Whatever the extent of the bodycount at Croke Park this afternoon, it was that day eight years ago that the bullets first started piercing body armour.

There were a few beginnings that day and, just as pertinently, a few endings. It was Henry Shefflin's first Leinster final, Brian Cody's first as manager. It was the last time Martin Hanamy and Billy Dooley played in the Leinster championship, the beginning of the drip-drip slow death of that Offaly generation. The eventual 5-14 to 1-16 scoreline suggests otherwise but Offaly actually went in to the game warmly tipped in a good number of newspapers, this one included. It wasn't that nobody saw the shift in power coming;

they just didn't think it was coming that day or in that way.

A red card ended Daith� Regan's afternoon, a dig at Andy Comerford laying bare for all to see the frustrations of the day. Regan has come across nothing but sadness around his county since those days, in vantage points both inside and outside the wire.

After a few years as a spectator, he put down two seasons as one of John McIntyre's selectors and saw things go from bad to souldestroying.

"It wasn't that that one day in particular changed things, " he says. "It was just that we came to a natural end and found in Kilkenny a county that had been working away under the surface and were ready to kick on away from Offaly. We'd been together 10 years and the work hadn't been done at underage level and what you've seen since then is just the consequence of it. That day was the start of Kilkenny's domination.

"We managed to get to an All Ireland final the following year but by then we knew it was all over and that there was going to be trouble for a few years. After the All Ireland final in 2000, there was no talk of being back the next year or anything like it. We knew then that Offaly wouldn't be back in an All Ireland for a long time."

It almost feels gratuitous to go through the numbers for the games between the sides ever since that day but, for the record, in the six championship meetings between the sides since and including 1999, Kilkenny have won by an average of 13 points. Only once, in 2002, have they kept the margin to single figures.

By then, Offaly were an irrelevance to Kilkenny. Brian Whelahan tells a story in Hurling: The Revolution Years of marking Shefflin in the 2002 and Shefflin calling for a sideline ball to be played to him. "I was still beside him when he got the ball, pucked it over his shoulder and over the bar. It was like, no matter what, the ball was going to come into his hand. I just said, 'Well that's it.' He's confident enough to call for this ball while I'm standing next to him. It was just a sign of the times, that there were new men on the block. My confidence was shattered."

For Whelahan to have his wings clipped against Kilkenny was the worst of it. He and Regan and the rest of them grew up beating St Kieran's in Leinster colleges competition and at minor and under21 level. Unlike now when, as Regan says, "these young Offaly guys have a fear of a Kilkenny jersey that comes from losing and losing heavily to them on a regular basis".

"It's a crying shame that that's where it's got to now. It's a shame for us in the county much more than it's a shame for anyone else. I hear people say that hurling needs the Offalys and the Clares to get back up to where they were but I'm not so sure that's necessarily true. People in Tipp and Cork and Kilkenny will play hurling forever and won't give us a second thought. It's up to us to do something about it. We're responsible for what goes on in our own county and what's gone on has been neglect in a major way."

It breaks his heart but another 31-pointer doesn't seem out of the question today.

"Honestly, I think if they can come to within seven to 10 points, I think it will be a reasonable performance. But I'd be very, very afraid that Kilkenny could open up and put a beating on them. I know these guys very well having worked closely with them for the past couple of years and I know their make-up. I have to be honest and say I'm very afraid of what might happen.

If Kilkenny start well, go for some early goals in the first 10, 12 minutes, Offaly could be very brittle."

In such a scenario, nobody wins.