Waterford have been auditioning so long for an All-Ireland final they seem to deserve the big stage. Seán Moranwonders are they ready for it

IS IT REALLY 10 years? The hurling season of 1998 has already been extensively commemorated: the craziness in Clare what with the three priests and the Colin Lynch affair and Jimmy Cooney whistling up early and Offaly mounting a coup against Babs and regenerating out of nowhere to become the first back-door All-Ireland winners.

But it was also a beginning for Waterford. Defeats in the National League final to Cork and in the Munster final after a nearly-won draw and replay against All-Ireland champions Clare that led to another agonising setback against Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final were rites of passage for a county on the move.

Firstly under the baton of current Cork manager Gerald McCarthy and then under his namesake and former team-mate Justin the county would progress to a decade that could have been indisputably the most successful in its history - three Munster titles and a National League - but for the nagging absence of one distinction. It's not even that the county hasn't added to its two All-Irelands but that it still waits for a first final appearance since 1963.

Tomorrow at Croke Park the struggle is renewed, against the season's most improved team. Tipperary, unbeaten this year, have taken a first Munster title in seven years and stand in the way.

Having a high-profile team over an extended period has, however, had benefits for hurling in Waterford: greater competitiveness at minor level, success in the Tony Forristal competition (effectively All-Ireland under-14) and landmark achievements by De La Salle in the colleges sphere.

"It's been huge in terms of underage and the numbers playing," says Joey Carton, Munster Council games manager and part of the management that brought home the 1992 under-21 All-Ireland.

"Development can be a vicious circle. Success at senior level brings on the underage but you need underage development to keep successful at senior. The profile of the game has been huge, particularly in the city. Even camogie is on the way up, which I'd attribute to the influence of the hurling. There are more kids playing than ever, young people are wearing the county jersey and we bring good crowds to matches for a small county."

Tomorrow those crowds head for Croke Park. This year's second GAA All-Ireland hurling semi-final against Tipperary will be Waterford's sixth in 11 years but the Rubicon has not yet been crossed.

Through a neat piece of symmetry the county that was there at the beginning will be there at what may be the end for some of the players who set out on the journey against Tipp in Cork in June 1998.

"It was very important to us," says the former player and selector Shane Aherne of that day a decade ago when he was one of Gerald McCarthy's management team. "I came from an era where we had a good team but couldn't beat Tipp. There was a tear in my eye on the field after we'd won. We'd played poorly against Kerry and knew that Tipperary would be the real acid test. We'd had a good enough league but were saying to the lads before this, 'This is where you prove yourselves, this is where you do it'."

He recalls the sense of promise and giddy anticipation, the effort that everyone was putting in, the schemes and stratagems.

"I remember we got information that they were going to put Declan Ryan in the corner on Brian Flannery, so we got the defence to stay in a huddle together before the game instead of lining out.

"We'd said to Tom Feeney, 'You go with Declan Ryan unless he plays full forward', because he'd have the size and strength. When the teams lined up that's what happened and it was a great boost for our players that we'd prepared for the eventuality . . . There was an aura about us."

A survey of the future that stretched out ahead of them in 1998 was cause for optimism. Would he then have been happy with what was to follow?

"I'd have been very much unhappy that we didn't even get to an All-Ireland final."

Each semi-final defeat inspired its own apologia. Inexperience, the lengthy gaps between winning Munster and playing All-Ireland semi-finals, the inadequate gap between winning a quarter-final, and the semi-final suspension of John Mullane, et cetera, et cetera.

But Waterford were there as contenders and hurled bolts of lightning that illuminated many summer days. Several of their big wins became instant classics, to be filed away for posterity there and then. Nonetheless, the attrition of defeat in All-Ireland semi-finals wore away at the team.

Justin McCarthy stayed on too long. The fracturing of the relationship culminated in a listless defeat by Clare last June.

McCarthy's departure mid-season and his swift replacement by the former Clare goalkeeper Davy Fitzgerald have been the context of a subdued season by Waterford's standards.

Fitzgerald's coaching experience to date has most prominently featured Fitzgibbon Cup successes with Limerick IT, for whom a number of tomorrow's Tipperary team lined out. Untried at intercounty level, he has restored a sense of enthusiasm to the panel and players speak highly of the atmosphere at training.

So far though, performances have remained subdued, and unexpectedly narrow wins against Offaly and Wexford mean for the first time in 10 years Waterford go into an All-Ireland semi-final without discernible momentum.

The team still needed the change, according to the Wexford manager John Meyler, whose team were beaten in the quarter-finals and who believes there have been identifiable changes in style.

"There were obvious tensions in the camp and Fitzy has come in and livened up the team. He was right to jizz them up because they were deflated after the Clare match. Davy is more static and his lines stay put. They're a bit like Kilkenny with the half forwards pushing out a bit and creating space for the full forwards and hitting quick, low, hard ball into them. Dan (Shanahan) still floats and ends up on the square, ghosting in on high ball, but there's more of a plan now - you wouldn't know how Justin's teams were going to line out."

Aherne agrees that the style is less spontaneous but feels it's a direction the team needed to take. "They're doing more work. Justin McCarthy's style was more to go out and enjoy it and just move the ball, kind of kamikaze hurling. Maybe now they're more negative but they needed a better balance between negative and instinctive hurling."

The big tactical departure by Fitzgerald has been in the deployment of the team's most celebrated hurler, Ken McGrath, whose pivotal influence at centre back has been sacrificed in an effort to address the chronic weaknesses in the full-back line.

Although there is a consensus the team needed to stop spilling goals in big matches, there is no great affection for the sight of McGrath chained to the square in big matches and increasing scepticism that the trade-off is worth the loss out the field.

"My view is that he shouldn't be in there. He's a leader and he drives the team on. The nearer he is to the opposition goal the better I'd like it but I can see why they did it. You're not going to win much in championship by leaking four and five goals."

Meyler, whose team took the shine off the experiment with three goals in the quarter-final, says that whereas Fitzgerald was right to focus on the defensive weakness the proposed solution is questionable.

"I remember talking to Ger Mac (although from Wexford, Meyler is a clubmate of Gerald McCarthy at St Finbarr's in Cork) when I was starting out to manage teams and he said to me, 'Start at number one and work your way out' - not start at number 15 and work your way back.

"There's still a question mark there. I know they needed to defend their goal but Ken's a different type of hurler. I don't think he looked comfortable there. The farther back he goes the better for the opposition because at centre back he can drive them forward and his distribution into the forwards is excellent."

Tipperary, reborn this season, aren't slow to embrace favouritism and that, Carton believes, will suit Waterford.

"Tipp don't really know what team will turn up and they're hugely confident. For instance, I heard a discussion the other day among some Tipp people discussing whether Micheál Webster should play on Noel Hickey. Now obviously the team aren't doing that, but those . . . attitudes can rub off."

Aherne is dismissive of any psychological implications in the dismal semi-final record, seeing the setbacks as individual misfortunes rather than a pattern.

"Media like coming up with hoodoos. First it was a Croke Park hoodoo and when Waterford put in some good displays there it became a semi-final hoodoo.

"Waterford players dream of reaching an All-Ireland final. You might look at Kilkenny last Sunday and say you don't really want to be facing them but this team deserve the stage."

They've been auditioning long enough.