Persistence as much as excellence marks out Dan

All-Ireland SHC Quarter-final replay: Tom Humphrieson how Waterford's talisman had more than his share of lean times before he became an overnight success in 2004

It is a testimony to Dan Shanahan and the place he has established in the scheme of things that our happy memories of the wondrous climax to last week's drawn game with Cork have their sleeves tugged by one little doubt. If this was two teams at the very top of their game how was it that Waterford failed almost entirely to involve Shanahan in the fraught endgame?

Apart from a puck-out on 64 minutes which he cashed in from out on the left sideline to level the scores yet again, Waterford made Shanahan redundant. As long adrenalin-whipped balls from the half-back line and midfield dropped wide, Shanahan scanned the skies waiting for the next pass.

He finished with 1-3 on a big day in Croke Park against one of the big two. His total for such occasions prior to Sunday was three points in three semi-finals. Two in 1998 filched off Liam Keoghan of Kilkenny and one scored last year against Cork.

And the residual impression of last Sunday was there was more in him. Waterford have learned to keep him away from the force field of SeáÓg's excellence and a couple of minutes on the edge of the square where he was exposed to the granite chest and octopus tentacles of Diarmuid O'Sullivan was enough to persuade Justin McCarthy that Shanahan would be better off roaming the prairies out around the '40.

For most of the game wherever he went his half-back line sought him. After eight minutes of play he had after all scored one of those goals which define not just his excellence but the best way to tap that excellence.

Tony Browne glanced up and spotted Shanahan drifting in that deceptively relaxed way he has. Brown dropped a measured ball into one of the great buckets that Shanahan has for hands and the big man bearing down on goal picked a spot low in the far corner and put the ball there off his left side. Did he ever stop to think that this audacity was going to be attempted against Donal Óg Cusack. Probably not.

In a memorable Harty Cup semi-final 12 years ago, Dan put three past the Midleton CBS 'keeper, one Donal Óg Cusack. Still the perfection and confidence of the execution surprised us.

Early in the second half Ken McGrath burst out of defence like a man with a posse of paid assassins on his trail. He picked Shanahan out down the left sideline. Long pass, catch and Shanahan created the illusion that he had space and leisure enough to measure the angles and elevations with a theodolite before picking a wonderful point. Hard things made to look surprisingly simple.

We shouldn't be surprised by Dan Shanahan any more, really. It's true that in the seasons between 2001 and 2003 it looked as if Dan would go under and become a casualty of Waterford's relentless hunger for upward mobility.

His first name was more often prefixed with the word Desperate than the word Big and he was a lightning rod for the frustrations of the terraces. Even when he was doing well as, against Wexford in '03, he kept hitting walls. That day the wall was Damien Fitzhenry who made at least two incredible saves to keep Shanahan's barren run going. He looked like one of those extras always on the verge of being written out.

You run a finger back through the astonishing line of Shanahan's career and even though you know the story by now it is still startling to see that his first championship goal came just three years ago in Thurles, against Clare in the first round of the Munster championship.

It is amazing to keep going through the seven barren years before that when Shanahan sustained his place in a developing Waterford squad with the occasional point and stints sitting on the bench counting the water bottles.

When Shanahan's work paid off he hit a gusher. He scored six goals in the Munster championship of 2004 before the well ran dry, giving rise to a slew of press box jokes about how if Shanahan were a cyclist or an athlete his improvements would be so incredible as to draw damning suspicion and innuendo.

Including that opening hat-trick, he has scored 17-35 in 18 championship games in four seasons. For a man who has once said that after playing in the Tony Forristal tournament at the age of 14 (scoring 2-1 in the second half of his debut against Wexford) that he knew he would be good enough to make it, there must have been times when that faith was tested and stretched.

There is no doubt he has improved his game and he has got physically stronger but for those who watched him develop the miracle is Shanahan's persistence not his sudden metamorphosis into a star hurler. He always had those qualities necessary for the big time.

BACK IN 1988 WHEN the GAA started the mini-sevens series, young Dan in fourth class in Lismore Primary School could be found in goal as Waterford won out in Munster. He was by then already a natural forward but the spot between the sticks was a compromise which recognised his talent and his youth.

Soon his talent would suffer no such compromises. He holds five Waterford under-21 county medals, including a three in a row, and a first medal won when he was just 14 when he was brought in against Ballygunner in the final and scored 1-2.

The following year Lismore were in trouble in the senior semi-final against Roanmore, a point down with minutes left, Shanahan, 15 by then, was thrown in and scored a point. Lismore escaped with the narrowest of victories. In the final against Passage on a bad, wet night they threw him in with 20 minutes left. He won his first and only senior county medal that day as a 16-year-old.

The narrative of his career has never been ordinary. The following year as a first year minor he would lose a county minor final to Mount Sion when having put Lismore in the lead by two points he saw a young fella called Ken McGrath smash a 35-yard free to the net for Mount Sion.

Part of his trouble has been the expectations he brought upon himself at such an early age. He was first drafted to the Waterford senior panel in 1997 but was cut loose soon after over a minor disciplinary matter. He was too good to ignore though and made his championship debut against Kerry the following summer and scored six points.

Next day he had two off Conal Bonnar and in the Munster final he took Anthony Daly for three points. Daly was in his pomp at the time and had done well against Cork in the semi-final.

When Shanahan scored his third of the day he whooped to Daly, "You're not on Seánie McGrath now", a typically good-natured jibe.

He scored another couple in the semi-final against Kilkenny and had a decent hour on Seán Óg Ó hAilpíwhile others were floundering in the following year's Munster semi-final but thereafter he seemed, like his team-mates, to run out of road.

He is and was a ferocious trainer, however, under Colm Bonner and Gerry Fitzpatrick, both of whom have worked with him in their capacity.

"He wasn't as physically strong as he has become," says Seán Prendergast, who coached Shanahan from primary school in Lismore right through the grades and was the man who popped him into the fray at under-21 and senor level while he was still a teen.

"He is very physically strong because of the work he has done. He was always tall and always had good hands but he can stand his ground now. His reading is excellent and so is his patience. When things were going wrong for him, Dan wouldn't always have had the maturity to see it though. Now he is exceptionally dangerous. He doesn't do wides which means he takes a lot of watching."

He is 30 now, almost has his hands on his third All Star and with the possibility of three more big days in Croke Park he could collect a hurler of the year award this winter too. He would be as popular a winner as he is deserving. His gregarious nature is seldom better displayed than after matches when he gallops past the media to the Waterford dressingroom, there to grab his false teeth before emerging to hold court, his right inner forearm bearing that legacy from the bad days, a tattoo which says "If You Don't Know Me Don't Judge Me."

The strapping on his left wrist is always inscribed in marker with the words, Work Work Work.

All that remains is basically all that remains of this season. Waterford's need of wins in Croke Park is something the existence of the current team hinges on. Having come to the cathedral before and having been forced to genuflect to Cork and to Kilkenny, they must beat them both for the All-Ireland which their story demands and hurling needs. When it happens - if it happens - there will be no more popular medallist than Dan Shanahan, who personifies the ethos of the team he plays for.

And in Lismore he is still what he always was, a phenomenon. When he is free he arrives down to the field togged out and ready to train and they have to tell him to take it easy, that he can't serve too many masters.

They watch him and what he has become and as they look to add another senior title to that one they took 14 years ago they look down the line to Dan's brothers, James, who is 22, and to Maurice, who is 17. History is symmetrical sometimes.

Last year the Lismore juniors were in the county final against Fenor on an October day and they were losing early in the second half when 16-year-old Maurice Shanahan was introduced. He scored 1-3 and put the game away for Lismore.

Reminded everyone of the day when young Dan came in senior at the same age with his Uncle Tom playing at full forward. Same happy ending too.

More episodes to come but nothing as unlikely surely as the tale of Big Dan and his career of two halves.