THE end of the affair.

Clare, the most beloved of recent hurling champions, took their leave of us yesterday just as the summer began its blossom. As it was in their time of glory, so it was in defeat. Clare were gracious, gentlemanly and dignified as they bowed out. Limerick's joy was raucous enough to shake the heavens.

If there is a better hurling game this summer we will mark the year down as being of special vintage. If a game gives us a more unexpected final act we will accuse the gods of meddling.

Some will argue that games of the past have produced hurling of greater beauty. Few will have seen more compelling drama. Here was a match which swung with shocking finality away from the All Ireland champions just as the stopwatch denied them another breath. For just a second the 43,534 crowd were shocked into silence as the final whistle blew.

For most of the game Clare had outhurled Limerick. The All Ireland champions' fullback line had held the Limerick full forward line to a single point in the course of the game. Clare had spurned goal chance after goal chance. Eamon Taaffe had seen an astonishing shot intercepted desperately by Mike Nash.

A team can legislate for everything but this. Clare conceded four points in the last five minutes and all the while we thought that Limerick couldn't win without scoring a goal. For the previous 20 minutes Clare had dominated, pressing forward in waves trying to stretch their lead to four points. One more score would have put Limerick on their knees.

And yet it was Limerick who prevailed with a flurry of astonishing scores from play. One from Gary Kirby, two from substitute Barry Foley and finally, as the game moved to the death, a truly heroic contribution from Ciaran Carey.

Somewhere in the twilight zone between Carey's first motion towards the ball and the completion of the act of receipt Clare must have known that their odyssey was ended. There can have been no player on the field to whom Clare would have less liked to lose possession. If Limerick needed a dependable hero he was always likely to be wearing the number six jersey. Carey took the ball 40 yards into the heart of the Clare defence, looked as if he had lost possession, turned and struck cleanly off his right hand side. Seconds later the final whistle blew.

Limerick took up a lost thread at the Gaelic Grounds yesterday, exhibiting a resilience which might well have been lost in the traumas which befell them in the past two seasons. Two years ago in an All Ireland final they watched helplessly as Offaly blew past them in the last five minutes of an astonishing All Ireland final.

Last year, still recovering from that setback, they were brushed aside by Clare in a historic Munster final.

Yesterday their constancy, their relentless hunger and their wounded pride were the weapons they brought to the closing stages. That armoury was too much for Clare.

Games like this seldom raise the thunderclaps which the advance forecasts suggest. Yet in the second half at the Gaelic Grounds yesterday they hurled a storm. Ger Loughnane, besotted by the grand game even in defeat, came to the winning dressingroom and offered tributes.

"I was never part of anything like today. We came in there at the traffic lights today and we saw a sea of people pouring down to the ground and it was like something we'd heard about from our fathers and grandfathers. It was one of the great games of hurling. Where would you see hurling like that, games like that."

Loughnane stood in the middle of the dressingroom, his presence drawing a respectful silence from a Limerick team which at that minute hardly seemed capable of silence.

"There's no need for a lie detector test if I tell you that I'd like to see Limerick go all the way. Off the field you couldn't meet people of better quality than Limerick. On the field there's no hurlers of better quality. Lads look, there's no point in jumping Becher's Brook if you're going to fall at the next fence."

The smattering of applause for Loughnane's generous words had just started when Ciaran Carey was smuggled through the dressingroom door and delivered to his teammates from the arms of his county's people outside. A great roar erupted. In his eight years playing for Limerick Carey has moved to the heart of this team, captaining it and supplying what derring do they possess.

Yesterday his intervention came just minutes after he had been switched to midfield, which many consider to be his best position. Limerick had struggled to find a cutting edge all afternoon, lacking the players with which to run at Clare and seeing attack after attack repelled by the extraordinary full back line of the Lohan brothers and Mike O'Halloran.

"I had nothing really in my mind when I got the ball," said Carey when his team mates had finished trying to squeeze the life out of him, except that I was going to go till I scored a point or got a free."

On such simple determination and sublime skill great hurling games swing. Limerick move onto a Munster final with Tipperary at the same venue