When the lap of honour ended in front of Hill 16 everybody in the caravan of celebration gathered for a photograph. It was tiered, like a wedding cake. Down the front were toddlers and babes-in-arms and kids who weren’t born when this Limerick team first planted a flag at the summit and swore that the mountain belonged to them. For everyone in the photograph, in different ways, this has been a way of life: players, partners, family. They had other things to do and other reasons to be, but they never left the mountain. Greatness was an endlessly needy pursuit that couldn’t be compartmentalised or rearranged in their schedules. It challenged them to stay a course that had no ultimate destination. The horizon kept moving.When Croke Park emptied the Limerick players sat in clusters on the grass in the late afternoon warmth while their children played with the golden streamers that had been fired from the stop of the Hogan Stand. If there is a place where ecstasy meets bliss, this must have been it. Just for a while, the greatest arena in Irish sport was their back garden on a balmy day.Their sixth All-Ireland was a monument to everything they held to be true. They won the fight first and left the underdogs nowhere to go. They turned the middle third into a force field of hits and head winds. Galway’s new system is predicated on finding a way through the middle third, but on Limerick’s best days that has always been their turf. There was one passage of play in front of the Cusack Stand, in the middle of the first half, when Galway made four quick passes from the left corner back position and gained about 50 metres, but every transfer of the ball was stressed and none of the Galway players had a second to think or look for a better way out. Even though no Limerick hand had touched the ball, it was being moved their terms. Eventually Galway were funnelled towards a dead end and Gearóid Hegarty took the ball away.Limerick's Gearóid Hegarty and Daithí Burke of Galway in action on Sunday. Photograph: Bryan Keane/INPHO At its core the game was defined by turnovers. In the semi-final Galway had hit Cork for 1-15 from that source; here they were stripped of the ball for 1-17. This is the metric that cuts to the soul of Limerick. It is not just the scores that they fashion from turnovers, but it is also the exchange of energy. They sucked the life from Galway.Over the winter this group renewed their vows to each other. During the last two summers there had been too many intimations of their mortality. They lost games in ways they didn’t recognise. [ Limerick hallmark their greatness with devastating All-Ireland final defeat of Galway ]This year, there was no attempt at cuteness or saving something for later: they fielded teams in the preseason competition that would have been plausible in the league and fielded championship-strength teams in every National League match. Everything was escalated. Their long-established players were not spared or minded. Their only purpose was total domination. They didn’t need to say it: they screamed it every day that they hit the ground running. Not everything had been smooth, though. Against Cork and Clare in their last two games, they had scored just 1-21. Here, they reached that total 18 minutes into the second half. By then they were 10 points clear.Over the years, 30 points had been their standing target, and for the fifth time in six All-Ireland finals they reached it. Their average this season had been 31 points and, on the biggest day, they beat that number by a point. Everything about the performance was a testament to their identity and their values. Limerick's Cian Lynch celebrates after the match. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/INPHO Their vaulting power has always been in the collective. Cian Lynch is one of the most gifted hurlers we have seen, but he dominated centre field in the first half on Sunday with tackles and flicks and relentless pressing and smart, simple passes; nothing ostentatious, no bright feathers, no self-serving.Limerick had 10 different scorers on Sunday, but 12 different players made an assist. How many of them were short pop passes from somebody who could have had a shot but was thinking first about the greater good? For the second game in a row Hegarty failed to score, but once again he was immense. Five scores originated from his build-up play and he is surely the Hurler of the Year-elect now.Others were coming from a different place. Aaron Gillane’s season collapsed after the league final, first with an injury, then with a long depression in form. When Limerick’s last two games were in the melting pot, he was whipped off and, for the first time in his Limerick career, Gillane was seen as part of the problem and not part of the solution. Limerick's Aaron Gillane and Cillian Trayers of Galway. Photograph: Bryan Keane/INPHO He left that behind him. Gillane scored four points from four shots and was involved in five other scores. It was his laser pass to Cathal O’Neill that created the goal that broke the game apart. For probably the first time since the second half of the 2023 All-Ireland final, Limerick were the sum of their parts. Nobody can match that sum.[ If this is the last tango for John Kiely’s Limerick, they went out staying true to their own excellence ]At the beginning of the year, they stepped on the high wire without a net. For a team that had won everything, time and again, there must have been an element of fear. What if the essence of them was shrunken now and soured? Failure this year would have finished them. They must have confronted that. Like all great champions they must have acknowledged their vulnerability and faced that challenge first. “You want to see the team achieve their potential and I felt the last two years that we left a bit of ourselves after us,” Limerick manager John Kiely said afterwards. “We just didn’t produce the quality in those key moments to get across the line.” That’s what they found. Almost three hours after the final whistle, everyone that Cian Lynch had name-checked in his victory speech gathered for a photograph in front of the Hogan Stand. About 24 of them, the architects of Limerick’s high performance. Will it be the last time they will be together, all of them? Kiely said he wasn’t thinking beyond tomorrow and the day after. The year of looking forward had ended.In a moment of giddiness Paul Kinnerk took a hurley and fired a ball towards the Hill 16 goal from 65 metres, tight against the sideline. Kinnerk’s intercounty career had been as a footballer, but the sliotar flew over the bar like a guided drone and the hooting and hollering echoed around the empty stadium. “I’m gonna clean up my earth and build a heaven off the ground,” Paul Weller sang.That is what they did.