Nicky English stood in the dank no-man's-land between the showers, the urinals, the toilet stalls and the dressingroom. He took a deep breath. Smelt the roses. A transient feeling.

To be Tipperary manager is to be in the employ of Tipperary people. There are no more demanding bosses in the country. The delivery of this Munster title was expected. The county has been standing at the door waiting to sign for it.

Thus Nicky permits himself only modest pleasure. There'll be a memo about the All-Ireland on its way any second.

"At the end of the day," he says of this hectic beauty of a game, "anyone being honest would say that it has nothing to do with managers and switches and tactics, not in the last 10 minutes.

"It's just the heart to win the ball and Limerick had a lot of that too. You wouldn't expect less from any team that Eamonn (Cregan) would be involved in. At the end of the day, though, we have lost enough of those matches."

There have been bad times. Nicky could sing them like a spiritual and his team could give the amens. Very bad times, but lordy law-dee this was a day of days.

"We had only one man today with a Munster medal, three or four were playing in their fourth Munster final. With respect to our young fellas, for a lot of them they were being carried by our main men, Brendan Cummins, Tommy Dunne, Brian O'Meara. Those fellas, what they've been through since the 1993-1994 days, coming onto a team in decline. They deserve their medals today.

"When it came to the edge-of-cliff stuff Eamon Corcoran and David Kennedy, all of them played tremendously. Other part of today is to note that despite loss of Johny and Conor Gleeson that we were happy. I said on the bus we'd use 20 players. I never experienced heat like that.

"We had four new players in the forward line by the end. We had people to call on. They had an impact. The way it was, the ref blew the whistle when he did and we were in front. If you were a manager of if you were Jesus Christ in the last five minutes you couldn't have made a difference.

"We knew what it meant, there had been talks we'd win by five or six points We'll go up now to play like a Tipperary team should play in Croke Park."

"It's weight off the shoulders, it would have been devastating to lose," said David Kennedy, who saw more traffic than a lollipop man.

"We lost last year and the whole season fell flat. We have to pick ourselves up again. No easy teams left. Means a lot to us as players. I go to college with Brian Begley and they are fabulous players.

"Sometimes you need a kick in the arse to get going and that's what they got when Clare bet Limerick. That's what's wrong with Tipp this last three or four years, always getting beaten by three or four points - just enough to say that we were good enough.

"We never hurt until after the Galway match, then there was the history with Clare to resolve last year, that meant a lot to us. This year, though, after Clare we knew we'd won nothing. We go ahead with clear blue sky. Training this week will be good."

Another Tipp name destined for chiselling onto the pantheon is that of Brendan Cummins, the team's irrepressible goalkeeper. Cummins kept hope alive yesterday and a string of his season's saves stitched together on video would make a persuasive case already for him to be player of the year. Yesterday he was brave, anticipative and limber. Mostly though he was hot.

Media people gathered round him to touch the hem of his garment. His garment was sweaty. So was the hem.

"There was serious heat out there. It was busy too, they have so many big men and the ball stays around the square that bit more. That showed for the goal they got. They buried it. Fair play to them. I made two saves, flicked it away both times and there was a Limerick fella waiting.

"Munster has been a monkey on our back since Nicky took over. Serious relief around the county."

In the other dressingroom, down the hall, they are suffering from the heat, and the grief. To have snatched the Munster title from Tipp's hungry grasp would have been to skip the heartbreak of adolescence as a team. Still. Losing hurts, even if Limerick did reintroduce themselves to big-time hurling. A great summer still beckons.