July 1992 and you are 15 years old. Life is good, trundling along with the everyday woes and concerns, highs and lows of any teenager. You know the kind of stuff.

It's the summer holidays, and the European Championships in Sweden have been taking up most of the sports headlines, even though Jack Charlton and his team have failed to qualify for a major tournament for the first time since 1986. It's still fun to watch, as the Danes make the most of their last minute invitation, courtesy of the outbreak of hostilities in the then Yugoslavia, by playing swashbuckling football and becoming champions of Europe.

The Barcelona Olympics have yet to happen, so the glory that Michael Carruth and Wayne McCullough bring to the country has yet to materialise.

But in Clare, your home county, this is about to become a summer that will turn wild and crazy, sending the county on a journey of discovery.

Being a Clare fan you are used to failure, have heard all the hard luck stories and witnessed some embarrassing defeats. You were there in 1986 when a classy Cork team pulled away in your first Munster Hurling Final. You saw the highlights on TV when Gerry McInerney missed a last minute chance to win the league title against Galway in 1987. You were in Semple Stadium in 1988 with your father when Clare were given the mother and father of beatings by Cork, before getting drowned in a ferocious shower of rain that only added to your misery.

The fact that you have a football obsessed father from Kerry and a mother from Tipperary means that you have other sides to “fall back on” when Clare's interest in the championship inevitably peters out with a whimper. But it still doesn't give you the same buzz as when you see the saffron and blue running out to commence battle.

Which brings us to this Sunday in July twenty years ago, and the Munster Football Final. Clare have not won the provincial title since 1917, but thanks to the open draw, pushed through by Noel Walsh, your county now finds itself up against the kingpins of the game in Kerry. Granted, this is a Kerry team that is going through a transitional phase, but they are still seen as the aristocrats of the game.

This particular Clare team, under the tutelage of Mayo's John Maughan, was making some positive noises, having run the Kingdom close for an hour of the contest at Cusack Park the year before. They had also won the All Ireland B Championship, but most pundits still see this encounter in Limerick as a step too far.

You take your place on the gravel covered bank in the Gaelic Grounds. It's not a full house by any means, but there is still a healthy crowd in attendance. You hope, Christ you hope. At the very least you don't want to see your county embarrassed, cut apart on a major stage for the rest of the country to laugh at.

That game is one of the first times when you truly become caught up in and swept away by a game. You find yourself giving vent to emotions that you never knew existed before. It's mind boggling as your county goes toe to toe with the famed Kingdom. They don't end up on the flat of their arses, they don't lie down and become happy losers.

Even a missed Gerry Killeen penalty does not put this side off their stride, and before you know it they have garnered two goals in the second half and are in pole position as the winning post appears. You feel a degree of sympathy for one of your sporting heroes Jack O'Shea when he hits the upright with an effort late on, in what turns out to be the great man's last match in the green and gold.

The final whistle is greeted with sheer abandon as saffron and blue invades the pitch. Your father is disappointed, but knows what this victory means to the game in Clare. Men such as Seamus Clancy, Tom Morrissey, Gerry Killeen, Padraig Conway and Francis McInerney have become giants in the county.

That was the game that caused Marty Morrissey to utter his immortal phrase about a cow not being milked in Clare for a week. It was a sentence that seemed to catch the novelty of the moment, even if us townies wouldn't have known one end of a cow from the udder, so to speak.