INTERVIEW/Stephen Lucey: Seán Moran talks to the Limerick dual star who would have liked to play both hurling and football.

In every dream home a heartache. Stephen Lucey's impeccable dual credentials have arrived too late for a senior intercounty scene that no longer believes in the possibility of combining football and hurling at the top level.

The scalded reaction of Lucey and the five other players who declared for the footballers in the face of an ultimatum from new hurling manager Pad Joe Whelahan was to be expected from the first generation of players to harbour high ambitions in both codes. But hurling managers no longer believe playing both games is compatible with the demands on their elite players.

Lucey, with a clutch of under-21 medals from both codes, has no doubt he could handle the demands of both. He has nothing to add to the collective statements of the past week, expressing strident dismay at the attitude of the hurling management, and disagrees with the basic premise.

"Everyone makes out you're being trained into the ground but there's no reason why you can't do it if managers agree. I'm from a hurling background and there's no doubt hurling requires more time, but you're not splitting your time between the sports 50-50. Most of my practice time would be hurling. I'm not saying you could keep them going for 10 years but you could do it for a while."

This year he captains UCD in the Fitzgibbon Cup and will play centrefield for both the hurlers and the footballers in the Sigerson. That's as high as dual activity will take him this year. Still, it's not a bad year to have to concentrate on football, as Limerick face into the county's first season in Division One of the NFL.

This long-awaited arrival at the top table was presaged by a Munster under-21 title four years ago under the management of former Kerry player Liam Kearns, who has guided the footballers through to senior level, picking up momentum as they have gone. Last year the team hit all the necessary targets.

Promotion from Division Two was rounded off by a narrow defeat to Westmeath in the divisional final. A week later, and most significantly, there was the blitzing of Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Limerick's first major football championship scalp in nearly 40 years. A crack at Kerry in the provincial final proved a step too far, even if the pattern of the match left the team more frustrated than humiliated.

"The Munster final was a disaster," says Lucey. "Experience stood to Kerry because all our preparation was good. We owned the ball for 20 minutes but didn't take the scores and missed a penalty. Kerry's tactics were more physical, more cynical if you like, than we had expected. I always felt we could have taken them and I'm still confident we could."

Having braced themselves for collision with the big time the realisation that it had been achievable made the let down worse.

"Last year, the footballers had a better year than the hurlers and we got a lot of support, so it was a real disappointment that so many came down (to Killarney) to see us and we didn't perform."

The mood of disappointment wasn't particularly lifted by the news of their qualifier opponents. "We were down in the dumps," he remembers. "Liam said, 'we'll end up being drawn against Armagh'."

And so they were, with Steven McDonnell's hat-trick of goals constituting the difference between the teams.

Progress now has to be maintained. Lucey feels that, whereas staying in Division One is a primary target of the new campaign, a Munster title is also a realistic aim. Being exiled from hurling won't leave him with a heap of time on his hands.

University demands cut deeper than Sigerson and Fitzgibbon duties, as he's also facing medical exams and constant commuting demands between Dublin and Limerick. But the experience has been good with more medals to show as well as the fun of sharing rooms in UCD with team-mates John Lynch and Nigel Crawford and only being a stroll away from the Belfield pitches.

He'll be looking to locate closer to home when qualified and so regularise the commitment of time, a scarce commodity in a junior doctor's life.

In the meantime there are crowded weeks ahead, with the triple demands of National League for three straight weekends punctuated by Sigerson and Fitzgibbon matches in between.

Last year injury curtailed his hurling year, now football has wiped it out; but that's the way it goes.

The dual ambition is dead but the singular talent remains.