Seamus Hickey made an impression with Limerick off the field before he made one on it. The venue was the Woodlands Hotel in Adare, the date the late autumn of 2006, the occasion a players' meeting occasioned by yet another wasted championship. Limerick had begun the summer by losing the National League final. They'd continued it by losing their management team half an hour after they'd lost by 17 points to Clare in Ennis. They were to finish it, partly redeeming themselves in the process, by taking Cork to the wire in the All Ireland quarter-final. All well and good if moral victories are what floats your boat.

And so autumn arrived and the players gathered to look into their own hearts, like a famous Limerick resident before them, and ask themselves certain hard questions. Where were they going? Where did they want to go? Was partial redemption the limit of their ambitions? Were they really prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to succeed? Had the Cusack Park debacle cut them to the marrow the way it should have? The usual suspects had had their say when up piped an unlikely speaker. Seamus Hickey, aged 19, a first-year panellist, the kind of guy who wasn't supposed to open his mouth – and not to say very much if he did open it.

But Hickey wasn't that kind of guy. He spoke articulately, he spoke with clarity, he spoke with the unforgiving honesty of youth. He had the floor for 10 minutes and he didn't waste a moment. When he was finished, several pins were heard to drop.

To the more dedicated panellists in a group that screamed out for focus and direction, this was immensely refreshing. Here, it was clear, was a youngster committed to the green shirt and bent on a full-time hurling career with Limerick, not on a part-time hurling career with a part-time drinking career thrown in for good measure.

Twelve months or so later, Hickey was the Young Hurler of the Year. Nobody who'd been present in the Woodlands Hotel could have been surprised.

He'd arrived on the Limerick panel to some fanfare. Like his brothers and his father Sean before him, Hickey had gone to school in St Flannan's. There he was part of the fabric of the place for six years, as boarders who hurled tended to be, in Hickey's case as a member of a group that included John Conlon, wing-forward on the Clare team that won the Munster under-21 title a couple of weeks ago, and George Hannigan, the Tipperary footballer.

In his Leaving Cert year Hickey was a member of the team that won the Harty Cup and advanced to an All Ireland showdown in Thurles with a St Kieran's outfit that included TJ Reid and the Hogans and were chasing three in a row. He would have lined out at corner-back, where he'd been operating all season, were it not for a hamstring injury to James McInerney, the centre-back. Jamesie O'Connor didn't have to agonise unduly before taking the bull by the horns and handing the Murroe-Boher man the pivotal position on the big day. Hickey prospered and, slightly against the head, St Flannan's recorded a memorable triumph.

It would not be Hickey's last appearance on a big stage the same year. Limerick had their best minor team in ages, one that recovered from losing the Munster final to ambush Dublin, the Leinster champions, in the All Ireland semi-final. Although Galway beat them at Croke Park in September with something to spare, Timmy O'Connor, the Limerick manager, recalls that Hickey's display at midfield in the All Ireland final was "his best of the season. I'd had him with the under-15s a few years earlier. He always had the ability but he's definitely worked hard on his skill level as he's got older." For all that it may not have won any silverware, incidentally, the same Limerick minor side provided three of today's starting XV: Hickey, Gavin O'Mahony and James Ryan. Would that every underage side were so prolific.

By the following spring, the word was out. For the Harty Cup final, Midleton CBS identified Hickey as a pillar that had to be undermined, stuck a workhorse centre-forward in on top of him with the express intention of keeping him quiet and won. Only the very best colleges' players are the objects of such backhanded compliments. The Limerick senior management were keeping an eye out too, concluded that Hickey was blessed with such natural pace that getting him up to the speed of championship hurling wouldn't be difficult and brought him in. Following Joe McKenna's departure post-Ennis, Hickey made his debut in Richie Bennis's first game as interim manager, the qualifier against Offaly at O'Connor Park.

If Bennis had any doubts about the youngster's readiness to scale the upper reaches of the ladder they disappeared at Semple Stadium on the evening of the All Ireland quarter-final against Cork. "That was the night he really showed his potential," Bennis recalls. "And in the three games against Tipperary in 2007, there's no way we'd have got through without Seamus. He had a big say." Bennis can still picture Hickey swooping from nowhere to dispossess Darragh Egan on the uncovered side of the Gaelic Grounds at a crucial stage in the second replay and despatch the ball to safety.

A now-famous barnstorming performance on John Mullane in the All Ireland semi-final, where Hickey not only kept his opponent in check but raised the roof with his repeated bursts out of defence and clearances down the field, rendered him a marked man for the final. Kilkenny took good care to prevent him coming out with the ball and their opening goal was partly the product of the younger man's inexperience; Hickey didn't make it hard enough for Eddie Brennan. It says much for his mental strength that nobody who knew him well doubted that what didn't kill him would make him stronger. Thus it has proved.

The issue of his optimum position – Justin McCarthy has had him oscillating between wing-back and midfield of late – is one that still gives shrewd observers (is there any other kind of observers?) pause for reflection. Corner-back? Hickey boasts the pace and the mobility, certainly, but the general hurling sensibility rebels at the notion of a player of Hickey's drive and aggression being locked away in the corner. "He's not negative enough for corner-back," Jamesie O'Connor argues. "That's not his instinct. We did have him there for a year, sweeping, but he was a luxury we could afford." Interestingly, Richie Bennis disagrees. "Seamus is so good to read a game, so good to cover, that to me he's a natural corner-back."

Centre-back, the eventual successor to Brian Geary? Probably not; as yet, Hickey isn't bulky enough or sufficiently strong under the dropping ball. Wing-back? Yes, fine; no qualms there. But the centre of the field is the spot that garners most votes from associates. At midfield he can attack the ball, can cover back and can drive forward and have a go, as he did when landing a point in the drawn provincial semi-final with Waterford two months ago.

Put Seamus Hickey anywhere and he'll do a job. He'll do a job again today.

emcevoy@tribune.ie