The hurlers of Coolderry had a routine during 2018. Training session over, they would do 30 sit-ups before going in, one for each of the Offaly club’s senior titles. They are proud of being top of the pile, with Birr second placed on 22 wins.

“Now, since the county final, I tell them to do one more sit-up,” Joachim Kelly says. “I say it’s one for me! They’re more than happy to do it.”

No exaggeration there. Kelly took on managing Coolderry at a time when adding to 2015’s 30th title seemed a distant prospect.

The latest one arrived six weeks ago following a surprise win over Kilcormac-Killoughey.

Mount Leinster Rangers were subsequently seen off in a Leinster quarter-final. Tomorrow sees Coolderry travel to Parnell Park for a Leinster semi-final with Ballyboden St Enda’s. They will relish once more being underdogs.

Joachim Kelly had a wonderful innings in the Offaly jersey, all but ever present between 1974 and 1993. Mostly he was a midfielder, renowned for his forceful style, a distinctive natural ciotóg. An All-Star in this position in 1980 and 1984, Kelly proved a driving force behind the All-Ireland triumphs of 1981 and 1985.

His own background was singularly different to Coolderry’s hurling culture. Lusmagh took their sole senior title in 1989, when they were trained and managed by one Joachim Kelly. He led Westmeath to All Ireland B success in 1990, a feat that left him in strong demand for sideline duties. 2004 saw Kelly train Portumna to their first senior title. He later oversaw three camogie All-Irelands with Offaly.

Yet taking on Coolderry, even with so extensive a CV, seemed another matter. “It was fairly daunting, alright,” he nods.

“You’d be thinking, going in there: ‘I better have everything right and ready.’ They had the most Senior titles of all. Everything runs through your mind: ‘Will I be accepted?’

“Coolderry are the Tipperary or the Kilkenny of Offaly hurling. I just brought my experience with me, and my hurling days with Offaly as well.”

“It was a genuine pressure, going in there. But I said to them, the first night: “Look it, lads, I’m not going to change yere style of hurling or anything like that. I just brought a few things to their attention.”

“I had a chart with me. They had put in a disastrous 2017. Everything was down. Players’ attitude, fitness… They were conceding more and scoring less. A local newspaper article rated them as eighth out of eight, as favourites for the drop. I had that article with me on the night.

“Those were the negatives. So we tried to turn all of them into positives. I just looked at that chart the other day, looked at the negatives we had highlighted last January. We got the attitude back right, brought the management back right.

“We conceded four points less and scored six points more. That’s a ten-point turnaround.”

As Kelly acknowledges, Coolderry were not a young outfit on the rise: “The team that was in the All-Ireland Final in 2012 with Loughgiel [Shamrocks] now has a lot of lads well up in their thirties. So it was a big challenge to get them firing again. But we did it.

“I have Mick Murray as a selector, which was good luck. Mick knows these lads since they were U14s. Then we have Séamus Kennedy and Dessie Teehan as well. Three very knowledgeable hurling men. I’d be learning from them all the time. I tried to bring everyone with me.”

Kelly is continually learning from new contexts: “I remember back in 1989, when I was training Lusmagh, you could eff lads out of it, tell them they’re at effing nothing, to get the finger out. You can’t do that nowadays. You have to cajole fellas, get around them, put your hand on their back, talk to them.

“I’ve changed myself. Maybe I’ve mellowed over the years. I don’t know. But it’s definitely all very different now, managing a team or training a team. But I’m hopeful that we’re going to give Ballyboden a right run of it.”

Joachim Kelly is a fit youthful man of 64, one who will be 65 on the first day of December. A retired Garda, someone with an ongoing zest for life, he spent most of his career as a PE Instructor in Templemore.

Kelly pretends not about the current state of Offaly hurling. He offers no platitudes and can discern many hard questions but no easy answers. Following two decades of decline, the county will hurl in the Joe McDonagh Cup in 2019, exiled from the Leinster Championship.

This scenario is worlds away for the contour of his sterling career. “Offaly played in 12 Leinster Finals in a row,” Kelly notes.

He admits: “I don’t know why we’re gone so wrong. Maybe we’re not producing them in the schools. We’re not doing enough in the schools, clearly. And one result is that you rarely now see an Offaly hurler prominent at Fitzgibbon.

“To be fair, the development squads are going reasonably well. But you still come back to the problem of numbers. Galway brought in 300 and something U14 hurlers two years ago. I was with the Offaly U14 development squad at the time and we were lucky to get 70 something lads in for trials, to whittle it down to 30. We called every club to send in their best players. We got in 74 or 75 U14s, about 250 fewer than Galway.”

He continues: “I can’t put my finger on it. We’re just not getting the hurlers at the moment. We’re a small county and maybe it’s a cycle. The hurling area around Birr would be around the same catchment as Blackrock in Cork, I reckon, population wise.

“I suppose Faithful Fields, the new training centre, opened last year. But we are ten, 12, 15 years behind. There were years when we did nothing as regards coaching.”

He recognises the 21st-century context: “Kids have so many choices these days. Fellas can sit on the couch if they want, the PlayStation generation. Back in our day, all we did was hurl. There wasn’t much else to do.

“I know you can’t go back but there is something missing at schools level. The Christian Brothers in Birr were well able to stick it up to the Kilkenny schools, the CBS or [St] Kieran’s, or to [St] Peter’s in Wexford.

“Pretty much every young lad that went to the Christian Brothers in Birr hurled. We were all brought into the big Science Lab, everyone from First Year up. There were 14 teams on boards up in there. Everyone had to hurl. There was a captain for each team, and the best lads to the worst lads had to turn up for their league match every Wednesday.

“It didn’t matter what parish you were from. Everyone was jumbled up together on a team. Pat Fleury [from Drumcullen] was on my team. So were lads from Rathcabbin, Lorrha and Dorrha clubmen.”

Kelly likewise recognises the broader social trends: “I’ve a granddaughter who started school last year. There’s only one boy in her class. The big families are not there anymore.

“When Lusmagh won the senior final in 1989, there were five from another Kelly family on the team, plus myself and a brother, plus three Troys. That was ten of the 15 from three families. The whole team was probably made up of five or six families. But that day is done, three and four and five brothers on the one team.”

He gestures to the door and outside: “But it’s a terror to think you see kids going around this town in a Waterford jersey or in a Clare jersey before they’d think of throwing on an Offaly one. You’d have to be very disappointed about that state of affairs.”

Lunch over, we head out into a grazed November afternoon, Tullamore in a small bustle. I mention the possibility of a Leinster final between Coolderry and my native Ballyhale Shamrocks, a friendly rivalry if the pairing transpires. “I don’t know about that,” Kelly smiles.

“You wouldn’t want to meet me on the line for a match day. I can get a bit excited.”

Then over his shoulder, whirling away beyond his laugh: “You could get any class of a belt from me, on that sort of a day.”