Limerick's story no longer a secret

Keith Duggantalks to Brian Begley as he recalls how Limerick stormed their way to last year's All-Ireland final

February has rolled around remarkably quickly. In a hotel restaurant on the edge of Limerick city, Brian Begley looks down with a cup of coffee and a slice of brown bread, which he butters primly. It is hardly a feast for a 6ft 5in athlete, but he has training in the evening and dare not risk anything heavier.

On a television screen, Barack Obama is addressing a crowd on the importance of change and when he starts to talk, Begley is preaching the same kind of message.

The secret is out on the Limerick hurlers. Last summer, the county that could not buy a single Munster championship victory for half a decade stormed their way to an All-Ireland final after they got their act together. They lost, the new season is upon them and with that comes the hunger to go one better and achieve what no Limerick hurling team has since 1973.

The obligation to go one step forward will be self-imposed. "At least we know we are good enough go get to a final," Begley reasons. "But if we don't progress this year, all that will have been for nothing."

While the west coast was bashed by storms in early January, the Limerick hurlers took their fortnight reward of a holiday in Florida and Mexico. There wasn't much said about the All-Ireland final loss, mainly because there was not much to say.

Begley is happy to acknowledge there is something unique about an All-Ireland final day. It is nothing he can pinpoint. The noise against Waterford in the semi-final was probably as fierce and the crowd was just as big. But that afternoon against Kilkenny was singular. It was if the very oxygen was slightly different.

"The whole build-up is intense. But it is not the size of the crowd. The day just feels different. Then they went 2-3 up while we were settling. And then we did play a bit of hurling. Watching those goals going in, well, there isn't a whole pile you can do.

"Kilkenny have been there for the last few years, but the hunger they have is unreal. They are very good hurlers and they hit hard as well. They are very physical all over the pitch. It was disappointing and we didn't play as we can play.

"There wasn't a whole pile of talk about it because a lot of us split up and went back to our clubs. On the holiday, there was an odd word said about it, but there is no real point in looking back on it. Like, we saw what we could do when we got things right and concentrated on hurling so we are looking forward to this year now.

"If we don't qualify for the latter stages of the league, we will have nine weeks until the championship. That is a long time. You can play all the challenge games you want, but a league play-off game would be better."

Begley looks too fresh-faced and frankly optimistic to be considered one of the gnarled survivors of the black years for Limerick hurling. But along with veterans like Mark Foley, Brian Geary and Ollie Moran, he endured six successive championship years without a single victory in Munster.

They started out every season with great intentions, but after three or four years, the negative memories of those losses would be rattling around in the backs of their minds.

It wasn't that they ever accepted their role as the perpetual losers in the Munster championship, but it got so they weren't surprised by it. It hardly helped that several hurling men with auspicious records tried to steer the team back to respectability and left confounded and often embarrassed.

And in the background was the invidious position in which the county's dual players found themselves.

Limerick's slow, admirable rise to becoming a top tier football team under Liam Kearns depended on the availability of several of the hurlers, including Begley.

He always saw Limerick as primarily a hurling county, but admits there was a summer or two when they probably had a better chance of winning a Munster title in football.

"You could argue that. We pushed Kerry in the Gaelic Grounds and should have beaten them. That was disappointing. And those of us on the hurling panel felt we could play both for a year or two. Becoming a dual county is tough. You need both managers co-operating fully.

"I think it should be left up to the player but neither the hurling nor the football team in Limerick can afford to lose out on five or six players. And that is the reality here.

"It was no coincidence there was no distraction about dual players last year. Now, we were in good shape last summer but there were other years when we were in good shape as well. You see guys coming in there night after night working hard. I am sure the management found it frustrating too. It's hard to know why or how we went through so many managers.

"The same squad has been there. The dual-player issue was big. I believe that. The fact we pulled out of the hurling didn't help that set up and it doesn't help the guys left there either. I don't know, maybe some of them resented that we weren't there either. That is possible. Ideally, you look at Kilkenny just ticking over under Brian Cody and there is a lot to be said for that."

Begley was among the six players (Stephen Lucey, Mark Keane, Mike O'Brien, Conor Fitzgerald and Mark O'Riordan were the others) who opted for football when Pad Joe Whelahan made plain his feelings about the dual status. Whelahan's tenure as county manager was ill-fated and after an alarming league loss to Tipperary in February 2005, the sanguine Birr man famously declared, "I'm getting older every week driving down to Limerick."

After his resignation shortly afterwards, Joe McKenna's appointment was supposed to be a temporary measure but after he imposed a basic structure and calm, it looked as though the team had turned a corner.

They were favourites to beat Tipperary in the Munster championship game of 2006 and got a perfect start, with Begley claiming a goal on four minutes and Andrew O'Shaughnessy hitting another just three minutes later. But a supernova display from Eoin Kelly and familiar Limerick hesitancy meant they lost a minor thriller by 0-22 to 2-12.

A fortnight later, they turned out against Clare for a qualifying match on a damp evening and were torn apart. Even now, that 2-21 to 0-10 scoreline seems shocking.

"That Clare match was probably the low point in our careers. The way we played was not acceptable. When Joe resigned, everyone was wondering what would happen, if someone would just come in for a few weeks or whatever."

In ambled Richie Bennis. Limerick's first match was up in Tullamore, a qualifying match that was played on a stunningly fine Saturday evening, with no television cameras and as far away from Croke Park as you can imagine. It went down as a championship footnote but Begley agrees it was a significant evening. It was clear the season was no longer about winning anything, merely about trying to rediscover the basic concept of a team ethos.

And in a humdinger of a match played on the tight midlands ground, Limerick won, with Bennis urging them on from the sidelines and the travelling faithful jubilant afterwards.

"There was relief, yeah," Begley remembers. "It was a fabulous evening and a tough, high scoring game and we needed that result because nobody knew if this team was finished or what. There was relief in the dressingroom too.

"And we took it from there. We went to play Cork in the quarter-finals and even if the result was the same old story, losing by a point, we at least performed."

Given the unpredictable health of the hurling championship, it was greatly heartening for the game's custodians to see that Limerick had not unravelled completely.

Nonetheless, few could have expected them to become the county that would illuminate last year's championship. Begley was on honeymoon during the league last year but heard about the 2-16 to 0-7 whipping his team-mates received in Nowlan Park.

"I know the lads had a meeting after that match. There were no punches pulled and the players weren't coming up to scratch. We decided then whether we wanted to put the effort in. And I think that was it, if there was a turning point. There was no specific reason apart from that. Beating Tipperary then in the championship got the crowd out. And even through the bad times, they were there shouting.

"People say Waterford was our All-Ireland final. I don't know. Like, you have to understand that Limerick people are serious sports people and they had been starved of hurling finals. They hadn't been up since 1996 and this was new to a lot of people.

"It was the talk of the town. Every game is intense, all the talking and the training and the build-up, it does take it out of you. Then an All-Ireland final comes along and it is a whole different level. Who knows, we may not be there again?"

But then, they might. Why not? They earned the right to at least keep company with Kilkenny on the first Sunday in September. For a group of hurlers that seemed destined to stay planted on the starting line of the Munster championship race, it was a hell of a distance to cover in one season.

Begley can review his own experience in the All-Ireland final without much emotion; Noel Hickey like glue on his shoulder, then the Dunamaggin man gets injured and Brian Hogan drops back in to the square, bigger again and razor sharp and hardly a yard of space for the Limerick forwards to exploit.

Grafting for everything, taking hard, fair hits, stealing glances at the scoreboard and the clock and the incessant noise and the colour and the final whistle. It was like nowhere else on earth and all that Brian Begley can say for sure is that Limerick would like to be back there. They have fought for the right to believe that they can.

"That is true. And we will be trying hard this year too. The secret is out and even Munster is going to be a minefield. Last year, we were unknown. Now, they all know what we can do and they will give us more respect."

The Limerick hurlers have earned that the hard way.