This season, the view has been different. Since the league began earlier in the month, Gary Kirby has embarked on the usual pilgrimage around the country. A short trip to the Gaelic Grounds, a smoky morning drive to Birr and, this weekend, an Easter trip to the capital. After 12 years, you find yourself getting to know the ground staff by name, almost acquire your favourite spot in visitors' dressing-rooms.

The bench, though, is the novelty. The preparation is the same, the spiel in the dressing-room and pucking around before the match. But this squeezing alongside the others as the whistle blows, zipping up the tracksuit and hearing every breath and curse and utterance from the manager, this is the new part. Sort of keeps it fresh.

Kirby has seen all sorts of births and passings since he first walked into the Limerick camp in 1986, and it seemed as though optimism in the county soared in tandem with his star. His name, along with that of Ciaran Carey's, was synonymous with that sparkling summer in 1994, when Limerick's irrepressible revival was just quenched in a damburst of Offaly insouciance. Talk is that Limerick folk still see those last five minutes in their dreams, or nightmares.

"If there were any ghosts there, they've been well laid to rest now, that's being honest," Kirby says. "Undeniably, it took the county maybe a year or so to recover from being beaten like that, but it's well behind us now. Limerick, between clubs and county, have been in five All-Ireland finals this decade and we've come through in none of them. It's not a great record, but at least we are up there, competing."

That catastrophic end coincided with Clare's dizzy emergence, and since then the Banner county have more or less stolen all the thunder in Munster, setting the tone with a colourful kind of nervelessness. We have been left uncertain as to Limerick's pedigree, and the fledgling days of 1999 have not done anything to reassure the sceptics. Where does Kirby think it's at?

"It's hard to say. I mean, I agree, our form has definitely been uneven. We coasted against Antrim and then crashed in Offaly, and even though the result went against us when we played Clare, at least we could take something out of the game, we looked like a team again. But, I mean, the average age of the lads on the team now is 24, which is grand for an upcoming team."

Thus far, Kirby's pitch time has been limited to that surreal second half in Birr, when the Limerick players looked as though they were just barely familiar with each other and even more estranged from the notion of hurling. Afterwards, a seething Eamon Cregan could barely disguise his contempt for what he'd overseen.

"And he was dead right, we had no problems with that. We had a chat about it on the Tuesday night, talked about what might have gone wrong. But to be honest, everyone was a bit at a loss to explain the collapse, it was so complete. It was weird to watch, because in the first 20 minutes we competed well, took some nice scores, and then nothing."

With Limerick trailing and out of it, Cregan fired Kirby in for Mike Galligan. He couldn't even rise a head of steam.

"It was one of those games, hard to get into, it had already gotten away from us. But that's behind us now. Eamon is intent that we should just concentrate on winning each game we play.

"That's our aim on Sunday against Dublin. If we win our remaining three games, we should qualify for the play-offs. The league isn't a lost cause yet."

This year, there remains uncertainty about how much we will see of Limerick, and even if they do get the cogs in motion again, Kirby might now claim only a peripheral role in that drive.

"I'm still enjoying it now. Certainly, it's demanding. I think back to the training we used to do when I first started and it would only be a warm-up today.

"And I'm married with a child now, time is more demanding. But I still like the hurling - we'll only begin hurling training this week, in the truest sense of the term. You'll see all the teams sharpen up a lot over then next three weeks or so."

So how does he see it panning out? "If only I knew. Our main concern now is Waterford. What a team to face in the first round. Playing in Munster now, it's hard to see beyond that. There are so many good teams. "I mean, whoever is unfortunate enough to lose when we play Waterford, well, those lads won't hurl again till March. It's an awful situation, all that training and some team is only going to see one game. Just hope it isn't us."