Daithi Regan says it's time for Offaly hurling to start moving with the times.

Regan was part of a brilliant Offaly team that won the All-Ireland SHC in 1994 but, 20 years on, the Faithful County's glory days are behind them and they are 70 minutes away from possible relegation to Division 2A.

"It's not the managers who are at fault," the Birr legend days in The Irish Independent. "Joe Errity is managing the minors and doing everything he can and I'm sure Brian Whelahan is the same. Both of them are intelligent hurling men who have been brave enough to put themselves on the line to try to change things.

"But the reality is that hurling has moved on and Offaly needs to move on with it. When I first said that Dublin had overtaken us, I got hammered for it because there's a snobbish element in parts of Offaly about hurling.

"But Dublin have been better than us for a long time and Laois have now moved ahead of us with a game that is much more structured than ours.

"From what I've seen of Offaly this year we're playing a spare defender, but that's not going to cut it unless you play like Clare, where everyone from 2 to 10 is able to do so many different things when they're not on the ball and also deliver the perfect ball to their forwards.

"You can't hit it aimlessly out of defence any more, you've got to have a much more systematic, structured game and that's what we've got to develop." Tweet

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