There is no disguising the new mood of Michael Doyle. Not quite Tipperary's finest afternoon of hurling, yet half a world away from that early summer's afternoon in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, when heads and hearts couldn't have sunk any lower.

So did he ever imagine he'd be here now, counting down to the headline All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny? "Don't mind me thinking of it," he says, with his first real smile of the season, "did ye ever think it?

"I suppose we call that day 'nightmare in Páirc Uí Chaoimh' now. And we were dire that day. No doubt about it. We've come back now but to be honest I still don't think we've hurled as well as we're able to hurl yet. I hope to see that the next day."

So it's Kilkenny then. The game that produced the best 70 minutes of hurling last summer, and the best 70 minutes of hurling in the league. The Tipperary manager doesn't need any reminder Kilkenny won both of those.

"Sure we'll get ready for it and we'll have a go at it. The next day could be a totally different game again, and it's one to look forward to. But we're not sticking our heads in the sand. We know we have a lot of work to do, and that showed again out there today. We're just happy to be there."

Clearly, though, it wasn't the most testing of games, or ultimately the most ruthless of victories.

"Yeah, but you can always pick bits and pieces at the end that you wouldn't be happy about. If it was a super game there today and we lost by a point then I wouldn't be nearly as happy. And someone told me it was 18 or 19 wides."

There is a quiet interruption. Actually it was 21 . . . "Was it? Then I stand corrected. Well that's very poor. All we can do is work on it for the next day. And sure isn't it great to win by five points and still have 21 wides? But we knew too that Offaly would stick their heads up at the end.

"And if we won by 10 points here it wouldn't have made any difference the next day against Kilkenny. Lads tired there at the end as well and that's another thing we're concerned about."

At the other end of the Croke Park corridors Mike McNamara emerges to share his wisdom on the Offaly performance. First question to McNamara is never easy, yet it comes anyway. So how disappointed are you?

"Well sure we're very disappointed." Then he pauses for thought, and delivers a long and powerful monologue that no one dares interrupt.

"We know the standard that needs to be attained to win at this level, and we thought we'd got a good bit of the way there. Now we discover that it's even higher again. I mean the level that Tipperary played at there today is the standard that's needed if you hope to make process, and ultimately have honours.

"On the plus side it's nice to see Tipperary playing to that standard, and can be a match for what is there waiting for them.

"But from our own point of view too many players didn't play as well as we would have liked. Certainly some of the younger players seemed to be a little overawed by the whole occasion. But how well all that augurs for the future I'm just not sure.

"We'll just try to address the problems, because arguably that is the pool of players that we have.

"We know where the crossbar is now, and we'll go back and look at the areas where we can improve. I think the spine of the team is still very good, and the defence is arguably very good too. Problems do surface from there up that we need to address, and hopefully other players in the county can come in and reach this magical standard, which is so high now. So incredibly high. It just seems to leave a lot of teams in its wake.

"But then matches in hurling are always about what happens on the day. Had we got the two goals earlier then maybe we could have rattled them a little more. Who knows?"

Clearly, though, the Tipperary goal just after half time was the real killer?

"Well it was meant to go in at the other end," he says, smiling a little more now. "That was the plan. For some reason we forgot we changed sides.

But it was a terrible goal to give away.

"We were controlling the situation and then we looked up to see the ball in the back of the net. Anyone who is involved with a young team knows they are killer blows."