ALL-IRELAND SHC QUARTER FINAL Waterford 1-16 Galway 0-18: SO JUST when Galway's momentum toward Croke Park seemed just about unstoppable the wheels came off the vehicle. Not through any flaw of design, but because they collided with the fury that hell has no comparison with. Scorned men.

Waterford advance to another All-Ireland semi-final. There will be little of the sunshine of favouritism on their backs but much admiration for their guts in getting there. Yesterday’s quarter-final in Thurles will rank along with the greatest achievements of their renaissance period.

Waterford! Having huffed and puffed to the summit last September they were broken into small pieces and posted back to the south by their neighbours from Kilkenny. It was said that they had given great service and some grand days out, it was nice for them to see Croke Park in September and that it was a pity that it ended that way, but at least they had the day out.

And yesterday, having stretched their second-half lead a couple of times to six reassuring points, Galway faced down a Waterford team with the oldest motivation in sport. A point to prove. It was Tony Browne and John Mullane and Dan Shanahan who had the memories of bad days to keep the furnace roaring.

And that was something to see. Shanahan, left as a growling, leonine presence on the bench until so late that you thought his introduction could only be a token, burst out the gate stung by the lateness of the hour, stung by all that has been written and said about him and stung by the fact his baby brother was introduced to the affray quite some time previously.

He caught the first ball and turned in a fury and smoked it just past the Galway goals. Game on.

Next ball. Same craggy old claw fastened to the leather. He is so hyped surely that he will try to pass the back again and stitch this one home. But no, he cops the galloping presence of young Shane Walsh and serves him a dainty little pass which Walsh accepts before whipping home the goal.

Galway have gone from being four points ahead to being a point up and there are maybe 90 seconds on the clock.

Yet you know that for John McIntyre’s men it is all over. They are sucked into the mad momentum of the game. The ball is in play too quickly after the goal and Waterford are feeding off the craziness.

They win a free in their own defence. Launch it high into the general air above Dan Shanahan. Galway have seen enough already and this time Shanahan is fouled. Eoin Kelly pops the free. Level. The game flips over into the dissolving world of injury time.

Up steps John Mullane. All day he has worked and toiled without the reward coming to him, but he has kept on showing, kept on giving. Davy Fitz has moved him from the corner to the wing in the hope that the freedom and the space will nourish his spirit.

The game is dying when he comes springheeled and mad for a ball on the left. Takes it low and perfect into the hand and drives as only Mullane can. The look of a JCB, the acceleration of a sports car. He takes it on and pops it.

And it is all over. Waterford have won by a point. Bounced the young pretenders from the championship.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. The boys in central scripting had set up a different scenario for the semi-final showpieces. Dublin would lose attractively to Tipperary. Galway would beat themselves heroically against the stern cliff-face of Kilkenny. You’d guess the outcome from some distance away but there would be novelty aplenty.

Nobody told Galway that things had changed. They led by four points at the break, and if they were pulled back to a two-point margin soon after it troubled them little. They stitched on four points again without reply, and if the balance of the game had changed slightly with the introduction of young Maurice Shanahan nobody noticed too much.

Waterford pulled back another four points all from the stick of Eoin Kelly and still you couldn’t sense the peril. Joe Gantley scored an emphatic sort of point, underlining his importance to Galway as an impact sub, and Damien Hayes added another. Galway would be coasting home, thank you.

Galway weren’t inclined to complain afterwards about the toll of the past few weeks and there was honour in that position.

It ended with the sort of flurry and blur which defies analysis. Waterford, as much as Galway, awake this morning wondering quite what happened.