Nobody said there'd be Déise like this

GAA SHC SEMI-FINAL Waterford 1-20 Tipperary 1-18:AT LAST. Na Déise have reached the promised land. For the last 10 years, watching the Waterford hurling team play in All-Ireland semi-finals has been as compelling and dangerous as getting caught in a lightning storm.

This team has singed the very souls of their people in their long quest to make it back to the September stage for the first time in almost half a century.

Five times they came here on days like this since 1998 and on each time they discovered new dimensions of heartbreak. On a transcendent afternoon at Croke Park, it was as if all that fury and despondency were transformed into a performance that, in truth, not many people believed Waterford could still give.

They met a young and fearless Tipperary team on the rise here. And during several periods when they might have respectably faded from the contest, Waterford rebelled against what seemed to be their fate in life. It finished 1-20 to 1-18 after 53,635 people were treated to a genuine classic, a match that will reverberate through the years. They could not take their eyes off it. They could hardly bear to watch.

"Unbelievable when that whistle went," Ken McGrath mused afterwards. "On other years, we were on the wrong side of it. Thankfully, when the whistle went today, we weren't crying into the jersey. We were delighted."

McGrath, along with Tony Browne and Dan Shanahan, has known all five of those doomed attempts and he must have felt his best chances of playing in an All-Ireland final had passed.

When Waterford last reached the big stage in September 1963 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was still a president.

They last won the McCarthy Cup in 1959 - against Kilkenny.

That was then. Years became decades for Waterford hurling and hurling people turned white waiting for this.

Before the National Anthem here, a minute of silence was observed in honour of Joe Coady, the Waterford hurler from the 1959 gang who died this week.

Maybe then, standing tightly together beneath the photograph of Coady holding his Celtic Cross medal in his grandfather years, this generation of Waterford players came to understand that for all the skill and bravery, for all the roaring days in Croke Park, hurling is a game of ghosts.

And just this June, Waterford looked a haunted team. They were eviscerated by Clare in a match that brought a sad end to the reign of Justin McCarthy.

And then, from left field, in stepped Davy Fitzgerald, the Clare goalkeeping legend, who swapped a turbulent retirement for a dramatic entry to big-time management.

It made sense in retrospect.

If anyone could understand the pains and hurts of Waterford hurling, it was the pale-eyed man from Sixmilebridge.

"There are two bits of emotion for me," he said later. "I am probably after the most difficult year of my life with everything that has gone on in it and I wasn't able to say anything. I still won't say anything.

"But isn't it always funny that at the end of the day there are swings and roundabouts. Personally, I am delighted to be there. But most of all, when I went down the first or second night to training, I could see in the older Waterford players - ye don't have any idea what it means to them to be able to contest a final.

"These guys' hearts and souls are inside of this. I knew I had a special group of players when I went down there. All these guys want is a chance to win Liam MacCarthy and they have it."

And how they earned it, against a fine team. Tipperary made this hurling season. There has been splendour in their honesty as much as their stick craft.

They recreated themselves through the persona of their manager Liam Sheedy, a man whose pulse, one suspects, would remain the same if he found himself swimming with sharks.

Calmness has been the key Tipp quality this year. Yesterday, Waterford opened with a series of points that illuminated all their years of magic, all the sweeping ambition of their scoring.

John Mullane flickered like tungsten wire and lit the sky with one early score that signalled Waterford's intent.

Within 10 minutes Tipperary trailed by six points. But they never blinked. It was 0-10 apiece at half-time and slowly, then, the pace and drama of the match kept soaring until it had reached that delicious, torturous stage where every second seems loaded with possibility and doom.

With 20 minutes to go, Tipp went in front when Shane McGrath, magnificent all season, clipped a point from nothing. The turbo-paced Lar Corbett added another and we waited for the old doubts to destroy Waterford.

Instead, Eoin Kelly, who finished with 1-10, drew a brilliant save from Brendan Cummins and, while lying on the floor, reached out to tap in the first goal.

The Déise fans were still cheering when Séamus Callinan goaled for Tipperary at the other end. History was up for grabs.

Maybe it all hinged on a Tipperary surge in 64 minutes - Conor O'Mahony breaking upfield and releasing Callinan with a perfect pass. And the young Drom and Inch man rolled with the soul of the game and let loose on Clinton Hennessy's goal.

" I was egging him to go for it," Sheedy said afterwards. "And you know, it was a great save - it broke to Micheál Webster and very unlucky, he just pulled. Then the 65 going wide . . . there it is.

"Still two points down when we thought we would be two up.

"Waterford are a class side and nobody would begrudge them where they are at. If there is a team of the last five of six years it has been Waterford."

And so Kilkenny, the habitual September men, face their neighbours as they bid for their third All-Ireland in succession. Waterford would dearly love just one.

Kelly grinned wryly when it was put to him that, at least in a league final, Waterford had proven they could beat Kilkenny.

"Yeah. But they have 30 All-Irelands."

And so to a glorious last stand.