Should Waterford win the All-Ireland final on September 3rd, Limerick's drought of 44 years will pale only when compared to Dublin's 79 - it doesn't make for happy reading.
One man who is doing his best to address this issue from the bottom up is Cian Lynch.
A prodigious young talent who has had success at schools, college, minor and U-21 level, his emergence onto Limerick's senior hurling panel came with great excitement - and not a small amount of added expectation.
Lynch, as his hurling style suggests, is not your typical young sportsperson. Speaking ahead of the Bord Gáis Hurling U-21 All-Ireland semi-finals this weekend, the Patrickswell club man spoke openly about his experience thus far:
You’re training since October and November and they’re the hard nights when you’re training and you don’t have a championship match until May or June. You’re training and slogging away thinking, "why are you doing it?"
A student in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Lynch feels that 'There is way more to life than hurling.'
You see a lot of the lads who put a lot into hurling, and at the end of the day, it's a sport.
Even in the last few months, I see it in myself that you take it too serious and you forget that you’ve a life, a family and friends outside of the hurling zone.
You forget the reality that you actually need to go to college, get your degree and try to get a full-time job. But it’s very hard the way hurling has gone, you’re training nearly six days a week. You’re forgetting that you’re here to live a life.
Also present at the promotional event was Galway's Thomas Monaghan, a fellow Mary I student who played alongside Lynch as the college triumphantly claimed the Fitzgibbon Cup earlier this year.
Although the pair will be on opposing sides in Semple Stadium this Saturday evening, Lynch has no time for any unnecessary, pre-match antics:
These things kind of make it a bit of fun as well. There’s times when you can take hurling a bit too serious. You’re looking at opponents thinking they’re robots, but at the end of the day, we’re all the same age, we’re all in the same boat, so it’s nice to get out and talk to each other and get to know the players from other counties.
Lynch's grounded exterior does not diminish from his unerring desire to win however. Having tasted success at every level, Lynch, like every other hurler, knows that, 'when you’re coming close to the end of August and the ball is hopping off the ground, you kind of say, ‘Jesus, it’s worthwhile.’
As Ger Loughnane put it, "Some people say hurling isn't very important in the scheme of things. But to hurling people hurling is the scheme of things."
