After their next game against Derry though, Liam Kearns told an emotional dressing room in Castlebar that it was over for him, and when his successor Mickey Ned O'Sullivan started to ring the hurlers in that room, one by one they informed him the dream was finished for them too; "Fair play to Joe [McKenna], " says O'Sullivan, "he availed of the vacuum [between Kearns' resignation and O'Sullivan's appointment], he got in there first; I'd have done the same thing."

Only Lucey railed against reality but the Thursday after lining out in the win over Roscommon, it finally engulfed his monstrous enthusiasm.

He was working 80 hours a week as a doctor; something had to give. O'Sullivan already knew Lucey well enough to describe him as "an amazing young man" but he agreed even Lucey had his limits.

Lucey's dual dream was over, the team he loved, broken up.

Today they go to Carlow with only 14 of the panel of 30 that won by 14 points there last July. Some absentees should be back. Eoin Keating has returned to light training after a shoulder operation. Stephen Kelly has been working hard in the gym to build up his knee after a cruciate operation last December. Muiris Gavin, a recent father to twin daughters, might be back before the end of the spring too. But that'll be it. John Quane has retired, Tommy Stack has taken the year out and Lucey, Brian Begley, Conor Fitzgerald, Mark O'Riordan and Mike O'Brien are all hurling. O'Sullivan though would prefer if people started, as Gene Hackman put it in the famous basketball film Hoosiers, "to support us for the team we are, rather than the team we are not".

"To be honest, I had no intention of getting involved again in inter-county management but Limerick approached me at a time when I had just sold the bar and restaurant and my family had grown up. And so far it's been much more enjoyable than I thought it would be.

People talk about the players who aren't there; I'm perfectly happy with the panel I have.

Every one of them is a grafter, every one of them is improving. A coach can't ask for more.

"People ask why I took the job, saying that the team's chance is 'gone'. Well, every coach has the same challenge . . . to get the most out of his players. There's a tremendous intrinsic motivation from seeing guys improve their ability to take a score, to make space, to release the ball quickly, how they think as a unit. If success was just about cups, you wouldn't have thousands of kids and adults involved in under-eight teams around the country. That said, I'm not stupid enough to think results don't matter."

They do and so far his team have been doing fine on that count, picking up three out of a possible four points. What really pleased John Galvin in the win over Roscommon and the 2-13 kicked against Longford was evidence of the things O'Sullivan had talked about . . . "to take a score, to make space, to release the ball, how they think as a unit" . . . and worked with the forwards. It might have been Division Two opposition, but already Limerick's play looked less ponderous. In recent years Limerick forwards had been content to win frees for Gavin or Keating to convert. Now they're expected . . . and encouraged . . .

to create and take their own score.

Gavin likes other things about the new set-up. Like the way O'Sullivan delegates coaching drills to selectors Mossie McCarthy and John Reddington, a lesson O'Sullivan learned from his first year over Kerry in 1990 when he modelled himself on Mick O'Dwyer and "tried to do everything myself". Like how kids like Eoin Ryan, the leading scorer in the minor hurlers' march to last year's All Ireland final, and Shane Gallagher have been applying themselves in training.

And like how cutting edge Cian O'Neill's training methods are. After as meticulous a coach as Kearns, the players weren't going to be easily impressed. O'Neill hasn't just matched the standard; now they believe he is the standard.

O'Sullivan wouldn't disagree. He sounded out several of his colleagues in the PE sector and they all kept coming back with the name of this 27-year-old sports science lecturer in UL who was a former Kildare panellist. "What makes Cian special is that he can take the most up-to-date advances in physical education and apply them to a game he played at near the highest level. There aren't too many people in the country who can do that."

They won't get ahead of themselves though. The fact they're in Carlow today is a reminder they're back in Division Two. They're not talking of winning Munster championships ("We have Clare in the first round and I have a long memory of Clare in the championship, " O'Sullivan smiles self-depreciatingly, a nod to 1992 and his last game as a championship manager), but some day, they might.

"Before the start of the year, I was somewhat pessimistic, " says Galvin. "But now that I'm back, I genuinely think we have as good a chance as we ever had. There are no more distractions, everyone is fully committed to football. I can still see us ending up with medals to show for this whole thing."

In that way Lucey's dual dream lives on.

In an ideal world Mark O'Riordan would like to be sitting on that bus to Carlow.

He knew when he went out on his own in the carpentry business last autumn though that it could be only one game from here on in. Being from Croom and at 26 still unable to say he had hurled a championship game for Limerick, hurling was always going to be that game. And right now he's content with where he sits in the real world. Last week he was wing-back against Galway. In front of him, Mike O'Brien looked every bit the option in the half-forward line their puck-out this past two years has been screaming for. At full-forward Brian Begley looked like the player of 2001 when they were winning under-21 All Ireland medals for fun rather than someone who hadn't played in two years. Limerick ended up winning by a point. For the last four years in league or championship games against fellow top eight teams, they've always seemed to lose by the odd point. Maybe if the lads were still playing football, reckons TJ Ryan, they'd have lost by the odd point last week too.

He's also noticed Joe McKenna has taken a different approach to the league than previous managers. "In other years we'd still be going gun-ho at the physical in January and February and hardly have any hurling done by the first round of the league, " says Ryan. "This season, we had all the physical done with Dave [Mahedy] in October, November and December and for the past two months it's been mostly hurling under the lights with Ger [Cunningham]. Maybe that hurling gave us an edge last Sunday.

I'd say our work rate has improved all around the pitch as well; the ball's not coming back in as quickly. But no one got too excited about winning last week. We've Kilkenny next week, that's our focus now."

Won one game, drawn one game, only looking forward to the one game. Just like the men on that bus to Carlow.