as someone he would "shoot" - which we assumed wasn't meant as a compliment.

Hurling should be thankful for managers like this.

"We're all here to win, and I think the final scoreline doesn't do us much justice on the day," started McIntyre - and actually didn't stop. "It was great to have the Offaly supporters for maybe 40 minutes thinking the unthinkable was going to happen, maybe the shock of the century.

"Kilkenny, though, are a ruthless outfit, and what they do they're extremely good at. Physically, the longer the game went on the more we were suffering, and their dominance in the air, as the match progressed, we had no answer to.

"That didn't mean we weren't trying, and I'd like to think the players didn't thrown in the towel or anything like that. But Kilkenny are a ruthless team, driven by a ruthless manager.

"And the killer for us was that nearly everything they fired at the posts today seemed to go over. That's attributed to their skill and accuracy, but you just wish some day they wouldn't be as good.

"But they're no excuses, we've no complaints. It's still a learning curve for us . . . We all live and die by results, but they're no recriminations. They're a great young bunch of fellas, done everything we've asked of them, and all proud to wear the Offaly jersey.

"We're just battened against a ferocious tide at the moment, and from our perspective, there's a black and amber umbrella casting a shadow over the Leinster championship, and the same for Wexford and Dublin and Laois. We're not yet good enough to do . . . what do you do with an umbrella?

"We showed for 35 minutes that there is talent in Offaly. But Kilkenny do it so well, they're savage competitors, and as much as they want to win, they want to win more. That's the essence of sport. We've a long way to go, but maybe we've stopped the haemorrhaging, and it's all still there for us in the qualifiers."

Cody started out with similar praise: "Well I though it was a great game. The Leinster championship is supposed to be . . . whatever you say it is . . . but I though Offaly were outstanding today. Okay, we won by a decent margin, and the scoreboard tells one story, but the nature of the game was completely different, a ding-dong struggle in the end. And we really had to go flat out, flat out, the whole time."

But when asked about the 1-7 that Offaly got from placed balls in the first half, Cody got a little more heated: "It's nothing to do with discipline. I'm not criticising referees here, no way. But there's an assessor in the stands, screwing referees.

"I've told officials that, told Croke Park. But I can't understand what defending means anymore, for either team. I'm talking about all matches here.

"Some of the matches I see now the defender is not supposed to be there at all. That honest defending is disallowed, because there's a fella sitting in the stand scrutinising every move the referee makes, and I feel massively sorry for referees.

"They've been torn apart and slaughtered, but the game has to be refereed the way it's played. That's lunacy; let the referee go and referee the match. This has nothing to do with Kilkenny, but I know players are confused by what they can do. So that assessor, I would shoot him."