Tipperary up by eight at halftime against a crowd they'd knocked out of each of the previous four Munster championships. Slowly, painfully, Limerick clawing the deficit back point by point to get their noses ahead on the finishing line, 0-14 to 0-13. It was the day they finally discovered how to beat Babs Keating's Tipp. It was the day the county's All Ireland-winning boys of the 1980s became men. Nobody knew it at the time, but Limerick's most successful side in two decades took its first giant step that breezy May afternoon at the Gaelic Grounds.

"Winning the 1992 league final, and the way we won it, just catapulted the team forward in terms of confidence, " Hegarty asserts. "We came out after half-time, we now had the wind, there was a bit of a lift from the crowd, a couple of the players upped their game and the confidence just oozed through the team."

A couple of months later Limerick were contesting their first Munster final in 11 years. Two provincial titles, two All Ireland final appearances and another NHL crown followed in the next half a decade. Every journey starts with a single step.

Some journeys start with a National League title. How gratifying from a neutral's standpoint if history were to repeat itself and the Limerick of 2006 emulate their predecessors . . . so similar in so many ways . . . of 1992.

They're entitled to go close.

A number of refuseniks have returned to the fold. The management have their feet firmly under the table. The next installment in the longrunning series of weird and wonderful Limerick catfights isn't due for, oh, at least another six months. Buoyed by his charges' recent Waterford Crystal success (every journey, etc), Joe McKenna has been moved to talk about winning Munster titles and All Irelands.

And then Peter Lawlor . . .one of their few marquee names, a player of dash and sweep and cutting, a man who was far from a million miles away from an All Star last year . . . suddenly walks away.

How utterly, depressingly, predictably Limerickish.

They've no cause to hang out the crepe paper just yet.

All is far from lost for McKenna's side in the short term, largely as a result of the reinstatement of the league quarter-finals and semi-finals. At the instigation of the Hurling Development Committee, the top team in each of the two Division 1 groups advances to the semi-finals, with the second and third teams crisscrossing to meet in the quarter-finals. While the Tribune is not jumping up and down with joy on this score, on the basis that we've seen too many counties, their eyes locked on bigger afternoons to come, run unashamed non-triers in the knockout stages of the competition over the years, the return of the old format will not only introduce a healthy pinch of spice to the mix, it will also broaden the list of runners and riders.

Hiving off the top six in Division One to fight it out among themselves, as was the system for the last three years, made perfect sense in abstract terms; a league should, after all, be run like a league, otherwise it's not a league (insight courtesy of the Department of the Bleedin' Obvious). But the GAA doesn't really do leagues; it's as if there's some gene in the association's psyche that wants its meat raw, its knuckles bloodied, some degree of hell unleashed and one or other of the gladiators leaving the scene in a bodybag. The upshot was that the second phase of this league-league left minimal room for surprises and absolutely no room for a dark horse to come from the next parish to reach the final.

The 2006 renewal does, which is good news for aspiring teams who'll encounter a bigger name in the closing stages. Filling third place in Division 1A, the qualifying group headlined by Cork and Clare, is a minimum ask for Waterford and an achievement not beyond the bounds of possibility for Wexford, bad and all as the latter can be at this time of year. By a similar token, Limerick will have no excuse for failing to emerge from a group containing Galway, Kilkenny and Tipperary, especially in view of the 'men at work' signs up over the last-named pair of establishments.

After that, all bets are off.

Pitching up against Cork or Galway in an All Ireland quarter-final would be one thing.

Pitching up against Cork or Galway in a league quarterfinal or semi-final will be quite another thing. The McCarthy Cup holders and, now that they know how to win championship matches again, Galway won't be busting several guts to reach the league final.

Their less-heralded opponents will be. Do the math.

Exercised and all as one can be by Limerick and their situation, the real team to watch out for . . . for any number of reasons, most of them revolving around their new manager . . . are Tipperary.

Obviously. Has Babs moved with the times in coaching terms? Can he fit square pegs into round holes, convert defenders into attackers, turn footballers into hurlers with a sprinkle of his stardust?

Above all, does he still possess the celestial fire of 1987? The Babs factor alone should propel Tipp into the knockout stages without undue difficulty. Quite a change from a year ago, when it took the introduction of Paul Kelly to help them toil and moil to victory in their opening game.

Against Down. In Thurles.

Elsewhere, Kilkenny . . . and here's someone who doesn't harbour any great expectations they'll win an All Ireland before the end of the decade . . . won't be a pretty sight in the coming months. Seasoned campaigners that they've become, Waterford can be marked down as potential league winners, not that the acquisition of the silverware would divert their focus from the hunk of metal Nickey Brennan will be handing over at Croke Park on 3 September. And whatever their genesis, last week's events in Clare, baffling to outsiders and only slightly less complicated to many locals, are not founded on any unhappiness in the camp, for the simple reason, and excellent reason, that there's no unhappiness in the camp.

Perhaps it's more a case that Ger Loughnane, a mischief-maker par excellence when he was manager, is pathologically incapable of refraining from stirring it even now. He remains a gloriously entertaining figure, full value for (The Star's) money. On a superficial level, one might say the man has way too much time on his hands and turned into a parody of himself a long time ago. On a far from superficial level, the parallel with that Scotsman who recognised he wouldn't have the honour, love and troops of friends which should accompany old age is almost painful.

Loughnane being Loughnane, no doubt he doesn't give a damn anyway. A pity.

Unlike the 2004 edition, which culminated the Sunday before Waterford met Clare in the first round of the Munster championship and led to the former taking a dive, this year's National League doesn't conclude on the absolute eve of hostilities. The final is scheduled for 30 April, a fortnight before Limerick and Tipp meet in the first round of the Munster championship.

There's a healthy chance one of them will enter the fray as the new league titleholders.