They face an unenviable task in Division One this season.
Fans of hurling in Offaly will be in buoyant mood after the recent outings in the Walsh Cup.
Competitive outings against Galway and Dublin sandwiched a win over Antrim. In short, they achieved exactly what was expected while developing a level of fitness and style of play that will be key during a tough league season.
This year Offaly will take on Galway, Cork, Clare, Wexford and Limerick in the league before embarking on a promotion push in the Joe McDonagh Cup.
The average age of the panel this season is just 23 years-old, but manager Michael Fennelly is happy with how things are progressing:
'They're trying to do the right thing and that was apparent in the second-half (against Dublin), there's a few things that we still need to tighten up on.
I think we only lost by a handful of points to Galway and Dublin. The last few weeks has been about getting fitter, performances, developing our plan and system of play and we've been doing that, so we're happy with where we are at.
Look we're going to be serious underdogs going into the league. We're coming from a Christy Ring level up to division one hurling and probably in the harder group of the two for the league and that's no disrespect to the other teams.
We're just looking to improve, get better and bring Offaly hurling up to the next level.
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