There was a function to go to every weekend, a massive night in Boston in early December, a bash at Yonkers racetrack attended by over 1,000 people, January's trip to Thailand. Everyone wanted to know them, to be photographed with them, to have a piece of them. With what seemed like half of the young females of Clare determined to bag themselves an All Ireland-winning hurler, the disco in the Queen's Hotel in Ennis eventually became a no-go area for the 15 famous examples of bachelorhood. Bliss . . .exhausting bliss . . . was it in that winter to be alive.

And then, on 16 June 1996, the team nobody dreamed might be giants travelled in the Ennis Road to make the first defence of their provincial and All Ireland titles against the team whose clothes they had stolen.

It was a day of murderous heat, a day that saw hurling's score of the decade, a day that a local spat went national.

Clare and Limerick weren't playing for neighbourhood bragging rights any more. In front of 43,500 spectators (even the touts couldn't source tickets) at the Gaelic Grounds, they were playing for higher stakes than they'd ever known.

The two counties had been locking horns in the championship since the beginning of the 1990s. Theirs was a relationship in which familiarity bred fervour rather than contempt. There was, says Jamesie O'Connor, ?a lot of respect between us but definitely no love lost. For a period there, even in challenge matches, there was an edge to it. There was always a risk that violence would break out at any stage. The kind of thing that happens when two teams play each other a lot." A hectic rivalry, TJ Ryan agrees, ?and even more hectic in 1996 because both teams were successful".

That Limerick were a team on a mission had been abundantly evident in the Munster quarter-final in Pairc Ui Chaoimh three weeks earlier, when they handed out Cork's heaviest championship defeat in 31 years. Even by the standards of the era, all that winter the 1994 All Ireland finalists had trained like decathletes, to such an extent that when their trainer Dave Mahedy mistakenly gave them a couple of extra 400m runs to do one night amid the darkness of the back field in UL, they embraced the pain willingly. ?This team has character, " Mahedy noted in his logbook afterwards.

?Limerick probably reckoned they were better than us, that the All Ireland was theirs the year before and that we had taken it off them, " Seanie McMahon surmises. ?They were very motivated. But we weren't lacking in motivation either." What they were lacking in . . . or were subsequently deemed to be lacking in, at any rate . . . was peak condition. For the first league match of 1996, against Kilkenny in Cusack Park, McMahon couldn't believe how far off the pace the entire half-back line was, himself included. He might have been taken aback.

After the months of fiesta, he could scarcely have been shocked.

Not that Clare showed the slightest sign of being undertrained for 60 minutes of the provincial semi-final. Though Limerick led by 1-5 to 0-7 at the interval following a Gary Kirby goal that emanated from a mistake by Anthony Daly, sweeping behind his half-back line, the champions dominated the second half, assisted by two points from Eamon Taaffe, a half-time sub for Conor Clancy. Twelve minutes from the end Taaffe, the goalscoring hero of Croke Park nine months previously, had the opportunity to bury Limerick altogether.

He caught the ball around the 21-yard line at the city end as it came in from out the field, turned and pulled the trigger. Standing between him and the goal was Limerick's left-corner back Declan Nash, who ?couldn't have got out of the way even if I'd wanted to".

The one thought flashing through Nash's mind was that he might be unsighting Joe Quaid. Whether he was or not he'll never know, for Taaffe's shot hit Nash's hurleyholding hand and dribbled out over the endline. The 65 was converted by McMahon to put Clare 0-15 to 1-9 ahead: so much for the know-all who told Taaffe afterwards that he should have taken his point.

It was to be Clare's last score.

What happened next . . . two points by Barry Foley, one by Kirby, then Ciaran Carey's deathless winner . . . birthed a thousand accusations back home that Clare had misjudged their training routine and had tried to cram too much into the final three weeks before the Limerick match. It's a charge that, a decade down the line, the players firmly dispute.

Jamesie O'Connor never felt that Clare were in trouble until it was too late and has never believed fitness was an issue. Daly, who had seen more late nights than most of them, ?felt grand" and points out that Clare had a bank of fitness stored up from previous campaigns.

Even Dave Mahedy can't definitively say why Limerick . . . Red Rum to Clare's Crisp . . . lasted the trip better, or even that they did. What might have been an issue, he offers, was hydration. ?We were very conscious that we needed to be well hydrated.

Fitness is an issue in the last 10 minutes of a game on a hot day. Hydration is an even bigger issue."

Perhaps Seanie McMahon puts it simplest and best of all.

Limerick, he says, ?just got on a roll at the right time . . . and when Limerick get on a roll, they can be very hard to stop".

Clare could have kicked up a fuss about Mike Houlihan's awful-looking pull on Ollie Baker at a critical juncture but didn't. Ger Loughnane, who arrived home in Shannon that night to find a gloating ?Serves ye right!" left on his answering machine by an anonymous caller, was wonderfully generous in defeat.

How Carey still had the energy to run into legend nobody's sure; 10 minutes from time, he was out on his feet from the effects of the sun on his red hair, and when he pulled off his socks in the dressing room afterwards his colleagues gasped at the blisters on his feet.

For Limerick, the winning of the Munster championship was the losing of the All Ireland; having been required to reach into their marrow four times between late May and mid-July, they were becalmed by the halt to their volition the All Ireland series brought. For Clare, the losing of the Munster championship was, far from the cue to exit the stage after their 15 minutes of fame, the prequel to a second McCarthy Cup triumph. Improbably, today marks the first significant meeting of the counties since then.

Age has not withered Davy Fitz, the Lohans or Seanie McMahon, who remain for Clare. Daly will be on the sideline in Thurles, as will Ollie Baker. Fergie Tuohy will be above them in the old stand, co-commentating for Clare FM. Of the green and white members of the cast, TJ Ryan and Mark Foley will man the Limerick full-back line, Liam Lenihan is a selector again and Mahedy is trainer.

Eamon Taaffe will be there too. ?Oh God, I wouldn't miss it for the world". He of the shot that could have made the difference 10 years ago.

He of the shot that did make all the difference 11 years ago.