Limerick's aspirations go by the board

On Gaelic Games: There's no real point in going through this season's suitcase again and holding up its threadbare contents to the light while shaking our heads in dismay. But it's worth bearing in mind the one underlying trend to all sporting competition: the need for competitors. The GAA hierarchy basically relies on its constituent county boards to provide it with competitors.

As the rain hammered down on Cusack Park in Ennis on Sunday it was possible to imagine we were watching a National League match or one of those January tournaments. Then you take that sort of stuff in your stride: "They must have been ripping it up on that holiday" or "Obviously he's been running the lard out of them this week."

But halfway through June, this was a vital championship qualifier, a chance for Clare or Limerick to avoid Cork or Kilkenny in the All-Ireland quarter-finals. That's not to disrespect Tipperary or Wexford going into the Munster and Leinster finals; the fact is that teams in the qualifiers want to avoid Cork and Kilkenny and don't expect them to enter the draw from the pot marked "provincial finalists".

The statistics indicate the extent of Limerick's meltdown: on consecutive weekends, second-division Westmeath have done better against Kilkenny and Waterford than Limerick managed against Clare; they didn't score from play until the 65th minute; only one point from play coming from the entire starting line-up. Enough.

Nor was it just a case of further losses from the front line. What happened to Limerick is depressing because this should have been one of the qualifiers' two box-office afternoons. Instead the rains came and Limerick went and the crowds stayed away. Even from Clare's point of view, what was learned that would benefit Anthony Daly's plans? Not as much as he'd have hoped to take from a victory over his principal Group B rivals.

It was also depressing because Limerick should be challenging for senior All-Irelands. Under-21 success brings no guarantees but the one statistical certainty until now has been that three successive All-Irelands at the grade have always been followed by a senior title.

Cork's four-in-a-row between 1968 and 1971 supplied six members of the 1970 senior winners and was followed by the three-in-a-row in 1976-'78. Although Tipperary's three titles, 1979 to 1981, produced comparatively few players for the 1989 MacCarthy Cup win, there was a definite connection.

By Tipp's standards it could be argued it's early days yet, but Limerick have had four years since that third under-21 All-Ireland and, far from progressing to senior titles, have yet to win even a single championship match. The only senior victories have come in qualifiers against Kerry, Laois and Antrim.

There is a question mark over the value of underage success. An experienced intercounty mentor once said that in his view the ideal senior was someone who had lost an All-Ireland minor final - enough achievement to confirm potential but insufficient to sate the appetite.

The inability of Offaly's three minor-winning teams in the four years from 1986 to 1989 to add under-21 titles has been widely credited with renewing their ambition to do well at senior.

But the fact remains that with a talented cohort at their disposal Limerick were expected to do much better.

Everything has been tried: Eamonn Cregan's classical approach emphasising skills and quick movement; Dave Keane the successful under-21 manager; Pad Joe Whelahan, an outside coach; and Joe McKenna, an iconic figure from the past.

Certainly there have been problems with the emerging players, some of whose boisterous social habits as underage players weren't sufficiently curbed for the serious business of senior intercounty hurling. But the problems of unruly and even troubled young men are part of the landscape for intercounty managers, so why has there been such devastating failure? It's hard to disagree with the comments of former manager Tom Ryan on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland yesterday.

"This is the usual scenario in Limerick," he said. "The managers go and the people who appointed the managers are left in position. We need a total review of our standing, our position and our management of our games in Limerick.

"I've been involved deeply in hurling in Limerick all my life and am still deeply involved in the club scene. I can see the standards are dropping. Management has collapsed in Limerick, the county board are responsible for that."

Ryan had five years as manager and was let go after delivering two Munster titles and a National League. He believed he should have been given more time to rebuild a new team, but the county board disagreed.

He can be caricatured as some sort of a Queen Margaret - Henry VI's widow who hung around court periodically issuing volcanic curses on all and sundry whom she blamed for her loss - but he is not alone in his views.

Cregan succeeded him as manager and did redevelop the county's challenge only to be compromised by the county board over his tough stance on dual players.

At the end of a Byzantine episode in 2002 the county board - having allowed Cregan's selectors undermine him and, in the words of one observer, "blackguarded him into resigning" - backed down in the face of player discontent and allowed the management to continue as if nothing had happened.

A couple of years after he had stepped down, Cregan had this to say: "The present executive will never win an All-Ireland. The players and management have to ignore them, go out and do it for themselves. Let the biro jockeys look after themselves. They don't know what's involved."

Yet for all the mistakes the individuals charged with managing were doing their best. That is no longer enough. The demands of preparing for intercounty championship seasons are so arduous that players don't willingly do it unless they trust management to make the best of their efforts. It's up to county boards to make the right appointments.

For McKenna it has been extraordinarily chastening.

One commentator ruefully described his own county's habit of grinding their heroes into the dust - a reference to involving great former players in team management until the pressures for success turned the public against them.

The thought was echoed for anyone standing in the damp outside the dressingrooms in Ennis while Joe McKenna - a 24-carat hero from decades gone by - stood trying to explain what had happened to his dreams of restoring Limerick hurling.

Eugene McGee once characterised the relationship between a manager and his county executive as similar to that between a CEO and his board of directors.

Except what board of directors could survive unscathed the loss of six CEOs in five years of catastrophic trading?