The case for the defence

Hello? Hello. How are you doing? Are you busy? Grand, grand, grand. Got a minute? Listen you were bad enough against Waterford to make the grass wilt and the swallows turn back from the summer. Do you know that? People said it was a long time coming. What have you to say for yourself?

And a laugh comes rolling out from the back of Steve McDonagh's throat. Same old story. Same old media vultures, picking flesh off Limerick before their blood is cooled. "Do you know you're about the sixth or seventh journalist that's asked me that. Ye'll never let a fella rest in peace."

So here's how it goes. The case for the defence, preliminary arguments. A voice from the dock.

"You have days when you go out and the ball goes left and you go right. Every time. Waterford was one of those days for me. I tried to rack my brain after for the details but it was just a bad day. There's lots of fellas who have played bad on Paul Flynn. The important test for me is bouncing back, rectifying those things."

Bang to rights then m'lord. The forward, Mr Flynn got no change for the first 10 minutes then pilfered a couple of points and liked them. So he continued to treat Mr McDonagh in a humiliating manner until half time. There were mitigating circumstances which might be taken into account by reasonable people.

"The League semi-final we were a bit unsettled in the full-back line, the two other lads were new and we were a bit unsettled and well, I wasn't much help to them. From my own view it was disappointing, can't do anything more about what's gone. I've had bad days before as well you know. Nobody can predict what will happen."

Steve McDonagh is one half of the right wing of the Limerick defence. Steve McDonagh number two, aka Dave Clarke, five.

"That goes on. Ger Canning is fairly good at it. Clarkie doesn't mind, he reckons it's a compliment to me. I might wear a different gumshield or get my hair dyed like a few of those rugby players. I tell you, though, they didn't mix me up a few weeks back against Waterford. They were fairly sure of who I was then alright. Not much word about Clarkie having a bad game for the both of us."

He's laughing, though, at the good of it. Steve McDonagh is on the hop today, bouncing back like a rubber ball. "I hope none of this stuff sounds like excuses," he says. It doesn't.

He took his licks and well, that's that. Paul Flynn finished the day with nine points. Five of them were from placed balls and four of them were from play and not all of them were accompanied by greetings cards signed by McDonagh.

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it a bit, worry about the reasons. I was moved at half time and when that happens you say to yourself: `Jesus I must be going really bad'. You try to think it through. I'm in good physical shape, we could have done a bit more hurling before the League semi-final, so maybe we weren't sharp in the hurling sense, but that goes for all the lads. Can't let something play on your mind.

"Hurling is based on confidence and believing in your own ability. No matter what happened that day, I'm not going to doubt my own ability, I'll still go out believing in what I do. You can't give up."

John McDonagh must nearly have given up. The right corner back on the Limerick team which won a minor All-Ireland in 1958, he had the best part of 10 years in a Limerick senior jersey without being threatened by success or superstardom.

Then Steve, his oldest son missed out on the minors, tipped away a bit at Rockwell agricultural college before suddenly blossoming on to the under-21 side. He nailed down a senior place in 1993 and has been unthreatened since, forming an all-fair-haired boy right flank to the Limerick defence behind Dave Clarke.

He has followed his father onto the farm, too. Before and after big occasions, the solitude of the fields is a welcome place for introspection and composing soliloquies.

"It's a grand place to be out in the air with nobody there to argue with you. You switch off everything and work away and get into your rhythm and put it behind you. Good or bad.

"It's a funny thing when I think about Waterford. We won by maybe 10 or 11 points when we played Clare back in 1994. I was playing right corner back and The Sparrow (Ger O'Loughlin) had three points in the first half and I had a good second half and fellas said I was brilliant.

"Then the team is beaten against Waterford and my man gets two or three points and I'm useless. The team is going well and he gets the same amount I'm brilliant. They're the slings and arrows of it. They all equal out." Or not. Limerick's hurlers must sometimes wonder if things will equal out for them. McDonagh has been putting it in since 1993, every year asking a little more of a body which farms from seven in the morning, every morning, and then trains five nights a week when the going is tough.

"We'd be a little bitter I suppose. I don't know what it is in the media attitude towards Limerick. We never wanted pats on the back and halos but we did contribute a bit over the years to the state of the GAA and to the state of hurling. "When there is criticism to be given out the media are able to dish it, we won't lack for any motivation in that regard but we had some great days, won a couple of Munsters that a lot of hurling went into winning. When people talk about Limerick they talk about the bad days, though."

So, having been seen off the premises by Waterford, the expectation is that Cork accents will be asking them if they have no homes to go to tomorrow evening. Closing time in the last chance saloon.

"I've noticed alright that a few scribes and a few pharisees are writing us off again already. We'd be used to that. We got no credit at all for winning the National League last year. In the media in general there is an antagonism to us. I think they have a gripe with Mayo too. Like us, they've lost two All-Irelands, threw them away, or whatever, and they get stick for it."

It's true that a cross word in the Limerick camp tends to become the row that shook the world and the loss of two games on the trot is diagnosed as proof of incipient decline. McDonagh looks at his team and it is the resilience and durability therein which gives him the encouragement.

"The game at the moment is mental as well as being very physical. I know we were drained last year against Tipperary. Drained in every way. We came back and won the League, though, and it gave us a little lift. We know if we play like we did against Waterford we'll get a hiding on Sunday. We know that. We picked it up in training though. We have to wait and see. It's a crossroads on Sunday."

On a personal level, the returns coming back, expressed as a ratio of effort put in, are becoming dangerously close to unprofitable for McDonagh. "Spring time, when we are busy at home, is hard. I'm balancing working at home and going training. You have a duty to home. I'm lucky that my father has been supportive and he's a relatively young man but I feel a responsibility there. He did enough work when I was small. So for me to be off from half-five to 11.30 some nights . . . I don't know if it can keep going to such an extent."

Cows have no concept of nine to five. Back in the spring there were nights when the clock was pushing towards midnight by the time Steve McDonagh hit home again. A couple of times he was up nights with calving and then back to work at seven the next morning.

"It's very easy when a fella gets a couple of pints into him and he's off having a go at you. They never think of that. But that's part of the enjoyment in a way. When you are out there you are looking fit and everyone thinks you are in good order, you mightn't be sure yourself what way it's going to go. I found this spring there were nights when we were training hard and I was tired before I turned up. I was getting no benefit out of it at all. "It's no excuse I suppose. There's been times when I was flying and haven't gone well, too."

When he started off in 1993 under Phil Bennis the world was a different place. Clare were still also-rans and the conventional wisdom in hurling's great houses decreed that All-Irelands were won with hurlers first and athletes second. Clare raised the stakes for everybody, combining the breeds by hurling hard and training ferociously. The complexion of the sport has changed. Back in 1993, when Bennis introduced him to the panel, it wasn't quite two laps of the field and off home with you lads, but it wasn't far off it. Now if it's Tuesday it must be bleep test night and if it's Thursday it must be fat test time.

"It's gone unbelievable," says McDonagh. "I'm farming; lot of physical work involved in farming, and I'm wondering where it's going to end with the all amount of physical work we are doing at the moment for hurling. I think it is a small bit to the detriment of hurling. There' s no substitute for skills. When we started doing our heavy physical stuff last November the lads craved to get out on the field with a ball.

"All this physical stuff, I think the jury is out on it. Fitness levels now are on a par with any sport. We are only amateurs and everybody has to do a day's work though. Five to six nights a week. There is only so long that a body can take it, only three or four years at the top when the level of intensity keeps on increasing."

So to familiar turf and the fresh air to be had on the foothills of the championship. Limerick take on a young Cork team with new mint medals in their kitbags. Two teams waving at each other in trains going the opposite direction? "It's all in the air for us. People said that maybe Clare weren't trying against Cork that day and perhaps it was the same with us, that maybe Cregan wasn't so unhappy about us losing. I wish they were in the dressing-room at half-time with us. Eamonn read the riot act. "I think we will go forward. We were shocking against Waterford. He wasn't happy. Some surgery has been done to the team that tells its own story. Basically how we react is the issue now."

Cregan is the third managerial voice to get in McDonagh's ear since he joined the team five summers ago. The most analytical and tactically aware too, but when they cross the white paint border onto the pitch . . .

"It's down to us to rectify it all when 3.20 comes and the door is opened and it's put back into our hands."

And for Steve McDonagh the old familiarity makes that scenario less daunting.