Juror just wants to scale Tipp

Interview TJ RyanTJ Ryan emerged as Limerick hurling took flight. Eleven years and two lost finals later, he keeps coming back, writes Keith Duggan

In Limerick the hurling life is never simple. Two weeks before a boom-or-bust championship encounter against Tipperary is not the most ideal time to be summoned for jury duty. But TJ Ryan hardly batted an eyelid when he tore open the envelope.

Maybe the Lord above or some higher justice was just having a little joke. It is May, he is about to turn 31 years of age and he is hurtling toward his 11th summer of survival in maybe the most artful and unforgiving field game in the world. As usual, as has been the case around every birthday for the last decade, he is moving at 100 miles an hour, chasing dates, keeping appointments, training hard and thinking about the game. Turning up at court for an hour a day for a jury selection process that, it turned out, spared him in the end, was just another detail to be taken care of.

"The thing is, this is the side I still enjoy," he muses. Running around that field three times a week, meeting up with the lads, putting in the hours, all that is no problem. Once you get up to 30, it does get more difficult. The recovery time is slower. I suppose it is coming close to me thinking of giving it up, but I know I will miss the game. It is the shite that went on at the start of the year or over the last while in the newspapers that I didn't enjoy. And I suppose it made me wonder some nights if it is all worth it."

This was around six o'clock on a gorgeous evening in the city, with the first true sounds and smells of summer evident. TJ sat in a restaurant booth sipping water while outside on the porch young people sat in deck chairs, drinking iced cider and lazing in the last of the evening heat. From the car park, Ryan could puck a ball into Gaelic Park. The young people sipping drinks and trading gossip would have been children back when Ryan played in his first All-Ireland final.

There is still something thrilling and shocking about that 11-year-old comeback by Offaly. In praise of the brazen imagination that only the Faithful County could summon, it has become known as the five-minute final. But it wasn't. Not if you were a Limerick player lost in the midst of it. Helpless. It was a 65-minute final of graft and daring and skill. It was a queer turn on an almost perfect day that did not feel deserved. It was the kind of experience that smashes a team. Yet Limerick came back two years later, with Ciarán Carey's unforgettable sprint-and-score in the dying seconds against All-Ireland champions Clare the rocket fuel their summer needed.

But 1996 was not to be either. By 23, TJ Ryan had played and lost two All-Ireland finals and since that time the judgment on Limerick hurling, rightly or wrongly, has been of a county desperately trying to fight back through time, to recapture something narrowly lost in the most harrowing manner possible. And by the by, the staunch men of those bittersweet campaigns - Carroll, Kirby, Galligan, Carey - all slipped away while TJ kept coming back.

He has seen slender-shouldered contenders come and go, unable for the burden of expectation or disillusioned by what they found. He has felt the frustration of being part of a Limerick team - a veteran - that slowly slipped to the very edge of consequence, now no longer seen as real All-Ireland candidates and now being muscled out of the Munster scene.

Last summer, after getting beaten by Cork on a day the red shirts were blunt to the point of being vulnerable, he got annoyed by the sensation of another afternoon of Limerick defeatism. He reached boiling point on the field and was still steaming when he exited the dressing-room, criticising the referee, the game, the world. It was the frustration of a hurler who keenly felt the chances slipping by.

"Maybe it was," he nods.

"From Limerick's point of view, when you play a team like Cork, a top-end team, there is always going to be a day when they are there for the taking. And that was probably the first round of the championship last year. We had them on the rack and then let them in for a few soft scores. Now, they improved a ton from that day to the All-Ireland final. But you have to be able to take advantage of a team as you find them.

"The likes of Cork and Kilkenny hit 20 points on a regular basis, whereas if you look at Limerick over the past couple of years, we struggle ever to hit 10 or 12 points."

In fact, the perception over the last couple of years is that Limerick struggled to function at all. Dave Keane found his excellent underage record could not translate into senior success with Limerick. And in February, during the mud and ignominy of the league, Pad Joe Whelahan vacated the Limerick management position in genuinely sad circumstances, ending an alliance the rest of the hurling community regarded as a stormy and notorious marriage.

Whelahan was hurt but realistic to the fact that he could not continue in a place where he was not universally wanted. Losing a second manager so quickly and in such public circumstances did not reflect well on the players.

"Definitely. No doubt in the world, people will tell you the manager can't be wrong all the time, "Ryan says.

"But all I know is that I have been in this team for the last 10 or 12 years and never felt we were difficult to deal with. Things have not always gone our way and when we flopped, we did it majestically. And I suppose the expectation with Pad Joe was that he would revolutionise Limerick hurling in terms of coaching and maybe get us to play in a particular style that would suit us. And that didn't seem to be happening.

"The performances delivered early this year looked to be very poor. Now one thing I definitely would say is that he wasn't 100 per cent responsible for those. Players were accountable. I suppose, within, it just didn't seem to be happening and as a manager you have to take responsibility for that."

It was not a pleasant time. But although Whelahan's departure posed obvious questions, Ryan sometimes struggled to reconcile what he knew with what he heard on the radio and read in newspapers. It was as if the outside world felt Limerick hurling suffered from some kind of schizophrenia.

The old Limerick complaint of only ever getting attention for bad news rang true for the hurlers also. He heard stories of other counties having rows and tantrums and they came and went without so much as a public whisper. It made him wonder.

"Down here, someone sneezes and the next thing there is a flu epidemic. I think there are a few people that maybe do us or Limerick in general no favours because bad news seems to travel a lot faster out of Limerick than it does most places.

"I don't know why that is, maybe it has just festered over the years and people expect another Limerick bust-up - ah, here we go again. But don't tell me for one second there aren't moments in other squads. You can't keep 30 guys happy all the time. It isn't human nature."

And the worst of it is that the negativity and uncertainty eat away at teams. Having started out when Limerick suddenly took flight, Ryan is convinced that for almost all counties, temperament and balance are the most difficult things to preserve.

He often idly wonders what might have happened if Limerick had won in 1994, in 1996, had they beaten Cork last summer.

It was hard for Keane and Whelahan because they were managing a team caught in that cursed state of limbo of looking for and needing a break. Just a goal here or a narrow win or a lucky win, anything to kick-start a sequence.

A lot of seasons that begin with a scraped, unflattering win can suddenly take off.

"It is just that those breaks seem harder to come by when you are at rock bottom."

But he doesn't believe they are bargain-basement material, not deep down. While heavyweight names were being bandied about as the answer to all the woes of Limerick hurling, Ryan just craved some quietness.

The decision to move Joe McKenna into the managerial role gave Limerick a chance to resume their business without show. Tired of the melodrama and politics, the team concluded its league with flashes of promise. Conor Fitzgerald and Stephen Lucey, two of the dual players at the heart of the controversy during Whelahan's period, returned to the squad and the first team.

Kilkenny caught everybody's eye and Limerick steadily and quietly got on with the preparation for this engagement with Tipperary, a county with preoccupations of its own. Ryan was switched from defence to attack, a variation that doesn't perturb him at all at this stage in his career.

They played a challenge game against Waterford a couple of weeks ago and yielded a return of 2-18. It was not the most ferocious hour Ryan has known on a field but it was substantial. Suddenly life was not looking so bad. In JP McManus, Limerick have a resolute and respected benefactor, a man whose very name is suggestive of glittering promise. Ryan sometimes sees JP at race meetings and they talk Limerick sport and Limerick life.

"The thing is, there is no pressure. Anything we ask for is there. He is the nicest fella you could meet and if you look at JP McManus all through his life, everyone and everything he has been involved with has been a success.

"We have not been successful and no matter who your sponsor is won't make you hurl any better. But he is a huge follower of Limerick hurling and I suppose it is well documented what he has done for the county outside of hurling as well. He is a Limerick man to the core and to have him backing us means a lot. And it would be great if we could repay the faith."

And with that he skips across the car park to get ready for another Limerick training session. The jury may still be out but TJ Ryan has the walk and attitude of a free man.