After some dark days and some wrong turns over the last few years there is now cautious optimism in Limerick, writes KEITH DUGGAN

FEW TEAMS in any sport have been asked to look in the mirror as often as the hurlers of Limerick. Tomorrow’s All-Ireland quarter-final against Kilkenny offers the latest opportunity for self-examination. The Treaty men have been maligned, pitied and castigated during an eventful decade that has brought about an All-Ireland final appearance but no silverware.

It is easy to trace Limerick’s talent for unexpected drama and new adventures in heartbreak back to those traumatic last five minutes of the 1994 All-Ireland final against Offaly. Allowing for the laconic chutzpah of the Offaly men, the knowledge it should have been Limerick’s All-Ireland title still haunts several generations of hurlers and that late collapse has magnified subsequent disappointments.

The soaring expectations created by the under-21 teams who reeled in three consecutive All-Ireland titles were never fulfilled and the revolving door for the series of managers who passed through the dressingroom enhanced the sense of chaos and panic. The stalemate between the players and management during Justin McCarthy’s fraught reign was simply saddening to behold and created divisions that could easily have turned rancorous. It would have been said that Limerick hurling had slipped back by a decade . . . if it had somewhere to slip from.

That is why the Treaty fans who head along to this novel All-Ireland quarter-final will do so in a strange frame of mind. Yes, they are outsiders and in their heart of hearts accept their All-Ireland championship season will probably end in Thurles. But the panel is settled and working ferociously for John Allen, who has managed to turn a tumultuous opening few months around.

Not so long ago, there would have been a fear of a merciless drubbing at the hands of Kilkenny. And that might yet happen: if Kilkenny hit that mood of greedy brilliance, goals and points come rushing like coins from a one-armed bandit. But still: there is growing belief in this Limerick team. That has been hard earned.

“It is not my heart ruling my head but I genuinely think Limerick will put it up to Kilkenny,” says Richie Bennis.

“The one reservation is watching Kerry and Tyrone in the football, it is set up in a similar way – Kerry being written off and came out guns blazing. So if Kilkenny come out like the Kilkenny of old and we have a good game, they will beat us. But if they have a bit off an off day and we hit form, I give us a chance.”

Bennis was manager when Limerick confounded the public by beating Waterford, to qualify for that All-Ireland final five years ago. It is memorable chiefly for Kilkenny’s thunderous opening 10-minute spell.

“After the first nine minutes of that match, we outscored Kilkenny by four points,” Bennis points out.

In retrospect, that final marked the beginning of a period when all other counties began to despair of ever beating the Cats in a championship game.

But Bennis believes the internal pressure on the Limerick players probably also contributed to their downfall that afternoon.

“There were lots of little things. The occasion probably got to them. We tried to play it all down and keep everything very relaxed but even so the players must have been suffering. Then they got a fantastic reception. I have been going to Croke Park since 1960, hurling and football finals. I have heard the Down roar and the Clare roar and I never heard a roar like it. RTÉ people said it to me afterwards too. Then Kilkenny . . . they are never happy with getting one goal – they want another one on top of it and they are lethal in that way. So we were just unsettled.”

In a column he wrote for this newspaper on the weekend of that All-Ireland, John Allen identified the fact Limerick had learned to “control their passion” on the field as the key to their revival: in their startling All-Ireland semi-final win over Waterford, they had channelled their emotions into purposeful hurling. If they could replicate that against Kilkenny, he gave them a fighting chance.

Five years on and just three players remain: of the team that started in Limerick’s last game against Clare, only Brian Geary started the All-Ireland final five years ago, although the defender drops to the bench for tomorrow’s game. By any standards, it is a stunning changing of the guard and remains a source of strong debate within the county.

“I would probably have a few fellas on the panel who aren’t there now,” Bennis says. “But Justin McCarthy came in and made a complete clearance so it was inevitable that who ever came in after that would go with a new set up.”

The appointment of Donal O’Grady – brisk, efficient and a wizard at imparting stick craft — was the perfect cure to the calamitous period which preceded it. Word of the innovation and sharpness of O’Grady’s sessions soon leaked out and he introduced practical Corkonian ambition to a squad who were deeply uncertain of where they stood in the bigger scheme of things. His attitude to the extremely unlucky 3-15 to 3-14 defeat to Waterford in the Munster championship was instructive. Limerick were beaten by an outrageous 71st-minute goal from John Mullane: yet again, they saw a game thieved from under their noses.

But O’Grady used that moment to illustrate one of the harder truths of the game: Waterford had taken their chance. “The ball came to the wrong man in the wrong place,” he said.

“Mullane . . . I would describe him as a kind of assassin. He just pounces and we can have no cribs.”

And that became the mantra. They got on with it. By the time Limerick had lost narrowly to Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final, O’Grady could observe: “The more you win, the greedier you get.”

The disappointment of his decision to step down was tempered by the arrival of Allen, his lieutenant and eventual successor during Cork’s All-Ireland winning years of 2004 and 2005. From the outset, Allen made it clear that matching the intensity with which Kilkenny and Tipperary play their games would be crucial to any success Limerick might have.

“That was the first time when there was a huge ferocity about the game in recent times,” he said last autumn of the 2006 All-Ireland final when Kilkenny stopped his Cork team in their three-in-a-row bid. “And we saw in the past three finals, particularly in 2009 and 2010, a ferocious intensity that’s now common at the very top. We have to match that.”

He made his presence felt from the beginning, cutting nine of the previous season’s squad, including marquee names like Stephen Lucey and Damien Reale. They spent the league overshadowed by Clare in performance but the fright they gave Tipperary in the Munster semi-final, when they reeled off six points on the trot after half-time was the most promising sign. The qualifying match against Clare followed; the game on which Limerick’s season spun.

“You needed to beat Clare or else we hadn’t made any progress in the last number of years,” Bennis acknowledges. “To analyse it properly, we had beat no big team outside of Clare and hadn’t met them because we were in Division Two so this will be a test of how far we have advanced and what direction we have taken.”

In the meantime, backstage efforts to improve the overall production have begun. The lessons of those under-21 successes have not been entirely wasted. It began to dawn on people the rich period was due to the happenstance arrival of batches of good players rather than the county’s under-age structures. Attempts to redress that have begun.

In addition, there is recognition that those under-21 teams were just that: exceptionally strong teams coached by Dave Keane rather than sides filled with players for whom glittering senior careers beckoned.

“My theory on winning three under-21s in a row: in my opinion, at the age of 20, you are either on the senior panel or you are not. I think minor is a more important barometer of fellas coming through. We have a better brand of hurler now than we had during that period,” says Bennis.

They will have a better understanding of where they stand by tomorrow. Kilkenny have retreated to the glades since their shocking exit from the Leinster championship. The quietness emanating from the Marble City has been ominous.

In Limerick, they are caught between wondering if the vulnerability shown against Galway could be identified again and expecting the vengeful, irrepressible backlash. If there is any comparison to be made between this match and the September meeting of five years ago, it could be in that opening period. The general expectation is that Kilkenny will turn the game into a smouldering wreck from the beginning.

The big question is how stout the Limerick resistance will be. But they have reached the point where they can go into a big game against Kilkenny in an optimistic frame of mind. It is a beginning.

“If John Allen could have foreseen this, he would have been happy,” Bennis says. “Expectations are high among the public again, which is a good thing. For the last four or five years, there were no expectations whatsoever.”