"PADDYSWELL," says Ciaran Carey grinning brightly "aye, there's worse places you could go."

There's worse places you could look too for the beginnings of Limerick's hurling revival. Something about Patrickswell runs deep in the scheme of things here. The club is one of those institutions whose importance within the county dwarfs its actual size.

Willie Ryan, Tom's father was a founder member back in the days when the parish sprouted its second senior club. Ballybrown, the eldest of the two clubs in the parish was already in existence for some time. The parish it was felt needed another senior hurling outlet.

Patrickswell, the junior sibling, grew to greater dimensions than Ballybrown. Ciaran Carey, Gary Kirby and Barry Foley of tomorrow's side all spring from the same source, the little club from the parish on the road from Limerick to Adare. The club's membership list has always been studded with great names Sean Foley, Leonard Enright, Phil Bennis Richie Bennis, P J O'Grady Dom Punch.

"We'd all live beside each other nearly in Patrickswell," says Gary Kirby whose celebrity in the parish has been in full bloom since he was a teenager. "There'd be nothing to do in the evenings except climb over the wall and into the field and play hurling."

Kirby has grown to greatness during a time when the club has done likewise. Thirteen county titles since the mid 1960s have mated the maturing of a club founded in the mid 1940s at a meeting in a shed in the parish.

The success has come at such a rate that the club has several recently retired players who have 10 county medals apiece. By the end of the century if the titles keep coming at the right rate Patrickswell will be their county's most successful club ever.

"When I started off playing, we'd had good players in the 70s but we weren't winning that much at underage. I didn't win many things on the way up. I remember, though, Ciaran playing on our minor team when he was 14 and lads around the club saying we were going to have a right good senior team soon.

"I'd say," says Ciaran Carey, "that there's not a better place to learn hurling.

Most of the lads, their houses would back on to the pitch and when we were in school it was always over the wall and into the field. It was like the pool halt for Patrickswell. We'd hang around down there and play a bit. It's still the same.

The club was founded in 1943 but survived only two years before folding again in 1945. In 1947 they reopened for business and have thrived ever since, drawing sustenance from an almighty rivalry with the parish's other senior club, Ballybrown. When Ballybrown reached an All Ireland club hurling final early in the 90s and lost it there was a certain inevitability about Patrickswell matching their feat the very next year.

Nobody seems too sure how Tom Ryan drifted from Patrickswell to Ballybrown. The hurling bloodlines have always been mingled.

Sean Foley, a star in the county green in the early 1970s, is credited with nurturing both the love of the game in several of the succeeding generation. Sean's father played with Ballybrown. Sean himself played senior with Patrickswell for 25 years.

"I don't know," he says "if that tells you more about Patrickswell than it does about me. I started when I was about 16 in the seniors playing in a full back line with Richie Bennis and Tony O'Brien (in whose memory the club's pitch is named)."

The Patrickswell dynasties are represented in almost every team the club sends out to do battle in the blue and gold jersey. Another minor final was reached early this month by a team replete with Careys, Foleys and O'Gradys.

The best of them will find themselves in a senior jersey pretty soon. Barry Foley the youngest of Patrickswell's All Ireland final contingent, is a nephew of Sean Foley's and he started with the club in the parish leagues before he was 10.

"We always had good teams. I remember the parish leagues when we were young, John Enright used to bring about 30 of us down to the field. I started off in goal. We won one game by 7-18 to no score and it raining and I never touched the ball. So I never played in goal again. That was it then, just playing away.

"They brought me into the senior team against Western Gaels as a sub one day when I was 15. I had three uncles playing with me so there was no chance of a row. This is my fourth year on the seniors."

The priorities at present are persuading a neighbour to sell the club enough land to provide for another pitch. Usage on the existing pitch is so heavy that groups of players have to book during peak season.

That's the future though. Tomorrow three men of the `Well' provide the spine and the flash for another Limerick on an All Ireland. No place deserves the glory more, no place will celebrate longer.