Former Offaly captain Brian Carroll admits that the county is "a long way off the glory years" following their 14-point drubbing by Westmeath last weekend.
The Leinster SHC qualifier defeat was the Faithful County's first championship loss to their neighbours in 40 years, following a 6-20 to 0-14 League Division 1 quarter-final defeat to Kilkenny that seems to have eroded any confidence gained by 1B wins over Wexford and Laois.
"Unfortunately, we're back to the dark days for Offaly hurling. Things haven't gone well over the last couple of years," Carroll told RTÉ Sport.
"We were confident that they had trained very hard over the last couple of weeks and things had started to move well for them.
"They had a very good start to the league. They finished quite poorly but we were hoping we might see some of the performances that we saw earlier in the league.
"But Offaly have a long way to go now. The speed of the game at inter-county level, the first touch that's needed and the speed at which you do things is where we're falling behind."
Offaly won four All-Ireland and nine Leinster titles between 1980 and 1998 but have struggled since the turn of the century, reaching just one provincial decider in the last 15 years.
"We're far removed from where we've been but we have what we have and all we can do is work as best we can"
Carroll, who played in that 2004 loss to Wexford before retiring earlier this year, concedes that the county have lost their place at hurling's top table - but he believes their season can still be salvaged by beating Kerry and Carlow to secure a Leinster quarter-final place.
"We're a long way off the glory years of the 80s and 90s, the great years that we have and the great players that we had," he said.
"We're far removed from where we've been but we have what we have and all we can do is work as best we can.
"We still have some very good hurlers in Offaly and the boys are being well-prepared so hopefully we can turn it around over the next couple of weeks."
"Hopefully the tide will turn. We've a lot of soul-searching to do, we've a lot of hard work to do.
"It's going to take time. Eamonn Kelly is only in a short time.
"We can't despair. We still have two matches left in the round-robin series. Both of those games are at home so hopefully we can still get victories and turn this around."
