HERE I was on the Ennis Road in Limerick last Sunday, moving towards the Gaelic Grounds. I feel I didn't look too conspicuous notebook hidden, stopwatch in pocket, pens bandaged to the small of my back. No reason why I should stick out, you think. Wrong.

Last November, in a pub in Nenagh, a conversation raged about the local team's less than successful attempt on the Munster club final. Somewhere on the premises, my origins were delicately inquired after by a local talking to some of my friends from the town. Dublin he was told. Obviously impressed, he replied, "Ah, what would he know about hurling?"

So for the weekend's big hurling match, I came prepared. Underneath my foil wrapped sandwiches was concealed a hurling phrase book. Here are some of the things I was ready to say to Limerick and Clare people:

"The striking will be crisp today", players "will hurl sweetly off either side", some may even occasionally "shorten the grip". I was in a position to be able to recall - with precautionary vagueness - that it was on a day like this that Ring and Mick Mackey hurled the ball overhead between each other to such effect that all afternoon the sliotar never touched the ground.

Anyway, I slipped through the throngs into the ground and, in the event, the match certainly merited a couple of footnotes in any resume of great hurling occasions and will probably be added to the appendix of the next edition of my phrase book.

Limerick's victory was probably overshadowed by Clare's loss of their Munster and All Ireland crowns, but in fairness to the winners, they've been plugging away for over two years; a deeply rooted belief in themselves transcending the bitter disappointments they have suffered.

Clare proved themselves splendid champions in the way they handled both defeat and victory. Courtesy, intelligence and dignified good humour were the hallmarks of the team's attitude to the increasing demands made on them by success.

At last September's All Ireland lunch, Jimmy Barry Murphy told his victorious Cork minors that should they ever be fortunate enough to win a senior title, they could do no better than to handle themselves as Clare were doing.

More than this, Clare's success may mark - or coincide with - a turning point in hurling's fortunes, because for all the troubles that beset the game, there are five sound reasons for arguing that its future looks brighter than football's.

One: Standards. For all that most purists would consider the contemporary scene to be not particularly stunning, hurling at least continues to elevate skill over stamina. The point about Crusheen - shorthand for Clare's savage training regime - is not that it was necessary for physical fitness but that it was an exercise in subjugating the will.

Players felt good about themselves and demonstrated an ability to go through quite considerable pain as part of the team preparation. It was an index of character. In hurling, fitness is a means to an end; in football, it is frequently an end in itself.

It's not that there's an absence of good players in football, but there is a shortage of good teams and, consequently, of good matches. The game is increasingly dominated by power play to the extent that good matches - where skill and physical prowess have equal billing - are becoming hard to find. Within the current calendar year, the only match I can think of is the Sigerson Cup semifinal between UCC and UCD.

Two: Openness. The list of teams that can reasonably be regarded as All Ireland contenders is considerably more extensive. Only a couple of years ago, football was on the verge of a brave new world, with breakthroughs from Donegal and Derry, whereas hurling looked stuck with the big three: Cork, Tipp and Kilkenny.

Times have changed. Football's revolution never spread. The breaking of the Munster Leinster duopoly led only to the monopoly of Ulster teams, just about broken last year, while Connacht remained uninspired by the northern example. This year, hardly anyone thinks the All Ireland is going anywhere other than Dublin or Derry. Tyrone will shake up Derry more than is currently appreciated, hut they are, after all, the defending Ulster champions.

An exciting championship needs a good few contenders, and hurling started with at least six.

Three: Discipline and Refereeing. Football is riddled with regulatory ambiguities. Who can say for certain whether identical challenges of a certain type will be penalised or permitted from one week to the next?

This combines with increased levels of physical aggression to produce foul ridden encounters of virtually no interest to anyone outside the competing counties. Derry and Armagh played an Ulster championship match, a fortnight ago, which included 81 fouls: in other words, one every 52 seconds.

On Sunday, in a match where physical intensity was not alone on the cards but signposted weeks in advance, referee Willie Barrett didn't award his first free until the fifth minute.

Football frequently generates refereeing controversies, even in the biggest matches. This can't credibly be ascribed to enormously divergent standards between the quality of referees in either code. The rules of football are hard to enforce, and teams increasingly exploit the grey areas.

Four: Reform. Since Kilkenny's Nicky Brennan issued his jeremiad on the state of hurling at the 1994 Congress, hurling has been the subject of intense debate and the consideration of high powered committees, producing imaginative proposals. The state and future of the game is being discussed.

Already, reforms in the championship have led to experimentation with the provision of more matches and a move towards a calendar year in the League.

Football is in virtually as much need as hurling of a rationalised inter county season, but the matter isn't even being debated.

Finally: Sponsorship. Travelling from Dublin to, and around, the southwest at the weekend, anyone would be struck by the strength and profusion of Guinness's billboard campaign for the hurling championship.

Anyone watching the Euro 96 soccer matches (not me, honest, I just heard) will notice at halftime the regularity of Guinness's striking television advertising. Hurling is being promoted as an attractive and exciting sports commodity.

Conversely, the Bank of Ireland have made no effort to mount a similar campaign on behalf of the football championship. Unlike Guinness, the bank see their sponsorship as an end in itself, rather than the means towards one.

The bank say they don't regard the sponsorship primarily as a consumer marketing tool, but the net effect is that football is losing while hurling gains spectacularly.

Soon I may have to dump my phrase book, do a Linguaphone course in hurling and go live in Munster.