We don't want to relinquish the glory of our times - Not just yet

LIMERICK'S recent run of All-Ireland senior hurling success is the exact opposite of an entire lifetime that went before it.

Apart from the 1973 blip in the litany of failure, the county's hurlers were even more effective than the footballers of Mayo when it came to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Ever since the curtain came down on the Mackey era in the 1940s, they promised, they occasionally progressed but, when push came to shove, it always came tumbling down whenever they came within smelling distance of success.

Saturday, we'll be just two steps away from becoming one of the three greatest teams in the history of hurling. Yet after experiencing more success in the past five years than in the entire century that preceded it, it's still difficult to shake off the self-doubt of the imposter.

Sure, we always dreamed of greatness like anyone else but, when it's thrust there in front of us, we're still not sure of how to handle it.

Maybe it's part of our makeup. Corkmen believe they're God's chosen people, Tipp men know they're tougher than anyone else, success in Kilkenny is just a fact of life and, when you move away from hurling, your average Dub’ can't even comprehend how anyone else could rate a mention in the natural order of things.

But whenever he reassembles with his mates with the green flares and the headbands under the scoreboard, a Limerickman kinda hopes for success but is already preparing himself for disappointment.

Even when we dominated in other sports like in All-Ireland League Club Rugby in the 1980s and 1990s or in the League of Ireland a decade before that, it was always tempered with the suspicion of whether we really deserved to be here.

Every success was met with speculation over whether this was as good as it would get and now was the time to readjust to the lean years ahead.

We've now five years into walking on air. And Goddamit, we wouldn't say no to another. Yeah, despite ourselves, the platform of our expectations has inched higher.

Those of us who remember 1973 and the chaotic, boozy, raucous return of the open trailer taking five hours to cover the six miles between Castleconnell and Arthur's Quay, those of us who witnessed the more managed homecoming of 2018, those of us upon whom the realisation of the potential for a fourth All-Ireland senior hurling title in five years slowly dawned when the late Kilkenny revival ran out of road last summer.

We don't want to relinquish the glory of our times. Not just yet.