That it's hard to believe 10 years have flashed by since Ciaran Carey soloed into immortality on a broiling afternoon at the Gaelic Grounds has been one of the cliches of the week. That there's an air of damaged goods about the pair following their respective recent defeats in Thurles means that today's fixture hasn't quite the same frisson about it that an encounter in a provincial championship setting would have. That no meeting of the sides ever again will come freighted with the same Wagnerian dimensions of the 1996 showdown is, however, gloriously irrelevant in the here and now. Two counties setting out on the journey back to the land of lost self-respect.

Throw in the sliotar, keep out of the way and let 'em at it.

With a trip to Tullamore to come on 1 July, Limerick can be forgiven for being less than thrilled with the venue. "It's the hardest draw in the harder group, " their coach Ger Cunningham says ruefully.

"Away to Clare and to Offaly."

For Clare on the other hand, the identity of opponents is almost as welcome as the home advantage. "I think it's no harm to have Limerick in the first match and I'm sure they're saying the same about us, " Anthony Daly offers.

"One or two people have said would we not be better off easing ourselves back into things, but to me it's better to have a tough match at the start. This way we'll see if we're made of anything."

While Clare's candle had clearly burned out after 15 minutes of the Munster semifinal, Daly didn't sense the jig was up until half-time. On entering the dressing room he saw "six or seven" heads down. Beaten men. No belief in themselves. You can't take off six or seven men at halftime, though. The biggest indictment, Daly adds, was not that Clare lost, not even that they lost heavily, but rather that they were outworked. "Cork seemed to be the team coming looking for revenge for last year's All Ireland semi-final when it should have been us coming looking for revenge."

Is it possible that Clare made the error of trying to win a match they'd already played instead of the match they were about to play?

"That's a fair enough point.

We probably looked too much at the errors we made in the All Ireland semi-final, looked at the video too often and forgot that it was total hard work that had got us to within a point of Cork. Plus Cork were more ready for us in Thurles than they had been last August. We definitely had the element of surprise that day."

Lack of proper preparation has never been an issue for Clare, Daly argues. Last year against Cork they weren't fit enough, supposedly. This year against Cork they weren't skilful enough, supposedly. Which, he asks rhetorically, is it? "The fact is, we've done hundreds of sessions. But mentally we're not sustaining the effort for 70 minutes. That's the problem we need to address. How do we address it? It's very hard to know. But we do need to get back to last year's values. To really work. Really blocking, hooking, chasing, making blind runs." When Plan A fails, refer to Plan A.

Having to travel the boreens again is a pain in the neck of royal proportions, needless to say. It would be far nicer, and much easier, to be looking forward to a Munster final, and one against Tipp at that. Yet the Clare players still have a choice, according to their manager.

"We either make the best of it or we capitulate. And these players are a ferocious sound bunch of lads who want to win, who couldn't have trained any harder. But there has to be an in-built desire to go through the pain barriin the dressing room before they go out "if that's what it takes". Would it that things were that clear-cut.

Clare weren't the only crowd to go out and hurl the wrong match. Instead of playing the first round of the championship against Tipperary on 14 May, Limerick played it two weeks earlier in the league final against Kilkenny. "I know it's a long championship and our focus all year had been on the Tipp match, but we became sidetracked by the league, " Ger Cunningham declares. "A young, inexperienced team like ours just wasn't capable of putting two big performances back to back. We'd put in a good display against Kilkenny and we were happy with that rather than being disappointed with losing. We should have been disappointed for a week and examined where we'd gone wrong. Instead we harped on the positives."

They kept training to a pragmatic minimum between the league final and the Tipp game. At the time it seemed the obvious course of action.

Now they're not so certain.

Should they have flogged the players in training? Surely not; most of the Limerick players were out on their feet from an early stage against Tipp as it was. "I was trying to go for the ball but my legs wouldn't carry me, " was the general tenor of it afterwards.

The management knew their fate rather sooner than their Clare counterparts would a fortnight later. For weeks Limerick had been working on their puck-outs, the first three of which yielded two goals and a point. The next nine puck-outs, in contrast, were all lost, as were two of the three after that.

With the half-forward line being cleaned out, there was barely a scrap for the midfield to latch onto. How Limerick were within a puck of the ball of Tipp entering the last couple of minutes was the day's only mystery.

How today's game isn't as glamorous as it might have been is no mystery. The 1996 clash at the Gaelic Grounds . . .

Cunningham watched it from the terrace, now the uncovered stand, his feet covered in dust and sand . . . was a ground-shaking collision of contemporary titans, the reigning Munster and All Ireland champions taking on the team that won two provincial titles and contested two All Ireland finals in the space of three years. Even Don King would be hard pressed to affix apocalyptic overtones to the rematch. Of the 12 championship matches they've contested under Daly, Clare have won six, four of them against Laois, Dublin and Offaly (twice). Limerick for their part haven't beaten championship opponents of consequence since the 2001 Munster semi-final; Kerry, Antrim and Laois were the victims for their three victories in 17 outings in the meantime.

"We have to repay the fans, who keep coming back year after year, " Cunningham says.

"And also get some payback for ourselves. That's a definite." But Clare have the local knowledge and have course and distance when it comes to the qualifiers. That should do it. Lovers of beautiful, flowing, wristy hurling, please look away now.

ALL IRELAND SHC QUALIFIER, ROUND 1 CLARE v LIMERICK Cusack Park, Ennis, 4.00 Referee S Roche (Tipperary) Live, RTE 1, 3.45

CLARE TBA LIMERICK B Murray; D Reale, TJ Ryan, M Foley; O Moran, B Geary, M O'Riordan; S Hickey, M O'Brien; C Fitzgerald, S Lucey, D Ryan; A O'Shaughnessy, B Begley, B Foley