A Limerick that is far from cheerful

It would be fair to say that not even Pollyanna could have held out much hope for the truce negotiated between Limerick manager Eamonn Cregan and his selectors last Easter. At the end of a Byzantine week the county board - having allowed Cregan's selectors undermine him and, in the words of one obeserver, "blackguarded him into resigning" - backed down in the face of player discontent and allowed the management to continue as if nothing had happened.

Tensions had been rife last year but were masked by the success of the team and victories over Cork and Waterford. This time around there has been no such protection. No one can be sure the extent of the precise effect on the players of their management's persistent feuding but the Guinness Munster semi-final against Tipperary was an uncharacteristically anaemic performance, the county's worst in at least five years.

The past week has been marked by open expressions of discontent from players in last Sunday's papers and a sense that only the recent less-than-ideal atmosphere in Cork's camp is keeping this afternoon's All-Ireland qualifier in the balance.

Cregan has tried to make it work, but shorn of the powers and functions normally afforded intercounty managers, this hasn't been possible. If the basic functions of management are to pick the right team and create the right environment for match preparation, Limerick's current structures militate against both.

"It hasn't worked at all," says former manager Tom Ryan whom Cregan succeeded. "Eamonn Cregan has been treated dismally by his selectors and the county board."

"The environment is the important thing," according to one player. "You can pick the right team in the wrong environment and it still mightn't work out for you. But at the moment the selectors totally disagree. Eamonn Cregan can pick a team and they'll vote through five or six different selections. Eamonn takes the training and has been picking the A and B teams for practice. We get into the swing of playing that way and then this week the team for Saturday is announced and there's five or six changes to what the A team was in training. It's crazy."

The peace deal of last March presumed a great deal on everyone's desire to get on with the business in hand. Selector Mossie Carroll was appointed assistant coach - despite his short-lived appointment as Cregan's successor having provoked a player revolt. All the selectors, Carroll, Willie Fitzmaurice, Joe Grimes and Michael Fitzgerald, remained despite an assumption on the part of many that their position was now untenable and they would resign.

Cregan returned only at the request of the players. One insider points out that he had no alternative to going along with the same selectors. "He would have had to go to a county executive meeting and ask them to dismiss the other selectors and give him his own. That would have needed a two-thirds majority - with every football club (irked by Cregan's disapproval of dual players) ready to vote against him."

Limerick didn't have a championship match before the Munster semi-final. After last year's exploits against Tipperary the expectation was that they would again be competitive even if the likelihood of their defeating the All-Ireland champions wasn't rated highly. Instead the match was a disaster.

There were no warning signs. They arrived in Páirc Uí Chaoimh 35 minutes before the match - a trick learned from Tipperary and intended to minimise the amount of time spent in the cramped Cork dressing-rooms. The mood was upbeat but on the pitch the performance was flat as a pancake. "We were beaten in 13 of the 15 positions," was the verdict of one player. "It was bad day at the office. It's easy to blame what has been happening for the past eight or nine weeks but since the Tipperary game any management would have struggled to pick things up. That's what's happening."

If there is hope in the short term, it is that the rancour or at least its most debilitating effects have bottomed out and that the team can rekindle the sense of ferocious purpose that marks their best displays. In a way things can't get much worse. Interest in the match is reported to be low in both counties. A fixture that should attract a lot of hurling attention on Munster final weekend had during the week sold only three tickets in Clare, where there would be both knowledge of and interest in Limerick.

"There's no real pressure on Limerick," according to Tom Ryan. "No-one gives them a chance. In those circumstances it's happened before. We went down for a day out and ended up winning. The total ridicule and lack of interest suits Limerick."

But ultimately the current fiasco suits neither Limerick hurling nor its long-suffering manager and players.

All-Ireland SH Qualifier

Cork v Limerick

Today, Thurles, 6.15 p.m.