SEÁN MORAN ON GAELIC GAMES:While Waterford have at last reached an All-Ireland final, that sense of closure and destination has been denied to Dublin

W ITH ONE punditry-defying swerve the weekend sent both championships hurtling down switched tracks. There's no point pretending not to be surprised when you're wrong but there wasn't a whole lot of evidence this season to back the chances of Tyrone and Waterford.

There was chat after Tyrone's demolition of Dublin that Waterford's hurlers could take heart from the confounding of expectations but Saturday's football quarter-final turn-up was capable of being interpreted either way.

Optimistically it could be said teams with experience and proven players can never be written off, but equally it could have been argued teams with a history of faltering on big occasions often make a habit of it.

Still, All-Ireland hurling semi-finals have form in this regard. Six times in the nine years of this decade one of the penultimate round of matches in the hurling championship has defied the prevailing consensus. Ironically Waterford had been the fall guys on a couple of those occasions, but this time, unburdened by expectation, they closed the deal.

Better late than never and a fitting way to mark a significant 10th anniversary: a decade ago Waterford reached through the qualifiers a first All-Ireland semi-final in 35 years. That eventful year also saw Offaly stage a coup against Michael Keating's management and go on under a swiftly arranged change of management to build on a perfunctory win over Antrim by defeating Clare, the Munster champions, in the All-Ireland semi-final and ultimately to beat Kilkenny in the final.

It wouldn't take too much research to isolate a few variations on that 1998 scenario but there is a sense of welcome relief about Waterford's reaching an All-Ireland final on their sixth attempt. Their presence raises a glimmer of promise that next month's final could be more competitive than looked likely after Kilkenny's magisterial dismissal of Cork.

Capable of matching the champions' physicality, Waterford would need to find their best form - which hasn't been evident this season, even on Sunday - and react positively to the team's first experience of All-Ireland Sunday since 1963. It's good the side waiting longest for a final appearance has finally made it as far as September.

That sense of closure and destination was emphatically denied to Dublin on Saturday and the county found itself like a blue counter that hits 99 on snakes and ladders. You'd wonder do Paul Caffrey and his management team regret not bowing out a year ago. Up to that point the track record had been one of laborious but empirical progress. This season has ended up as regression. There were tough breaks in the end with Alan Brogan's injury and the inexplicable scale of Tyrone's improvement but the vulnerability when opponents turn up the temperature remains.

That wasn't, however, a failing that developed under the outgoing management.

Arguably since the 1989 loss to Cork in that year's All-Ireland semi-final and certainly since the four-match series against Meath ended in defeat 17 years ago Dublin have incrementally lost the intimidating aura that was built up in the 1970s when only an exceptional Kerry team could expect to beat them in championship.

During the late 1980s the relationship with Meath became the dominant challenge for Dublin but at a time when Seán Boylan's side were the best team in the country. The abiding feeling in the city was once Meath faded, Dublin would resume the business of winning Leinster and subsequently All-Irelands now that Kerry had declined.

It never really happened. Control in Leinster was re-established but the expected fruits of that success were slow to materialise. Dublin were the primary victims of Ulster's resurgence at the start of the last decade, losing to all three of the province's All-Ireland winners, Donegal, Derry and Down.

An interesting statistic in 1992 before the All-Ireland with Donegal was that Dublin hadn't lost to a Connacht county since the 1930s and had never been beaten by Ulster champions at All-Ireland level. That record went by the board and since then Dublin have lost 64 per cent of championship and/or qualifier matches against Ulster opposition.

Even the 1995 All-Ireland success was achieved by falling over the line. The team peaked for the Leinster final demolition of Meath and just about hung on through declining displays against Cork and Tyrone. That team would have been extremely vulnerable under the qualifier system.

Results this season have prompted calls for the system's modification in order to rebalance the All-Ireland quarter-finals in favour of provincial champions.

There are two arguments here. One is that the four champions should, unlike the other 27 counties, be allowed a second chance rather than have to bow out when beaten for the first time. The other is Leinster and Ulster champions have far more to do to reach the last eight than their counterparts in Munster and that this is reflected in the almost constant presence of Cork and Kerry in the last four of the All-Ireland as well as the slip-ups by the Leinster and Ulster champions in quarter-finals. These concerns have emerged, as for the first time three qualifiers and only one provincial winner (Cork, who played the most handicapped quarter-finalists, Kildare, who were facing a fourth match in four weeks) have reached the semi-finals. There may be merit in the argument but such deficiencies are part of the provincial system and as long as the qualifiers are tied into that system there will be a tendency to imbalance.

Congress has already reacted negatively to the proposal to allow provincial champions the advantage of, for instance, home advantage in the All-Ireland quarter-finals and until this season there hadn't been any significant clamour to reward those counties in the same way as has happened in hurling.

Most managers believe the best way to All-Ireland success is to progress through the championship unbeaten, and statistics to date (four All-Irelands in seven years) marginally support that, although no team has won coming down the outside track without already having lifted an All-Ireland.

Ultimately counties will have to decide whether the games are best served by the current provincial format, which - more than the qualifiers - is the biggest source of inequality in the championships. But in Dublin there are more fundamental issues on the table, as there appears to be no format under which the county footballers can thrive.