LockerRoom:Travelled to Thurles yesterday with old pal Bob in the car, wondering all the while what I could steal from him. Yeah yeah yeah, I'm a poor class of friend to have, but listen, it's dangerous to set off on the morning of a Munster final without a column written. You could be waylaid by vagabonds or drinkers and never even get a column started and then have to endure an awkward conversation with the sports editor the next day. Believe me, it's always awkward talking up to him from a kneeling position. I learned that as a freelance.

As Bob always says with undiminished relevance, The Times They Are A-Changin'. In olden times, better men than me would set off two days early for a big match knowing what perils there were in pausing for refreshment in, say, Morrissey's of Abbeyleix with a deadline just 72 hours away. On Sunday they would file decent approximations of the action for the benefit of a grateful audience who hadn't been clued in by television on Sunday and who wouldn't be bitching in chatrooms all day on Monday. Then they would return in slow and dignified triumph hoping to hit the city by Wednesday there to have a shave and to pick up their riding instructions for the next weekend.

Under the pressurised circumstances we work under today when the boss class bastards demand that you go to the well of your genius more than once in a week, any useful larceny is justified when it comes to keeping yourself in a job. Maggie's Farm? Don't talk to me Bob. We're both just one too many mornings, An' a thousand miles behind.

Poignantly, there is nothing else we are able to do in life apart from time in prison and if it takes a little theft to prevent us from becoming even more of a burden to society than we are now, well that's how it has to be. So I went rifling through Bob's pockets, knowing they were filled with lyrics.

Anyway by late afternoon to merely note that the times are a changing seemed insufficient in the wake of a Waterford Munster final win which was greeted not with delirium by the winners but with caution and statements of conditionality.

Waterford have won the League and the Munster championship so far this year and their joy yesterday was notably confined. September is the only month that matters. This All-Ireland is a Slow Train Coming for Waterford.

All day yesterday Bob whined beautifully in my head about amphetamine and pearls and we regretted instantly that we had not pilfered the line for last week's Tour de France column and thought wistfully about the various gals muscled up on 'roids that a column themed on Just Like A Woman would have been perfect for.

Even Mr Tambourine Man, a song I've always disliked as just being a little bit too damn jingly jangly offers perfect match day material if you appropriate Dylan's genius in rhyming the lines Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow with Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

What quotes piece mined from a losing dressing room wouldn't be beautified by those words? I am given to stealing lines from Forever Young, and have passed off the couplet May you build a ladder to the stars, and climb on every rung as my own inspirational wish on many a scribbled birthday card.

An American columnist with more time on his hands than me, or less lazy than me, once constructed an entire piece out of Shakespeare quotations and how they pertained to baseball. I'm sure there is a beautiful column to be made by just patchworking together lines from Bob Dylan - but this isn't it.

(In fact by way of an excuse for failure to follow through adequately on the conceit I can only offer a quote from a famous conversation which took place between Dylan and Leonard Cohen in a Paris café. Dylan had been singing Cohen's Hallellujah in concert and complemented Cohen on the work, asking him how long it had taken him to write. Cohen, from whose laptop smoke has never issued, replied that the song had taken the best part of two years to complete. Dylan nodded.

Cohen, eager to express a reciprocal interest, took the opportunity to praise Dylan's song I and I from the Infidels album and inquired how long that song had taken Dylan to write. "About fifteen minutes" said Dylan. Hmmm. Bob is quite right. Fifteen minutes is as about as long as anyone should spend writing something that will be digested in about five minutes).

We haven't got time to be rummaging through Bob's back pages looking for all the stuff he may have scribbled down with a novel Munster final in mind, but we are fairly sure that when he wrote Positively 4th Street he might have been talking about Justin McCarthy who faces the media after matches (sometimes even on good days) with an expression which says lads, I wish that for just one time, You could stand inside my shoes, And just for that one moment, I could be you, Yes, I wish that for just one time, You could stand inside my shoes, You'd know what a drag it is, To see you.

However Justin was in ebullient expansive form yesterday. He has learned over the years in Waterford that even if you have a Munster title in September but you have no All-Ireland you will be reminded again and again that failure is no success at all.

In theory the back door system in the All-Ireland championship means that nobody feels any pain when it comes to losing Munster finals. Still.

As Justin was talking to us he caught Richie Bennis out of the corner of his eye. Richie had just been to the Waterford dressingroom to offer his congratulations. The two men embraced and Richie, affable as ever in defeat, held Justin by the forearms and said "I thought ye'd be happy to go for the All-Ireland and leave us a Munster".

Defeat is defeat whatever way you dress it up. In the last 10 minutes yesterday as Waterford retained their focus to cut loose and Big Dan in particular made a huge dent in the season, it was more apposite to think of that line about the chimes of freedom flashing for the warrior whose strength is not to fight.

This was a dogpit of a game, tough and frank, the sort of stage Waterford of a few years ago might have used to show their toughness. Yesterday they displayed their maturity.

They have made a habit this year of finishing strong and they are at the stage now where they fear nobody. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Thurles emptied quickly. This damn column detained us longer than it should have and by the time we got to this paragraph, it seemed like one of those bad ideas that you seize upon when you are up against it for time. Bob Dylan apropos what?

The fickly sun was shining again by the time we were done and a few rainy day women were walking across the Semple grass. Waterford women let a little whoop out before they disappeared into the far tunnel and out to where the cars park. It was a good day to be under pressure.

Waterford are getting there after long years of being imprisoned by failure and doubt . . Anyday now, anyday now, they shall be released. Ah enough already with the Dylan. Maybe scrap it and start again. No time. Don't Think Twice...