Gearóid Hegarty: Limerick's level-headed, soft-handed, lab-created nightmare

Like Brian Fenton, another all-time great with limited underage pedigree, Gearóid Hegarty can lay claim to being one of modern Gaelic Games' most celebrated late developers.

Fenton didn't make the famous Dublin minor squad of 2011 - the core of the 'golden generation' - and was essentially told that it wasn't going to happen for him.

Likewise, Hegarty was nowhere near the sublimely gifted Limerick minor team of 2014, which boasted Cian Lynch, Seamus Flanagan, Sean Finn, Barry Nash (then full-forward), Tom Morrissey, Peter Casey, and which was surprisingly beaten by an unfancied Kilkenny side in that year's All-Ireland final.

There are perhaps parallels to the Dublin '11 minor team in that respect. Clearly the recipe for a relentlessly successful senior team is a gut-wrenching All-Ireland final loss at minor grade.

When Hegarty first did make his mark at inter-county level, it wasn't in hurling. Much like Limerick's revered tactical whizz on the line, Paul Kinnerk, Hegarty's first involvement with inter-county teams was in the big-ball code.

He had played senior for the Limerick footballers a full year before he got any look-in with the hurlers at any age-grade.

Oddly, for someone now associated with the bright lights of elite hurling, his first championship appearance as a Limerick senior GAA player was about as inauspicious as it could possibly get - as a 55th minute substitute for the Limerick footballers in their Munster first-round loss to Tipperary in 2014.

Always tall and rangy, it was under the tutelage of then Limerick football manager John Brudair that he began his evolution into the Hulk-like figure we see bestriding the hurling championship today.

"He brought me in and that completely opened my eyes in terms of what