The good times rolled. On September 10th 1989, Tipperary's under-21s added another All-Ireland to the senior title won a week previously. Three of the under-age team had been on the senior side which had defeated Antrim - captain Declan Ryan, John Leahy and Conal Bonnar.

Tomorrow at Croke Park, Tipperary face All-Ireland champions Wexford in the second All-Ireland semi-final. The same three under21s of eight years ago survive, together with two other members of the team, Liam Sheedy and Michael Ryan.

Despite all the potential, the county has managed in the meantime to add only one further senior All-Ireland title (in 1991) and the years since have been marked by many frustrations both personal and for the team as a whole.

Estimates of what the county should have won naturally vary from the minimalist satisfaction with two All-Irelands to the more demanding belief that as many as five titles would have been a representative haul.

For the young players whose inter-county careers took off in an atmosphere of success and optimism, the course of their careers hasn't run smoothly. All have been prey to crucial injuries which in the case of Ryan and Leahy are believed to have cost the team matches and also All-Irelands.

Conal Bonnar, the youngest of the three brothers who lined out in the '89 senior final and excited mention in the same sentence as Cuchulainn, has been afflicted with chronic injury and this weekend is playing what is believed to be only his second full match of the year. In common with his brothers, he is a fitness fanatic and the lost training time affects him badly.

Declan Ryan has been the most influential forward on the team for the past two years. Such a state of affairs would have been foreseeable eight years ago but some of the interim disappointments would not.

For a spell his career looked over. A pitiful display in the 1995 championship was followed the next spring by substitution in a League semi-final. Somehow he recovered his form for the championship and has maintained it.

John Kennedy is familiar with Ryan and played with him until his own career was ended by injury. In the 1995 and '96 seasons he was a selector with Fr Tom Fogarty.

"I've known Declan since he was nine or 10. His ability is exceptional. He has power and under a high ball, it's difficult to contest with him; (has) fantastic hands; can throw a point over his shoulder; can make things happen. Sometimes he annoys people because he takes everything very much at his own pace, stands and waits for things to fall into place."

Leahy's career was prone to further extremes than the others'. A dynamic presence all around the field during the triumphant 1991 season, he appeared to have returned to unstoppable form in '94 when his league final performance drew ecstatic notices. Injury, however, intervened and the same levels of performance have since eluded him.

Last year was a difficult time as he was convicted of assault in England and received a suspended sentence. His hurling didn't escape so lightly and, obviously demoralised, he suffered the indignity of substitution in the Munster final.

"Maybe," says Kennedy, "he could have coped better with all the attention and pressure but we can all look back at most things and say we could have done them better. "You need very mature fellas when something like 1989 happens. The tour of the county lasted about four months and as players they all had a huge amount of mileage up by their 21st or 22nd birthdays which, combined with the general euphoria, didn't help. They were hurling constantly for three years."

Mick Minogue coached the 1989 under21s. He doesn't agree that early success might have caused problems for the players. "I don't think so. They are three very strong individuals and three great players. I think they were able for it."

The personal travails of the youngest survivors of 1989 may or may not have been a factor in the county's difficulties, but general considerations pose more searching questions.

Answers are hard come by, but the county not surprisingly resents the harsher criticisms that the teams had neither the mental strength nor the stomach for combat that would have ensured greater success.

Ten years ago, in his first season in charge of the county, Babs Keating led Tipperary out of the wilderness. The replayed Munster final win over then All-Ireland champions Cork in Killarney is one of modern hurling's most striking images.

Although the GAA and the public at large are delighted to see Clare win an All-Ireland, there is a particular atmosphere of relieved jubilation which accompanies the return of prodigals, like Wexford last year and like Tipperary 10 years ago.

It may not have been the finished article - as subsequent defeat by Galway indicated - and six changes in the starting line-up would be made before the initial All-Ireland success two years later, but the 1987 team was the basis of all the county's challenges for the duration of Keating's tenure.

Reviewing the years when success eluded the team, there is no shortage of excuses and genuine, hard-luck stories but were there flaws in the team or do some people in the county harbour unrealistic expectations of how frequently even a good team can win All-Ireland titles?

Although unable to resist the urge to rewind the might-have-beens, Keating takes a philosophical line. In a 1994 interview for Seamus Leahy's The Tipp Revival, the Tipperary manager from 1986-'94 answers the question: "Did the county win as much as it should have?"

"You can say if you like that we didn't win enough. But I made the point . . . that since I took over in 1987, we had won two All-Irelands - on a par with Cork, Kilkenny and Galway . . . Every hurling All-Ireland we saw in the last few years, there has been a Kilkenny team in it between minors and under-21s, and they haven't won more senior All-Irelands than us.

"I have no doubt that we would have won the '93 All-Ireland. We did everything right to have the lads right and ripe for the championship that year but every bit of bad luck possible came to us in Croke Park (in the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway), from Ken's (Tipperary goalkeeper Ken Hogan's) easy goal to the injury of Declan Ryan. And when did you see two players from the same team colliding and the two being knocked unconscious?

". . . This (1994) was one year that you could really say we had a team that was better than anything in the country. Offaly won the All-Ireland with a young team playing badly for most of the hour and they will improve. But there is little doubt that had we survived Clare, things would have happened for us. It is hard to perform at your very best against a team that you had beaten by as much as we had beaten Clare in 1993."

All sorts of teams seemed to cause Tipperary problems at different stages. Galway in the late 1980s had a young but experienced team, tempered by two agonising All-Ireland final defeats. In the early 1990s, Cork were highly motivated traditional rivals, capable of punishing an apparent sloppiness of attitude on the two occasions that Tipperary laid an All-Ireland on the line in Munster.

By the end of Keating's reign, new forces were emerging. A new Galway team exploited Tipperary's bad luck, referred to above - the goalkeeping error that led to a reviving goal and the injury that put Declan Ryan out of the match within 10 minutes of the throw-in - but there was a feeling that complacency had set in after the 18-point destruction of an embryonic Clare side which to this day nurtures a sense of grievance that their opponents disrespected them on the day.

Within less than a year, Clare sensationally reversed the result just weeks after John Leahy's tour de force in the league final had blown aside Galway and installed the county as hot All-Ireland favourites. In a stroke of further ill-luck, Leahy missed the Clare match after injuring himself playing in a championship game for the county footballers.

Even after Keating's departure, Limerick became the bane of Tipperary's championship aspirations, narrowly defeating them in a 1995 Munster semi-final and overcoming a 10-point deficit at half-time to draw the following year's provincial final and win the replay.

"What we haven't achieved," says John Kennedy, "is more of a topic of conversation. It's very hard to put your finger on it. People say it's attitude and the old `Tipp are arrogant' thing comes up, but I never recognised that as a factor with any of the teams I was involved with.

"Some of our followers are not very helpful. They decide after a game like this year's against Limerick that the team are worldbeaters. This year, Tipp beat a Limerick team not even related to the team we played over the last two years. But for some people, it's time to stick their heads back in the clouds."

Mick Minogue is one of those who believe that more should have been achieved since 1987. "I would feel that two All-Irelands from the time of the breakthrough, was a poor reward for the number of under-21 titles won in Munster and at All-Ireland level. It took a while to get going in 1987 and '88 but '90 was a disaster when key men were left off. We should have had another All-Ireland that year."

Kennedy agrees that 1990 was a lost opportunity. "We were over-confident, thought we only had to turn up. Because of injury I shouldn't have played myself and there were one or two others who shouldn't have, either. Our attitude wasn't correct. After 1990, we were really wound up. Other times, the commitment wasn't as strong and on any given day, you can be beaten. Any team can beat another.

"Although it is annoying, the fact is that we have succumbed in physically intense games. It's like we need a kick in the pants before we get going. In '91, the attitude was unrecognisable and we kept our foot on the accelerator at all times. We could be accused of not always doing that."

John O'Donoghue was a selector with Keating from 1990. Whereas he knows the script of misfortune as well as anyone, O'Donoghue is inclined to be upbeat about the whole period.

"If you say the team under-achieved, you have to measure it against something. I think the record from 1989-94 stands comparison with any other county.

"Maybe there was more in them than came out but we were lucky to win the 1991 All-Ireland, because Michael Cleary got a lucky goal. Then we were unlucky in '93. Over a period of seven or eight years, you get a fair share of luck and the day it comes, you take it and when it doesn't there's nothing you can do about it.

"I would say what was won was a good return for a team coming from the wilderness with no experience at that level. I'm proud of the way they acquitted themselves. None of them was ever put off and that was an achievement over all those years and winning all those matches.

"The team also changed the whole method of hurling training and also saw the start of the supporters' clubs which meant that teams weren't financially shackled by county boards. It was the start of a new era, the start of everything."