Munster Club HC Final/Tulla v Loughmore-Castleiney: Tom Humphriesprofiles the east Clare club that has flouted the odds and made it to a Munster hurling final

Tulla. The shorthand version of the place is a pipe band, a windswept hill and an associated history of laments. According to Jim McInerney, who has seen lots down through the years of Tulla hurling, the town went mad when the hurlers beat Newmarket to make the county semi-final this autumn and it has stayed mad ever since.

There is a man in Tulla this winter with his own laments though as the village's odyssey continues. Just one man. He walked into a bookies early in the summer and asked for the odds on Tulla winning the county hurling championship, something Tulla had been failing to do since 1933. He was mulling over the offered price of 40 to 1 when the girl behind the counter said to him, sure you could add another zero to that! Tulla? And he thought for another couple of seconds and decided the girl was right. Stick with thoroughbreds.

And he put his wedge on an Aidan O'Brien horse which won at slender odds. And bitter-sweet were the Tulla man's feelings on the night that the boys brought the Canon Hamilton Cup back to the parish.

Tulla in a Munster club hurling final? It was as unthinkable during the latter rounds of the Clare championship as it was during the 74 years since the place last tasted success. That long famine wasn't relieved by even so much as a county final appearance and the last few decades didn't even bring the novelty of a semi-final for the claret and gold.

Giddy times in Tulla. Jigs and reels.

Tulla would have been a farming community and though east Clare was the original home of hurling in the county, the game would have ebbed and flowed a little in Tulla. Now the place finds itself centrally located on a malleable landscape with people working in Shannon, Ennis, Limerick or even Galway. The town finds itself growing. The sewage system hasn't been able to handle the demand so there are a lot of sites lying around waiting for the go-ahead. So the town has grown slowly, the newcomers have integrated perfectly and the club has absorbed the energy.

During the summer, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, the seniors would come at 7.30pm and find they couldn't get in nor out of the hurling field with cars and people collecting kids. "At least a hundred bodies on the field every evening from six o'clock till nine during the summertime," says Jim McInerney. "There are young fellas taking their hurleys to bed with them now. Any kid from six years up understands what goes on, boys and girls."

Jim grew up in a small hurling revival himself, just in time to be in a Clare jersey for the Loughnane revolution. When Brian Calloo returned to the parish to teach and be principal in the national school 30 or so years ago he brought his love of the game with him and started planting small acorns on school afternoons.

After the Clare final this year the Tulla boys went to the same primary school with the silverware glinting and Brian Torpey, the principal, the nephew of Brian Calloo and the father of two of Tulla's star players, Seán and Eanna, noted that the demand for autographs was so high and fevered that if every child were to be accommodated there would be no learning done before Christmas.

He arranged that the team would all sign a piece of paper and he would photocopy it and distribute around the school. Life can't be all romance!

"We would have been there all day signing the jerseys," says McInerney. "A lot of them have got the jerseys signed since but there were a few long faces that day! Sure if they didn't care it would be a sad day!"

Championship every summer since 1933 brought sad days. The great Tommy Daly played on that Tulla team having won four All-Irelands with Dublin before returning home. He died in a car crash three years later. The field in Tulla is named for him. Sad days. The litany of them ended this year. The usual reasons. New energy, a hard-luck story and togetherness.

Last year Tulla's championship finished sourly, when they were ejected from the senior B championship having lost a group match to Cratloe. Tulla argued that the previous year Newmarket had lost two group matches and been allowed proceed to the main championship and in fact they had reached the final.

Nobody cared too much about Tulla though and they stayed outside the fence and watched Wolfe Tones claim a title. Since 1960 only three titles had come back to east Clare - Whitegate in 1961, Brian Borus (an amalgamated side which included Tulla) in 1975 and Feakle in 1988.

This year the championship was restructured and when Tulla won the Clare Cup back in spring, beating Sixmilebridge by a point in the final, they began to believe.

This was Jim McInerney's second year in charge. He demanded more. Last year in championship games he'd bitten the bullet and left some of the stars of the parish off the side in big games because he wasn't happy with the commitment they were giving.

Brian Quinn, who had exerted a lot of pressure on Jim to take the management job (Jim finished hurling in 2004 on his 40th birthday), came through and as a player demanded precisely the same thing that the management was looking for.

Four groups of five. Dates that had to be adhered to. Everyone back in the A championship. A structure with no backdoors. The top two teams in each group made the quarter-finals. Third and fourth teams in each group went into a B championship. The bottom team in each group fought against relegation with the intermediate winners coming up. The system was a huge help for Tulla, playing in the A championship offered them the same chance as the nobility.

McInerney had brought in Mike Brown from Crusheen and Raymond Steward, an injury-cursed forward from the senior panel, to work with him. Their mantra was that if the boys gave the commitment the rewards would come. They didn't have to wait long for proof.

Tulla had Crusheen in their first group game. Crusheen were beaten in the 2006 semi-final and were the strongest team in the group. With five minutes to go Tulla were two points down after taking the blow to the stomach that a soft goal represents. And they were a man down. For half a century that would have been an excuse for Tulla men to fold. This time Tulla eked out a draw.

It was a turning point. The outside world would notice what was going on later but in Tulla that evening when they stood up and were counted meant a lot.

They had to wait eight or nine weeks before they played again. They didn't go well against Ogonnolloe but got through, then were beaten by Smith O'Brien's of Killaloe. That set up a last tussle with Scariff. Scariff have no county titles but have lots of qualities Tulla would aspire to. Year in and year out they become more than the sum of their parts, playing tough hurling that trips teams up again and again.

Tulla got through and to emphasise to themselves the seriousness of their intent they went to the beach the next morning and drove themselves through the toughest session of the year in the wind and the rain.

And time accelerated then. Newmarket in the quarter-finals. Newmarket, coming off three under-21 titles in a row, lost this year's under-21 final as they went in search of a fourth. Their young team were prohibitive favourites. At quarter-final stage Tulla's odds had been pared only as far as 20 to 1. Newmarket, the aristocracy of Clare hurling, have not won a senior title since 1981. The hunger of a blueblood should always trump that of the peasant!

But all hurling is local. Tulla won the 2000 minor A final in Clare, beating Newmarket in the final. Eight of that team are playing on the senior side now. Two or three guys just over age had contested a minor final two years before. At minor level from 1998 to 2001 under Pat Madden, Tulla contested a final or a semi-final and the produce is being harvested now. Tulla never won an under-21 championship but beat Newmarket and Clarecastle at that level in the years after minor success. They didn't know to be afraid.

Faster and giddier and dizzier now. Newmarket were well beaten.

Clarecastle in the semi-final. At times down the years Clarecastle would have wiped Tulla out. In good years for Tulla they would have lost to the Magpies by just a point or two. That was the benchmark. This time though the two Sheedys, Stephen and Martin, were gone from Clarecastle. Their leadership was gone. Tulla sniffed some blood in the water. On they swam.

A county final against Crusheen, a team who have been knocking on the door for a few years. Crusheen won the senior league in 2005 and were beaten in the final the following year. They had never won the senior championship. Tulla had been whetting their own hunger for 74 years. Inevitably the game was a dogfight. Tulla made fewer mistakes and won. They were poor in the first half but kept the score down. They lost their scoring blade Andrew Quinn early in the game and the lads were sidetracked psychologically. They shook themselves at half-time, lifted it and Eanna Torpey played a great game and had his hand broken but played on.

Experience played its part too. Brian Quinn and his brother Mark and the captain Mike Murphy, all in their 30s and all men with experience and hardship invested in them, stood up to the storm. Crusheen kicked a goal chance wide in injury-time. Tulla won by a point.

That's the story of a year. The windswept hill of Tulla oversaw days of celebrations and basked in the glow of bonfires that would have warmed Tommy Daly's old bones. Lixnaw were beaten handily and then Ballyduff Upper were bumped in the Munster semi-final. When Tulla won the county the men on the ditch said they'd drink for a year and wouldn't raise a gallop again. But they came back and trained on the Wednesday night and went to Breaffy House in Mayo soon after for a training weekend and have lived like monks since. They are used to the madness, to the changed world they stirred up.

No more fear. No more laments. It was rainy and windswept yesterday as Jim McInerney went about his business renovating a building on the land he farms but when it is November and everyone is still hurling you don't notice.