LAST Sunday, as they filed onto the bus in Clones, Mickey Ned O'Sullivan handed every Limerick footballer a sheet of paper.

Earlier on the field as they'd begun warming down, he'd congratulated them on their win but warned it would soon be time to park it. The sheet told them that time had come.

It was an itinerary of the following weekend. The bus would be leaving Newcastlewest at 12 o'clock on Saturday, stopping off in the South Court Hotel at halfpast, before another pit stop outside Galway at half-two and arriving in Castlebar for half-four. Within 15 minutes of checking into their hotel, they'd be into a recovery session before being free to watch the rugby. Later they'd be watching more sport:

footage of Mayo, and then some of themselves against Fermanagh. Everything was outlined, in detail, in order, in print. Another team might have basked in a win like Clones for a week. Instead, Limerick planned for a week.

The year is as new as this Limerick side but already there are parallels with the one they overcame in Clones.

At the start of 2004, Fermanagh were a bunch of kids, no-hopers; a county that had battled bravely the season before without big names but couldn't possibly withstand another wave of defections.

They finished that 2004 league with only one win but displaying enough spirit for Mickey Harte to forecast no one would beat them easily.

No one did. Fermanagh won an All Ireland quarter-final with only six of the side that played in one 12 months earlier.

Limerick may never play summer football in Croke Park but already they've established they won't roll over for anyone. Dublin needed a Mossie Quinn '45 in injury-time to escape from the Gaelic Grounds with a win. Fermanagh left Clones staring into Division Three.

Limerick started both with five of the side which bored the nation against Cork last June, and just two of the team denied by Darragh O Se's fingertips in the 2004 Munster final.

The dream, the push, was meant to end there, with Kerry, and for a lot of that side, it did. They tried to give it one more kick in 2005 but it wasn't there. By 2006, neither were the hurlers. Of Liam Kearns' outgoing panel of 28, O'Sullivan inherited 15.

They would help the county win promotion but even in that, O'Sullivan could tell veterans were out of tears and gas.

"Last year it was hard to get players going, " he concedes. "You got the sense some of the older lads felt Division Two was beneath them. And if you've been playing inter-county football for seven years, have a partner, mortgage and a team coming to the end of an era, it's understandable to wonder, 'Am I young enough to go for the development of another team? Is it worth it?' And five or six of the lads felt it wasn't."

O'Sullivan was too much of a football man and a romantic to walk away, yet enough of a pragmatist to ensure that if he was there for 2007, he'd be there for 2008.

He would build a team ("There's footballers everywhere") but it was going to take time. The week after their one-point qualifier defeat to Westmeath, he outlined to the football board the benefits of a development squad.

He had run a similar initiative in Kerry with John O'Keeffe. It received lukewarm support from the county board ("The first meeting was cancelled because of a funeral. The next was at halftime in a league game and no officer showed. I wasn't wasting my time after that"), but it helped bring through Eoin Brosnan, Paul Galvin and Sean O'Sullivan. Limerick approved of the idea and within two weeks, 18 footballers were at the University of Limerick, being tutored by O'Sullivan, team trainer Cian O'Neill and squad coordinator Billy Leahy.

Already eight of those players are on the senior panel but it's a long-term thing.

"The last time I managed a county team, it took seven years for it to realise its potential. There's no point in coming to Limerick unless we leave something after us.

We've a squad at under-16 too, because in Limerick if you don't get the under-16s, rugby gets them. Now a kid can see a pathway to senior football . . . under-16, minor, development squad, and if you prove your worth there, the senior panel. That wasn't there before. Last year I hadn't one back as a sub. We started and finished every game with the same six backs."

Football and footballers have always intrigued him . . .

how to play it, how to get the best out of them. It was O'Sullivan who coaxed Mick O'Dwyer into going along to that famous demonstration where Kevin Heffernan spilled the secret of Dublin's success . . .

fitness . . . and, 14 years and eight All Irelands later, O'Sullivan succeeded O'Dwyer. At the time he'd been researching sports psychology in the States and interviewing champions like Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly for a book on mentally preparing the GAA player. "Then I got the Kerry job, and I said, 'If I bring this out, I'll be strung up.'" After losing to Clare in 1992, it nearly came to that, but in blooding Moynihan, Breen and O'Flaherty and guiding the county to two All Ireland under-21 finals, O'Sullivan left a legacy Kerry would reap if not appreciate. He subsequently threw himself into managing his cafe shop and bar and restaurant in his native Kenmare and the day job teaching across the Cork border in Ballyvourney. All the time though he made sure to give a hand out with his local club and keep an ear and eye out for matters at football's cutting edge. Then two years ago he decided to lease the cafe and sell the bar and restaurant. He coached TG4's Underdogs.

Then Limerick called. "Would you be interested in coaching another bunch of underdogs?" It was the perfect sales pitch.

"I loved the concept of the Underdogs and it applies to Limerick. There are fellas who've been overlooked but given the proper support, can perform at this level. We've a few now that never played underage but there are guys I haven't got a hold of yet."

He's satisfied that support is there. He rates O'Neill, a former Kildare panelist with a doctorate in sports science, as the country's best physical trainer. When the panel assembled, he promised them just four things. They'd be the fittest team in Division One at the start of the league ("We had to be"). They'd be a different team by the end of the league. If he didn't make each of them a better player, he'd been a failure. And they'd be a very close, cohesive unit.

"I brought the lads to Kenmare. We were out in the bay in these canoes and there was wind and there was rain. It was close enough to life or death; if some lad didn't pull his weight, fellas were in the water half a mile from shore.

You learn from that who you want in the trenches. As a team, we made three months' progress in two days."

He's had to do some soulsearching himself. Last summer he looked in the mirror and found "I didn't get it right either; I was restricting the players too much". He adapted. And he'll continue to. Not just because he has to.

Because he loves to.

"I coached inter-county 15 years ago but I'm enjoying this way more because I'm learning way more. From Cian, from [selector] Joe Reddington, from players. Ultimately I have to call the shots, but everyone has something to offer. I don't get hot and bothered like I used to. When you're young, you go right for the jugular and antagonise people. As you get older, you learn to get round most people. You become shrewder, more diplomatic."

He can cite the example of Stephen Kelly. The pair had engaged in some megaphone diplomacy early last month when Kelly was dropped for missing the previous week's training. The pair met, together with two players Kelly chose to attend. Kelly explained his hope to combine football with scoring tries for Shannon in the AIL but Kelly's teammates concluded he couldn't give Limerick the necessary commitment. Kelly accepted that, and both parties wished the other good luck. Davy Fitz and Tony C it wasn't.

"Ultimately everyone must walk away with some dignity.

It's not about you winning an argument; it's about everybody contributing. That's one thing I wouldn't have accepted 20 years ago. I thought I knew it all." He pauses. "Now, " he softly laughs, "I know I don't."

Today, it's Castlebar. Cork and 20 May isn't even on his radar. He knows that his side doesn't register on the public's. Darragh O Se's fingertips might have been all that stopped someone else sculpting a third statue to go with the hurler and rugby player on O'Connell Street, but now the footballers are once again a friends-and-relatives team.

At Christmas, O'Sullivan met business associates from Limerick who knew him as Mickey Ned, the caterer in Kenmare, Mickey Ned, the All Ireland-winning captain, but completely oblivious to the fact he was now the manager of their county team.

O'Sullivan doesn't care that they don't care. In time, they might, but it's not about them.

"Every night, every game, we set targets for the players. It might be developing some fellas' tackling, or a set piece, and when lads get it right, there's great satisfaction out of that. That's progress. Now, Joe Soap doesn't see that. All he sees are results."

The players see it though.

"After the Dublin game, one of the new lads said to me, 'Going out, I didn't know what to expect. Coming off, I felt they're not superhuman; they're just flesh and bones.'

That guy made such progress in that one game. Suddenly, they're thinking on a different level."

Limerick footballers daring to dream again.

These dogs bite.