Talk about Hotel California. Limerick come to Croke Park tonight for a league quarter-final against Dublin knowing that yet again in 2016 they won't be playing in the top division.

Another year swimming in the shallow end, try as they might to get up the other end. They’ve checked out of the various iterations of Division 1B time and again over the past five seasons yet they’ve never quite been able to leave.

“At the start of the year for each of the last three or four years, we’ve said we are getting out of this league,” says Séamus Hickey.

“We won Division Two in 2011 and thought we were getting out of it and then we didn’t because they changed the format. We made the final in 2012 and lost to Clare. We finished top of the table in 2013 and didn’t go up because we lost the final to Dublin.

“Then they changed it again and did away with the final altogether, which we would have been in both last year and this year.

“It’s frustrating as hell but that’s the way it goes. Division 1B is actually getting a lot better season by season anyway. The teams around us are improving a lot. As it stands anyway, with Waterford doing what they did to Wexford, they went up on merit. They’re actually an interesting team coming and I’d say we’re kind of glad they’re over on the far side of the draw in Munster. I wouldn’t care to be facing them too quickly again.”

Summer silverware

As it happens, the line of thinking that held Division 1B as a wasteland for serious teams has been discredited these past few seasons.

Cork, Dublin and Limerick themselves have picked up summer silverware off the back of a spring below stairs over the past couple of seasons and it wouldn’t blow anyone’s mind to see it repeated this time around.

Waterford have jumped up into Division 1A by winning all their matches apart from the one they drew against Limerick.

TJ Ryan’s side needed an equally spotless record to match them but stumbled against Offaly in a game where Shane Dowling was sent off after just three minutes. For Hickey, it’s a matter of gritting the teeth and getting on. It won’t be what he remembers 2015 for when they come to write the books.

“League and championship are so different. Cork and Clare came out of this division and look where they ended up. This might sound hopeful but in a lot of ways it might even be an advantage to be playing in Division 1B. The pressure is ratcheted up from the word go in 1A and it becomes all-encompassing just to maintain your status.

“For us, there was pressure on to try and get promoted but when you finish the league it’s easy to leave it behind you. I’m not sure that’s the same if you’re after being relegated.

“But once the league is over, the competition structure just changes your mindset straight away for championship anyway.

“You know the teams that you’re going to be playing, you know your opposition inside-out. Now, there’s no replacement for games of high standard and you never know if you’re sharp and you’re to the pace of the championship until you’re actually there in the middle of it.

“And maybe, you know, maybe Tipperary took us a bit lightly over the past two years because that’s where we came from. Maybe that was a factor, I don’t know.”

Two months

With the guts of two months still to turn before they face Clare in their Munster Championship opener, a nice run through the league knockout stages would do Limerick no harm.

Beat Dublin tonight and they’ll have the winners of Cork v Wexford next up. Getting there will require a victory in Croke Park, the recent difficulties of Limerick teams in the venue having been the subject of some recent rumblings down home.

“Yeah, this kind of narrative has started to emerge over the past while in Limerick and I don’t want to get too caught up in it,” Hickey says. “

“I’d probably rail against it anyway whether it was there or not! But I’ve only played in Croke Park three times in the last few years in competitive fixtures and I’ve won one of them. That was against Dublin in the league in prime time under lights in 2013.

Good enough

“The other two were All-Ireland semi-finals against the teams that went on to be champions. Okay, we didn’t turn up against Clare but that had nothing to do with Croke Park.

“And I think it’s fair to say we did turn up against Kilkenny and we just weren’t good enough. But we left with our heads held high.

“I heard people in Limerick start into this after Kilmallock got beaten but they played an excellent team and were very disappointed with how they played themselves. I don’t think Croke Park a factor at all. I don’t think we’re as helpless as all that. It’s a matter of whether the team we’re playing against are better than us on the day, that’s all.”