It seems not so long ago, that day when Eamonn Cregan sat slumped on the old wood bench in the silence of the Limerick dressing-room. His team had just lost to Cork and the Ennis Road was quiet. The shower-rooms gave out little hisses of steam and people padded about using low voices. Cregan looked like death, drained of colour and animation. It was hard to see him coming back for another year. He himself was dismissive of the prospect. Still can't figure it out.

"I can't say what made me stay," he says with a sigh as if he's asked himself to unravel that one before. "I was asked, I suppose. I get on well with the county board, unlike other managers. I suppose you give it a year and you're testing the water with that one year. We said we'd stay for a second year before the draw was made. Came to third year and said sure we'll give it a final year and then the under-21s won so we said let's give it another year with these lads, blood them and see what they are like. There's a lot of young talent there. And here we are."

God but he hates a losing dressing-room. Those terminals of summer suck the very marrow from him. Last year in Thurles for instance was a little death. Cork whooping it up down the corridor, Cregan with so many arguments he'd liked to have made with the scoreboard. Point one: Barry Foley was injured from the 30 seconds in, ankle ligaments, yet he still skinned his man after 10 minutes and skimmed one wide. That was a glimpse. Point two: Cork's scores came in a little avalanche triggered near the end by Joe Deane's goal. Point three: ah forget it, where's the use.

"I just said to the lads, I said to them to look around the dressing-room and remember the faces and remember the feelings. I asked them to remember how it felt to be in there that day, with the work we'd done but the summer gone. You're defeated. Remember how it feels. Words like that."

And here we are. Another Munster final in the life of Eamonn Cregan, a man who has measured his time by these cultural landmarks. It would have to be Tipperary standing in the gap of course. Only mete that a man face down the ghosts before marching from Munster. Cregan is ready for the challenge, He looks at his fresh-faced team and almost to his surprise realises that Tipperary means very little to them. No complexes. You can't teach an old dog new hang-ups but he has tried to cut his own character this year from their fresh cloth.

"The lads have no hang-ups like we had about Tipperary. Limerick beat them in a league final in 1992 and beat them again in Cork in 1996. It's all in the head anyway and the young guys today are more confident anyway. They expect to win. The Tipp guys are young and they expect to win too. That's healthy. That's how it should be."

Yes. Here we are. Enough of the "we" business though. Why is he still here, why is Eamonn Cregan still cajoling players about this and that, still making them run laps and hit sliotars and just believe. Why keep on? Hurling relentlessly sucks him into its vortex. It's in his blood and in his rearing.

His father Ned, was a player of distinction winning an All-Ireland in 1934 and playing in a whole clatter of Munster and National League finals. Eamonn saw him play once for a Limerick County Council side that was stuck for a man. Ned was scraping 50 by then. Eamonn was in short pants.

The old man lived to see Eamonn play too. And play well. The Cregans had a hotel in Limerick city centre, a Fianna Fail hang-out called Hanrattys and Eamonn began playing in the lane behind the hotel just off Glentworth Street. From there to the Peoples Park. Mostly casual hurling, picking up the skills, learning the love of it. To the Model School. To Sexton Street and a Harty Cup in 1964' the year he repeated his leaving. Played Harty Cup that year and reached an All-Ireland minor final the year before, as captain. Little wonder the seniors came knocking on his door.

No thanks. His nascent genius still ethereal in its expression, Cregan opted to wait a while. Pragmatic even with the rawness of the first shave on him, he knew that some muscle wasn't going to go amiss on the journey ahead. He said he'd get back to them. By the time he did he had a younger brother in holding pattern too.

"We both came onto the team in the 60s, I came on in November 1964. Michael came in one or two years later. Limerick weren't doing well back then. We had to devise a new method. Tony O'Brien and Jim Hogan came up with the idea of winter training in 1968. It was a revolutionary idea tried out in order to get the upper hand. We began training in October of 1969 and after that we went to four National League finals, eight Munster finals, three All-Ireland finals and an All-Ireland semi-final."

By the time the novelty of winter training had been introduced Cregan was an established star. He wore the senior jersey for the first time in a league game against Dublin at Croke Park in 1964. The following summer he played midfield (his Harty Cup position) against Waterford in the championship. The common misperception though is that his hurling life began in 1966. Against Tipp of course.

Tipperary were a recurring illness for Limerick hurling in those times. They didn't just beat Limerick. They beset them, overwhelmed them, suffocated them, sickened them. They oppressed them, scared them, might have annexed them if they'd had the inclination. In 1962 Limerick staged an uprising and managed a draw. They had only to wait till the replay to experience the jackbooted reprisal. 5-13 to 3-4. Cregan remembers the darkness with the shiver of a man who has known blindness.

"They constantly hammered us. Twenty points, 25 points. They wouldn't beat us by 25 points if they could beat us by 26. They used do the same to Clare and to Waterford. It left an indelible impression on me. Once we got on top we'd try to do something similar I told myself.

"It never happened for us but Limerick hurling learned a bit from all that. From '73 to 1986 we played five times and didn't lose a Munster championship match to them. They were fabulous though, they were so good. They wanted to be the best win as many All-Irelands as possible. They were the Manchester United of hurling and that was their mentality."

And 1966? That was the year Eamonn Cregan formally introduced himself as something special. Limerick were scantly regarded, as was their wont and indeed their inalienable right at the time. The Tipperary machine had lost a few wingnuts and a little conditioning but, but , but ...

Cregan hit the game like a lightning storm and scored 3-5 in a showcase performance of smart thinking and first-time striking.. Bernie Hartigan was rampant. The supply never stopped. Limerick scored 4-12 to Tipperary's 2-9. It smelt like freedom.

Cregan looked like hero material.

They'd have to wait for wholesale liberation. Limerick slid back into the mire of bad luck and bad planning which had kept them part of hurling's lower middle class for generations. In the Munster final of 1966 they had a late goal pulled back for a free and lost by a couple of points to Cork. Sat and watched as Cork pocketed that year's All-Ireland.

For a while thereafter losing came easy. 1967? lost to Clare. 1968? lost to Cork. 1969? lost to Tipp. 1970? lost to Cork again.

And on to 1971 in Killarney, where as Paddy Downey wrote in these pages "the skies opened and cried for Limerick". They played sublimely. Six points to the good at half-time. Tipp put a man marker on Cregan for the second half and things slowed down. Tipp scored the famous dry ball goal when Donie Neylon slipped a bone dry sliotar from his pocket to Babs Keating for a close in free. Things slowed and Limerick were overhauled but caught Tipp with almost their last breath, an Eamonn Grimes goal.

A point in it. Then Willie Moore scored a legitimate goal for Limerick only to be called back and awarded a free which Richie Bennis pointed. Thus three points deflated into one point. The jackpot became the right to spin the wheel again. Three more points were scored as the game went to the death. Two of them were scored by Tipp. Enough said.

By then Ned Cregan had stopped watching his sons play. He went to the games until about 1968 when he felt that the excitement was too much for him. Every cloud though. His son began thinking about the games he played in.

"He'd go away for a walk or sometimes stop and listen to the radio," says Eamonn. "I'd come home and go up to the room and talk him through the match. That's how he stayed in touch with how we were doing and that's developed the analysis part of it for me. It came quite easily, describing the game for him, picking out the things that made the difference."

Ned Cregan died in 1972 a year before his sons won their All-Ireland senior medals. Lots of him lives on though. When Eamonn Cregan talks about hurling and explains the tax this season has taken out on him you understand that.

"The matches are hard to recover from. I live each ball. It just drains me physically and mentally.

"It took me about three weeks to recover after the Cork match. Really it did. Maybe 10 days after the Waterford game. There is nothing I can do. I watch. I wait. I hope. I anticipate. It cleans me out. This one on Sunday, I won't be right for a month."

So why is he still here. All those things perhaps and a spikiness in his nature, a pointed determination which one set on its co-ordinates can't be deflected from. He's here because of his history, family and hurling, because of Limerick's need, because of the game's need. He's here perhaps because he managed Offaly to a beating of Limerick in 1994. he's here because there are people he'd like to prove something to. Here's here because he likes his team, likes the way they mix and gel.

People have said to him that when they ran out against Cork in the Park at the start of the summer they could see something different about Limerick, some collective glint, some new-found grit. He likes that thought.

They've been galvanised too by criticism, much of it from his predecessor Tom Ryan whose grievance with the county board (sacked nine days after a league title win) has found odd expression lately. "Nobody would have accepted that this team was any good," he says suddenly. "Well-known people within this county have criticised us time and time again. This fella should be playing and this fella shouldn't, it's all from a point of complete ignorance. That's all I can say about it. Comments were made out of total ignorance, one minute he says something, the following week it's something different. He doesn't go out to training, he's not there all winter, doesn't know what goes on.

"What I wonder is, why criticise your own, why knock your own. Players hear this person on radio and they ask the same question." Not that his protectiveness stops at in-house criticism. He has coursed the odd NUJ member this summer .

So far it's been an eloquent season. There isn't one of us who chorus from the ditch who gave Limerick a fair shot at being in a Munster final this summer, not back when the draw was made and we nodded and said it all looked set for a Tipp-Cork final, that the era of insurgency in Munster was dead.

Cregan is still there and still passionate. With Liam Griffin gone and Ger Loughnane silent hurling needs that. He talks on. About Sexton Street and Harty Cup days. His year was the first of four Hartys for the school. No sign that anything like that will happen again soon.

Now, it's 1993 since Sexton street won a Harty but when he thinks about it there's five Sexton Street boys on the panel and himself and Joe Grimes and Derry O'Donovan in the bootroom and an under-21 All-Ireland taken last year which certain people accused him of trying to take credit for when he merely blooded some of the players so they'd be ready in the future. Don't get him started on that.

This week has been crazy. Work has intervened to keep his head clear of hurling for large blocks of the day. It's the busy season at Newcastle West golf club where he is the manager. Being busy is welcome therapy. "And sometimes if I get half an hour during the day I'll go out in the sun and look for a rock and just sit and relax and think about it all." About being still here about still giving to this game. He says that this year the wheel has turned for him. He likes the lads, he says again, they are a big happy family.

But? "But we've won nothing yet. Tipp are the extreme favourites and to a lot of people it looks like they have nothing to do, only to beat us. They'd be afraid of Cork maybe but they certainly won't be afraid of us. So we'll have to see how that works out."

And he says it as if it were a game of blackjack and he's wondering what card will turn up next. Only the eyes betray him. None of this is about serendipity or the music of chance. It's body and soul, blood and breath, and that's why he does it still.