Tom Humphries on how tomorrow's match between Limerick and Tipperary is brightened by two old maestros, Babs Keating and Joe McKenna

Strange times in the two kingdoms of hurling. In Leinster if Kilkenny play to the standard they reach at a good training session the provincial title is unloseable. Offaly are in transition, Dublin are a work in progress. Wexford have marked the 10th anniversary of Liam Griffin's All-Ireland win with a minor championship loss to Carlow. Nuff said.

By comparison Munster teems with talent. It is the Broadway of the game replete with swell managers who like to walk around with a few cigars sticking out of their breast pockets. Some can justify the stogies, others can't.

The game is brightened somewhat by the presence of tomorrow's managers. Limerick's Joe McKenna and Tipperary's Babs Keating, two big guys from the old days, bring a certain swagger to their business.

Babs is gabby as ever and his return to the circus has been a gift for those paid to fill the back pages.

McKenna is straightforward and the belief system he carries can be seen on the field. Limerick have knuckled under like men on parole. They play the game with a certain muscularity leavened by moments of flair. McKenna, who agreed to mind the house for only a short while when he took over, has cleaned and restructured the building.

In Thurles tomorrow Babs and Big Joe will eye each other. They both have reputations which would serve them well sitting at a table for some Texas hold 'em.

Is Babs being very clever or playing a bluff to conceal a worryingly widespread belief that he is bringing a donkey to the derby?

McKenna sits across the table with an injury-free squad playing the role of a man who has just been given a decent hand.

Hopefully it will stay fine for them but whether or not it rains there'll be memories flashing about of a day when the counties met 35 years ago. On a bad, bad day in Killarney in 1971 Ger Power's father, Jackie, saw his Limerick side have their eye wiped by a last-minute Tipperary point.

The parallels are interesting. Tomorrow Limerick go into battle looking for signs of maturity from the young men who won them three national under-21 titles in a row from the turn of the millennium onward and have delivered nothing since.

Back then expectations were fed by schools success, notably that of Sexton Street, who won four Harty Cups in a row at the end of the 1960s and went on to All-Ireland titles twice in that period.

Tipperary were winding down the team which had won the back-to-back All-Irelands of 1964 and 1965 and with five fallow seasons in between people were getting edgy and pessimistic. Limerick travelled to Killarney as favourites. They were to learn that short odds are the greatest enemies of promise.

Limerick played a gorgeous brand of hurling back then, whipping the ball around low and fast, and in '71 they tormented the Tipperary defence early on, lashing in the daisycutters for the Cregan brothers, Mick and Eamonn, and their confederate Donal Flynn to pull on. They got two goals in the first 10 minutes and settled in to enjoy their lead. The width of two goals separated the sides at half-time.

Babs Keating plays a central role in all memories of the second half that day. He scored the goal which began Tipperary's revival and then was a central figure in the "Incident of the Dry Sliotar".

In short, Tipp won a 21-yard free. Babs had a cut over an eye and ran in to Donie Nealon, Tipperary's coach that day, who was standing behind the Limerick goal. Babs borrowed a towel to wipe his eye and, as the sodden match sliotar had vanished into the crowd, asked Nealon had he a ball.

Nealon withdrew a dry sliotar from his pocket and handed it to Babs. A second or two later the match sliotar was fired back from the terrace. Donie caught it and shoved it in his pocket. All too spontaneous for conspiracy, but on a day of biblical rain and flooding a dry sliotar fired from 21 yards was a different prospect from a ball heavy and soft with rain. Babs rammed it to the net.

Not long afterwards he finished breaking Limerick's resolve when he fired his third goal of the half.

Limerick got up off the canvas somehow and the match was lost only when a Limerick goal was disallowed because the referee had blown for a Limerick free.

The afternoon ended in tumult: those scenes the back-door system has deprived us of; men dancing in blue and gold as their neighbours from Limerick wept in despair.

Limerick could scarcely believe what had befallen them. Tipperary took the confidence the game gave them and parlayed it into a last All-Ireland before famine and decay set in.

Two years later the teams met again in the Munster final. It would be neat and tidy to be able to report that by then Limerick had discovered the many virtues of Joe McKenna and that it was he who turned the tide. Not so. Sadly.

Big Joe had moved to Limerick from his native Offaly that year having hurled for a couple of summers with the Faithful. Limerick weren't entirely bowled over by what they got. McKenna played against Clare in the provincial semi-final but was dropped for the Munster final. For the semi-final with (mighty) London, McKenna was sick and didn't attend. It was only the stroke of switching Eamonn Cregan to centre back for the final against Kilkenny which brought McKenna into the full-forward line in his stead.

Tomorrow marks the start of the fifth season since Nicky English's side won it all for Tipperary. It's hard to remember Tipperary people greeting summer from a greater trough of despond. A win tomorrow could do for Babs's children what that win in 1971 did for his peers. For all the wailing and weeping about the lack of players in the county, Tipperary are never a million miles off success so long as they believe.

Limerick have the players. They'd believed in themselves a little too readily for the past few seasons. They have absorbed the chastening blows by now that their predecessors took. We'll know tomorrow how much they have learned.

It's May and there's a safety net but this is Munster and tomorrow has longer-term ramifications than you'd think. The show will open to a modest crowd, but this is Broadway. The future could be just like the past.