There is good reason to believe that, despite the recent knocks on the national stage, Limerick and Waterford will rise again. TOM HUMPHRIESexplains

“It is tempting to throw one’s arms up and wonder how would they be toting new stars when Limerick did nothing but squander their three All-Ireland under-21 teams and Waterford haven’t scared anybody at underage since Paul Flynn was a boy.

THE LONG suffering faithful of Waterford and Limerick take a break tomorrow from the counselling sessions for decimated All-Ireland finalists of recent years and hit the high road to Thurles. Each tribe travels more in hope than confidence.

Poor league campaigns – albeit Waterford’s being one which brought the therapeutic joy of a win over Kilkenny – have given way to some indifferent shows on the challenge circuit.

Some old favourites have reached the end of the road, a couple of old dogs are being required to perform new tricks.

If hope is the thing with feathers, it is warbling right now about a good start at Semple perhaps being the gateway to better things.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Expectations are low and the feeling is the hitting will be hard and the exchanges tinged with desperation. Waterford and Limerick have each got new or newish managers who are each blooding new players.

But neither side comes to town toting a must-see new star.

It is tempting to throw one’s arms up and wonder how would they be toting new stars when Limerick did nothing but squander three All-Ireland under- 21 teams and Waterford haven’t scared anybody at underage since Paul Flynn was a boy.

That famous 1992 minor team which Flynn graced has given just about all that it can give Waterford at senior level by now.

But lessons have been learned from the mistakes of the past and it is difficult to see Waterford in the near future revisiting the embarrassments of the 1989 Munster final with Tipperary or the 1993 Munster defeat to Kerry.

Waterford have been down this road before. Before De La Salle came along a few years ago, the county had produced just one Harty Cup winning side – the Mount Sion team of 1953. That schools team was a tributary for the senior county side through the 1950s and played a major part in the 1959 All-Ireland win.

Mount Sion’s success was an isolated outbreak in an undeveloped underage tundra, however, and Waterford’s regression through the ’60s was alarming, but, in hindsight, probably predictable.

A Munster title in 1963 was their lot until 2002. In that period, the darkness was at its worst in the underage ranks. Before Flynn and co struck a match, Waterford hadn’t beaten Tipp, Cork or Limerick at minor since 1955, when they saw off Limerick.

Today, in Waterford, the wings are becoming crowded with players who will make the grade for Waterford as the current squad is rethreaded over the next few years. This year’s under-21 side are a case in point, being probably the most talented outfit to represent the county in the grade in the last 10 or 15 years.

They play a Tipp side next month which is bulging with All-Ireland minor medallists. A win for Waterford would be a surprise. Failure to harvest four or five good senior county players from the team would be a surprise of equal magnitude.

At the beginning of May, Waterford played Limerick in the Munster minor championship at the Gaelic Grounds. It wasn’t a fixture which stilled the nation’s imagination, but, in both counties, expectations were high.

Going into the final minutes Limerick were three points clear of a Waterford team backboned by players with schools success under their belts. Two goals in the final two minutes – the second a 60-yard sideline cut from John Dee which dropped into the Limerick net – sent Waterford through to play Clare next month, a fixture which holds the promise of another Munster final appearance.

(Two points of Waterford’s total that night were chipped in by Jake Dillon, who is perhaps a shining symbol of the coming generation. Dillon is in the first of three possible years as a minor. . . He owns a Tony Forristal winners medal plus winners medals in the Dean Ryan, the Harty and the Dr Crokes Cups. It is rare for meteors like that to flash across the Deise sky, but Dillon is not alone and if for some reason he doesn’t graduate to full blown stardom there are others who will.)

The easy read on this year’s Munster minor championship would be to look at Limerick being bumped out by Waterford and to assume that, in a battle between two children of a lesser hurling god, somebody had to prevail.

When De La Salle retained the Dr Croke Cup last year they planted the flag at the highest point for Waterford hurling, capping a season which brought the county six of the nine provincial titles available at colleges level in Munster.

The B and C grade senior titles went to Lismore and to Dungarvan and the county also won the A and C grade titles at under-16½ age group and a provincial title at under-15½ also. De La Salle were dominant, but there was quiet satisfaction in the county at the spread of hurling excellence and the fact that, at under-14 level, Friary of Abbeyside, Dungarvan, won the county title.

This year wasn’t a year which attracted so many banner headlines (although Dungarvan CBS did add the Rice Cup to the county’s list of underage titles), but, in the absence of the regional side Coláiste na Deise, Waterford saw Blackwater CBS advance to Munster A standard competition and in an All-Waterford quarter-final of the Harty Cup the novices prevailed over Del la Salle before losing to Thurles in the semi-final stage.

The story of the year, though, was probably in Limerick. Ard Scoil Rís had the pleasure of beating St Flannan’s in a replayed quarter-final, gaining revenge for a heartbreaking defeat three years ago. The school left its mark, however, with a fine win (again over Flannan’s) in the Dean Ryan (under-16½) competition.

Success in the Dean Ryan doesn’t automatically presage the same in Harty competition, but, at a time when rugby has stepped up its claims for the hearts and minds of Limerick youngsters, this was a win against the head.

All underage success in Limerick will probably be jaundiced for a while by the crashing and burning of the under-21 sides at the beginning of the century, but even those sides were the product not of chance but of patient planning going back to the early ’90s when a development plan was put into place for the county.

Limerick went on to win the inaugural running of the Munster under-15 hurling championship, a “Tony Forrestal” in 2002, which led on to a minor All-Ireland final appearance in 2005. That team of four years ago provided an instant star in the shape of Séamus Hickey, but have begun feeding in less precocious talents to the senior squad this year.

Such is the way with Waterford and Limerick underage successes.

Patience is by necessity a virtue in either county.

Waterford and Limerick take the field tomorrow as two relatively ordinary teams hoping for something good to happen.

Both counties have had their traumas on the big stage in recent years, but it is the grind that goes on down below which keeps them popping up on that stage every now and then.

Nobody is perfect, but sometimes, if you look closely enough, the glass is actually half full and not half empty.

Waterford and Limerick won’t stop the traffic tomorrow, but neither are they going to disappear from the hurling landscape.