So it might be with Limerick. Richie Bennis, that "great ol' character" that's been "great for the game" and gone back "to the basics" might suddenly be waved off as oldfashioned; Gary Kirby, the perennial nearly man with '07 now to join the hard-luck stories of '94 and '96; Dave Moriarty, the trainer who keeps getting teams to finals but can't seem to win them; Stephen Lucey, one of the under-21 kids with still no medal to show for all his time at senior.

But that's not how it should be, that's not how it is, that's not who they are.

Because whatever happens today, understand this. In this particular year this particular team got precisely the management team it needed . . . and demanded . . . and that management team got the full-back it needed . . . and demanded.

This is the story of their past year.

How they've come this far might well go all the way.

'On Thursday Donal Og [Cusack] declared in the huddle we were fighting for everything we believe in. Bennis had come in and ditched the bananas and the psychology and support game and gone back to old-school ways. If Limerick had beaten us then the whole of hurling would be saying that our whole set-up was a load of baloney.'

Brian Corcoran on the 2006 All-Ireland quarter-final in 'Every Single Ball' They're not quite as old-fashioned as people . . . and often they themselves . . . would have you believe.

A fortnight ago Gary Kirby took a weekend break with the wife and three kids in Castlegregory only to find himself at four o'clock that Sunday morning watching Kilkenny in last year's All Ireland final. Justin, up to last year anyway, would not do that. Loughnane, the father of the revolution years, prided himself on not resorting to that. But Kirby, a selector, does, and so does his uncle and manager.

"I've studied lots of videos, " says Richie Bennis. Like how Kilkenny won last year's league final, beating his own Limerick. Like how they beat Galway last month. But more than that, he adds, "we've studied the ones they've been beaten in because we can learn more from how they were beaten than how they won." This year's league final has been dissected. The 2004 All Ireland final too. Even the tape of the 2004 Leinster semi-final and Wexford's ingenious puckout strategy has been tracked and broken down.

They've used psychology as well, even if Richie has tried to perpetuate the notion all along that he doesn't believe in what a passive primetime radio news programme reporter lazily rubbished as "psychobabble". Earlier this year, Bennis regularly consulted a leading mental toughness trainer, one he cannot name out of respect for the trainer's privacy. Ten days ago the team were addressed by Paul O'Connell who told them how Munster had got their mental preparation wrong for the 2002 European Cup final and got it spot on for 2006. Besides, as Professor Aidan Moran was saying last week on TV3, sport psychology is common sense and you don't have to be a psychologist to practice that. Eddie O'Sullivan isn't a psychologist but he's a keen reader of psychology. Kilkenny's inner circle could . . .but won't . . . tell you the same about selector Martin Fogarty. Richie Bennis isn't qualified in psychology, doesn't read or study it, but in his own inimitable way, he practises it.

That's meant listening to the players, and at times being told he hasn't always been practising common sense. After last year's All-Ireland quarter-final, some senior players informed Bennis they might have beaten Cork, not just scared them, if he hadn't been so frenzied on the line. He had to observe the match, not be playing it. More, this was their team, not his. As he'd remind them months later in Nowlan Park, he was their sixth manager in five years and still they were losing; they were the common denominator. They needed someone to facilitate them, not dictate to them.

If Tony Considine had accepted the job 12 months ago, they would hardly have got that, but instead they got Bennis and he was happy and humble enough to oblige. If they had something to say or suggest, they were free to say it. If he had something to say or even demand, by God he was going to say it.

The situation he inherited has been overplayed as well. Ennis was a disaster, but an aberration too. Going into that qualifier Limerick had been the only team in hurling over the previous five years not to lose a championship match by more than seven points.

Bennis was smart enough to decipher that the players hammered by 17 points by Clare was also the players who came from seven down to beat Clare in the league semi-final. They could come back again with a few changes, with a little bit of common sense.

The one thing he definitely did ditch was the support game. He's on record as stating his approval of the "super" work of Joe McKenna and was very touched by a "lovely" letter he received two weeks ago from McKenna, "the only one of the ex-managers to contact me". The problem with Joe, he believes, is that while he had "Limerick on the right road", he took a few diversions and ended up losing his way, his own confidence and ultimately, that of his players.

Diversion One: playing players out of position instead of attributing the Munster semifinal defeat to Tipp mostly to fatigue. At the start of 2006 Limerick needed wins under their belt, but between the Waterford Crystal and the league itself, the players were out 13 of the 15 weekends before the league final. Even if they had a three-week break between the Kilkenny and Tipp games, they'd probably have been fine, but instead they returned to Thurles flat. The fallout from going a fifth Munster championship without a win was massive. "I remember going down to Lahinch with Brian Begley that following Tuesday, " says Stephen Lucey, "and the pair of us all night shaking our heads, 'Jesus, where do we go from here?'" The way back was never going to be easy, but it was never playing musical chairs with the team selection either.

Diversion Two: the obsession with the possession game. "When we took over players were telling us that the previous management had told some of them not to go for points from 60 yards out even though they might be on their own, " says Kirby. "One player was told not to have a shot at goal at all, that he couldn't score, and that same player is scoring for us now."

In the four sessions before the Offaly game and up in Tullamore itself, players were told to literally give it a shot. There was a leash there though. By half-time Brian Geary and Lucey had been hauled ashore. "I think, " says Kirby, "the boys looked at that and went 'These guys [management] don't mind who they take off, they just want Limerick to win.'" Limerick would leave Tullamore with their first true championship win in six years, but after Ennis 2006 could only be a short-term exercise in damage limitation. The winter gave everyone . . . players, management . . . time to reflect, plan, change.

Moriarty concluded that for all the good work done by his predecessor Dave Mahedy too many of them did not have the upper body strength required of an elite team sport athlete. At the start of the year every player was individually assessed and then broken into one of four groups. There was a general strength-gain group, which even featured the likes of as big man as Lucey. In another was the hypertrophy group, with the likes of young Seamus Hickey who needed to bulk up massively. Then there was the speed group and the weight-loss group . . . who was in this, we'll leave you to speculate. On the eve of the league they had made enough gains to all join together for general training, but through the year there would be constant reviewing.

Three weeks before the first-round game against Tipp, Kirby and Moriarty sat down with every player individually and told them exactly what they had to do to get game-time.

At eight o'clock the morning after the Munster final, Moriarty rang a disillusioned Donie Ryan who inquired what he had to do to feature. Moriarty spelt it out for him . . . improve his work rate and show it in the four training matches before the All-Ireland quarter-final.

Ryan's subsequent progress and the team's results speak for themselves but there have been blips along the way. Bennis often recalls the hammering both Kilkenny and he gave the players in Nowlan Park last March. For Moriarty, the lowest point and turning point was the following week's loss to Dublin. "Even in the last few weeks a few of the players have talked to me about the warm-down by the open-stand side and one of the supporters shouting, 'Why didn't ye feckin' run during the game? .' That hurt the players badly and that stayed with them."

So though did something Moriarty kept telling them all spring. They'd been hopping the previous March only to be dead in midMay. Come championship 2007 he'd have them flying. Their two goals for the year were to beat Tipp in the Munster and then reach an All-Ireland semi-final. They were still on course for both.

Bennis and the players trusted him and that trust was well-founded. Moriarty's own game was rugby and played it with Young Munster, Terenure and then, in the summer of 2000, the Boston Irish Wolfhounds before he picked up a neck injury over there that finished his career. Always though his strength and passion was preparing teams and he'd learned from the best how to do that. Before he joined the Gardai, he studied recreation management in Waterford IT under its resident genius, Gerry Fitzpatrick. At Young Munster, he'd played for and learned from future Munster assistant coach Brian Hickey.

At Terenure there was former national coach Gerry Murphy. Even now he regularly takes courses run by Liam Hennessy and Jim Kilty.

Anything he can learn, anything he can borrow. When he was training his native MurroeBoher to the intermediate title in 1999 and Adare to a couple of senior titles a few years later, he found himself adapting some of Murphy and Hickey's drills and applying them to hurling.

His big break though was with the county footballers, helping them to two Munster finals and a Division One league semi-final.

When Bennis was looking for a trainer, he phoned Liam Kearns, who he'd befriended through the years, for his view on Moriarty.

The first thing Kearns said was, "He's the best."

The players will echo that. This year Lucey has found himself now able to push men off and get that extra room to get his clearance off, thanks to Moriarty. "He's a perfectionist, " says Lucey. "He's extremely passionate, extremely articulate, but he wont talk any bullshit and he won't take any either."

Kirby will vouch the same. Bennis and himself might identify some part of the team's play that must be rectified . . . "A big thing, " says Kirby, "was fellas coming out to control the ball chest high with their hurley when they could have caught it; we needed to get the ball faster into our hand" . . . and Moriarty will go away and find and conduct a drill to address it. "To be honest, " says Kirby, "Moriarty nearly does it all. I consult, I advise, but he takes it away."

And so here they are, in September, living the dream, the dream still alive. For Bennis, the great tactician, facilitator, delegator. For Kirby. For Moriarty. But it's not enough.

There's hardly a day that goes past, he says, that he doesn't think of Darragh O Se and those three balls he hauled down by that crossbar. That team had some journey too but did not reach their destination . . . and that kills a part of them to this day.

Lucey is haunted by the same vision, the same lesson . . . you only get so many chances; take them when they're there. "We have to play this All Ireland final like we're never going to hold a hurley again. This is it; this is what it's all about. You don't want to just play in it, you want to win it. Nothing else matters. A good performance? Bullshit. Coming close, losing by a point? Bullshit. We want to lift the Liam McCarthy Cup and bring it back to Limerick."

Bennis and his team got a second shot at life but for them for today, there ain't no tomorrow, no more moral victories. No more regrets.