Countdown to Munster and Ulster football finals: Limerick's Liam Kearns has declared his fancy for Kerry ahead of Sunday's clash. Ian O'Riordan finds out why

In the era when Kerry footballers have defined the art of playing down their chances it was strange to hear one of them talk so fervently yesterday about winning Sunday's Munster final in Killarney.

Yet for Liam Kearns, born and bred in Kerry and a past footballing servant of the county, the talk has been twisted into a Limerick perspective. As the opposing manager he had his reasons for building up Kerry, but neither was he trying to fool anyone as to which team has the greater chance of winning.

"I will say Limerick have a chance. But I'm not going to say we'll beat Kerry. We're going down to Killarney to play the All-Ireland favourites, and potentially the favourites for every game they play. So that's the reality of it.

"My lads haven't played on this kind of stage before. But we played them in the championship last year and they beat us by four points. The year before they beat us by six. We have been improving, so we feel we're going down there with a chance. But that's all you can say, because if I say I think we'll win, no one will believe me."

But no one can dispute the fact that since Kearns took over the Limerick senior management three years ago the county has made significant progression. The breakthroughs he instigated at under-21 level are starting to follow a similar pattern at senior level, and Sunday's appearance in the Munster final marks the next stage in that rise through the ranks.

"We have more or less been progressing all the time," he says. "I suppose the first seven or eight matches, when we were still being beaten by 20 points, it didn't look so good then. But we have had progress each year, and again this year.

"The one thing we would have been delighted to win was the All-Ireland under-21 title the first year we got there, but we were beaten by a really good Tyrone team. But I think it's fair to say that at senior level we have made progress each year."

Earlier this season, when they lost the National League Division Two final to Westmeath, the feeling outside the county was that maybe Limerick's ambitions had been moving at too fast a pace. Kearns, though, saw it only as a brief setback, and a week later they knocked Cork out of the Munster championship.

"I think the way the team performed against Cork the week after said a lot about their character. But I was never sure they could do it. We had lost a national title the previous week, and Limerick haven't been in too many national finals.

"It was hard to get them down from the high of that, but they were right back on terra firma by the time of the Clare game. Still, the Cork game was the most satisfying to date because of the circumstances."

Kearns has been credited as the man who single-handedly turned the fortunes of Limerick football, but he determinedly disagrees with that analysis. As a manager, he says, he merely gets the best out of the players.

"In fact I think the manager's role is overstated. I would see myself as a facilitator, trying to create an environment for my players to give it their best. That's really what being a manager is about. There's no way you can justify the sort of criticism some managers are getting at the moment.

"I think we get too much credit when things go well, and too much stick when things don't go well. And Tommy Lyons is getting too much stick at the moment. It's an amateur game but you put a lot of time into it, and even when things go wrong no one deserves that kind of stick."

Meanwhile, John Quane, the only survivor from the Limerick team which last met Kerry in a Munster senior football final, in 1991, will not be starting on Sunday.

Quane failed a fitness test last evening and his place at midfield goes to Jason Stokes, who partners John Galvin. Both were members of the Munster under-21 championship-winning team of three years ago.

Stokes, who picked up a ligament injury in the win over Cork, was introduced as a replacement when Quane left the field injured in the Clare match. Quane is named in the substitutes.

Brian Begley, who came on as a substitute against Clare, will again start on the bench.

LIMERICK (SF v Kerry): S O'Donnell; M O'Riordan, D Sheehy, T Stack; C Mullane, S Lucey, D Reidy; J Stokes, J Galvin; S Kelly, M Gavin, S Lavin; C Fitzgerald, J Murphy, M Reidy.