SPRING on Thomas Street. Drinkers seeking the sun and dogs hunting the shade. At the top of the dusty hill the whitewashed outer waits of Electrical Rewinds Ltd have a strange bleached Mediterranean aspect to them. Tom Ryan has worked here since he left school. No illusions. A man for the hard road.

You come here, to Tom Ryan, looking for answers. His Limerick team have the most perplexing past in hurling. The numbing defeats which have put a stop to their three most recent championship gallops have wiped away the memory of the handful of gloriously heroic performances they have offered up. Defeat has always come as a kick in the guts. Everybody would forgive Limerick if they rolled over and quietly died.

Yet it's springtime and Limerick are on a roll again with two wins and a draw from three big league games and you come to Tom Ryan looking for answers and explanations. How come Limerick are still in the land of the living?

In the cool, shaded space of his office Tom Ryan tells you blankly that there are no answers. "I don't believe in looking back," he says simply, "just move forward."

They tell you he is a strange man. He sits there, tough, square shouldered and tight lipped, like his team and like his city. Strange man right enough.

"Too much talk isn't a good thing," he says, "I just don't believe in it."

It's not an era for men like Tom Ryan who don't believe in talk. In the time of his team's greatest traumas, hurling has warmed its hands on the heat from three most charismatic and media friendly teams, Offaly, Clare and Wexford.

Three All Ireland champions whose managers have made for great and moving stories. Eamonn Cregan, Ger Loughnane and Liam Griffin. Messiahs. While hurling enjoys a charisma surplus Tom Ryan and Limerick have never been given the due credit for pushing the envelope of their own potential.

After all, mining underage talent in Limerick is about as promising an enterprise as digging for opals in Patrickswell. Tom Ryan points out that Galway teem with such an abundance of young talent they could field two sides. Yet though talent is rationed, he brings his own team back each year refreshed by new young faces and hurling with high hopes. Where's the credit that's due?

If Ryan has feelings about it, he mostly keeps it all in. He posts no advertisements for himself. Stoic endurance is his choice of weapon.

Like old man river, he don't say nothing but he must know something because he just keeps on rolling along.

Ask him who his managerial influences are and he points out quietly that there is "no school for management." Those he admires, though, are of a type.

"Mick O'Dwyer and Sean Boylan for the way they kept on producing teams, and fellas like John Meyler in Kerry and Jim Nelson when he was in Antrim. The people who stick at it through thick and thin. It's too easy to be a manager for a little while and then say well I have to go now'."

He keeps on, keeping on. After Offaly blew past his paralysed team in 1994, he kept on. After they went limp against Clare in 1995, he kept on. Even after the county board tossed 20 insulting questions on his table last autumn, he kept on. Even after his friend Dave Mahedy packed it in and walked away, Tom Ryan kept on. Even while people around Limerick grumbled and winced as Wexford and Liam Griffin rode an open top bus through the consciousness of the mass media, Tom Ryan kept on. Through a series of failings out and rows and pressures he has persevered.

"I don't look back. It never crossed my mind to pack it in last year. I took at hurling and the team as a great challenge. If fellas were to resign every time a final was lost, well... I don't know."

So that was it. The team came home, had a fine night in Limerick on the Monday after the All Ireland and went their separate ways. Tom Ryan dealt with a peevish county board and the players didn't get together again as a group until January, when they went to Orlando to see Mickey Mouse.

THE PLAYERS you talk to say that Tom Ryan is a strange man, who keeps his distance and keeps his counsel. Not much else they can say. Yet from a remove which precludes the possibility of personal friendships, he has wrung performances of such knee trembling intensity out of them that they are not sure how they can account for it.

On those Munster hurling days in half lit, steamy dressing rooms. Tom Ryan's tight lip and natural a reserve generally disappear. He's often hoarse and watery eyed by the time the winning quotes are being given out. Then he reassemble himself, knots his tie and keeps on being Tom Ryan.

Training sessions are our talks," he says "We don't actually have sessions or meetings. The only meeting the team had since the All Ireland, say, was in Waterford the night before the Wexford (league) match. They had a session with Brian Ryan (the team's trainer) in the hotel the night before the game. They had a look at a video of the Clare (league) game. I wasn't at it. I left them to it. I feel that people need space. They had a discussion and they had the entitlement to that chance for freedom of expression without me being there.

"To be honest I believe that too much talk isn't great. I believe that it is very easy to sit down and say things. We talk for half an hour in detail at the first training session after every match and then we do it on the field. I think everyone knows what is expected."

After the All Ireland they enjoyed the long scar healing break which the change to hurling's calendar afforded them, went to Orlando in January (the county board's sizeable contribution to that trip being seen as an act of contrition) and settled back into what is expected of them. Three league games and five challenges since the beginning of February and the pot is beginning to boil.

Ryan has been busy preparing this year's side order of new faces. Four of them to be precise, each at various stages of integration with the team. David Hennessy of Na Piarsaigh. James and Ollie Moran of Ahane and Jack Foley, a brother of last year's star turn, Mark, have all taken steps forward and steps back this spring.

Perhaps only one or two of them will become championship starters this summer but that's fine. Mark Foley, Brian Tobin and Barry Foley are still maturing from last year's crop. Shane O'Neill's case is more perplexing and disappointing but Tom Ryan won't be accused of dropping any player without giving them a fair chance. O'Neill will play himself in or play himself out.

This process of renewal and replenishment, fascinates Ryan. He spent the winter months scouring the world of club hurling for potential players. Finding them is not even half the job though. Not many hurlers in Limerick come with either a pedigree or a warranty. Ryan then begins a long series of empirical tests.

"Last summer we went to Cork with four new faces. None of them went in there as greenhorns. They came through a long series of tests and an intense schedule before they played at all."

He remembers Mark Foley, on the field for the first time against Tipperary last summer and a section of the Limerick crowd found it necessary to whistle and boo as the young lad tripped over his legs a couple of times. Tom Ryan knew by then though that he had a good one. The democracy of the rabble wasn't going to prevail. Uno duce. Una voce.

He describes the Limerick training field as a battle ground, "not a happy place." He sees lots of players with basic hurling skills but he looks for something else before he permits them to graduate.

"Courage is the number one thing. County hurling is about that. Courage. Dedication. Being prepared to take punishment on the pitch and the training ground. To take discipline. I rigorously impose, discipline."

Coming through Munster last summer in a blaze of memorable matches, Limerick left a series of flashier, more fancied teams in their wake. They aren't without skill or inspiration themselves but courage, dedication and discipline are the three words which best convey the character of Tom Ryan s team. You ask how the team keep rolling on. Tom Ryan built perseverance into the component parts.

He laughs long and loud when it is reported to him that a couple of players have mentioned that they would be shy about taking a few drinks on a Friday night because Ryan would have heard about it by Sunday.

"Sunday," he says, "I'd hear it on Friday. It's good though that they know I'd hear. Good too, that they know there's only one way that would end up.

He pays assiduous attention to the details of players' weights and diets and has been known to remorselessly drop players who literally aren't shaping up. He operates in a black and white world but still he finds a surprising number of characters whom he can mould into the unique contours of his hurling team. Some projects show quick progress. Others are long term.

"Last year I arranged and played three inter county challenge games to watch one single player. He didn't make it. Limerick to Ennis, to Clonmel. Three matches, three movements, just to see one player play three times. He didn't make the grade last year but he is back this year and performing at a high level. That's Dave Hennessy."

Hennessy is indeed fitting in well this spring as a corner forward on a team not renowned for its cutting edge. Ryan is impressed and pleased but not wholly convinced just yet.

"He's coming on nicely but you never know. Take Brian Tobin, he is back in the team for Sunday and we'll see how he fares. He's a good player, strong and skilful, but getting him to do what we want him to do isn't easy. We play to a style. It is important that everyone plays the game the way we want them to play it. That is the cornerstone of everything. Brian still has to fit into that.

"It's the same with David, Hennessy. He has done well but we'll see a bit more before we put our imprimatur on him. Within the programme he is allotted he is certainly going the right way. Other players are harder to put in that direction. Pat Heffernan is back and he is going through a programme of introduction.

All those players, by the time you see them on the field for Limerick, will have shown the courage, the dedication and the discipline to us. Most people don't see that. Most of the people who criticise players or selectors loudest are speaking from ignorance."

Limerick are moving well in the early stages of the league and critics ignorant or otherwise have been paying attention. The impression of, a freshened and hungry team is reinforced by news from the training ground where all is well. The much admired Mahedy has been replaced by Brian Ryan, an army man from the South Liberties club, who greeted the team after their Florida exertions with a fully printed out programme leading to summer fitness. As Limerick set about their work three nights a week, Tom Ryan, who felt that Mahedy was just about irreplaceable, has been impressed.

"Dave had a huge impact and influence on me," says Ryan. "His professionalism and his brain for management. This year, though, Brian has come in to a demanding job and done it his way and done it brilliantly and so professionally. We are as well prepared, maybe better prepared then ever. There is that freshness too, through hearing a new voice."

Another Sunday looms then and not far behind it summer and the white heat of the championship. For the moment Tom Ryan just looks forward to entertaining Tipperary tomorrow with an enthusiast's passion.

"We've had Clare, Kilkenny and Wexford. Now Tipp. It doesn't get much better than that. The players are excited about the league this year and that is reflected. When you are playing counties like that in good weather sure it's no wonder the hurling is good and the crowds are big."

For the players, another intense season under Ryan's unblinking gaze lies ahead. This is their fourth season together. Appetites are sharp, legs are lead free, distances still remain. Ryan is the first to concede the formal nature of relationships.

I have always kept the distance from the players," says Tom Ryan. "If you get involved with players on a personal basis it isn't good for morale, they read different things into it. I have no favourites. I believe I have a good rapport though. There are good days and bad days but I treat them all the same. You have got to watch it and manage it, it has to be part of your make up. If a player has a problem there are channels through the captain or team secretary. They use those."

Then embarrassed at all the talk about himself, he devotes his final words to his players.

"It's not about me though," he says, "I just front and co ordinate. I have great people helping me. It's about the players. I'm 52 now. I've been at every level in hurling, played in fields with no gates, everywhere from bogs to Croke Park. Nobody has ever asked me should they get paid for hurling. I've just heard them ask when are we playing again.

"That's the type that we have playing for Limerick. After the game we had with Clare, which was a bruising game in which they had given their all, the players went down and met the school kids from Limerick and signed things for half an hour. After they beat Wexford in the league a few weeks ago if you had come into our dressing room you would have thought they'd lost. They were so drained. That's the sort of team they are. You want to know how they do it? They just want to know when are we playing again."

He shakes your hand. Outside, down the hill in O'Connell Street kids are wearing the leaf green jerseys of the county hurlers, who haven't won an All Ireland in close on quarter of a century. High hopes persist for some reason.

You come here to ask Tom Ryan why and he says there are no answers. The secret of Tom Ryan's team lies in the way it was put together. No flourished signature but the maker's mark all over it nonetheless.