GAELIC GAMES:WATERFORD AND their wicked games: the team they cannot kill made it through to their third Munster final in a row yesterday and, as ever, they made their people fret and worry until the very last.

On a day straight out of Frank McCourt’s almanac – heavy rain and ashen skies – only 15,000 showed up for a Munster semi-final that was not particularly trumpeted. But it was worth the journey to those who made it.

Both sides confessed to enough errors and naïve moments to preclude the game from qualifying for the dusty book of Munster summer classics. But this was a terrifically entertaining and honest afternoon of hurling.

Limerick’s defeat spun on the one thing no team or coach can legislate against: a few seconds of vintage John Mullane audacity.

The Treaty County has had its share of heartbreaking goals and there was something particularly cruel about the speed and trajectory of the De La Salle man’s stinging, 71st-minute strike.

And there was something inevitable about it too, from the very second that ball was looped across field from Eoin Kelly, who noticed the pale man was loitering on the right side of the field with a few yards of space. Waterford have never done things plainly and so it was this time. Mullane took the ball and seconds later it was 3-15 to 3-14.

“The ball came to the wrong man in the wrong place,” Donal O’Grady said with a knowing smile. He was leaning against the railings after the stadium had emptied. “I think it went off Tommy Condon’s shoulder which brought it above Nickey Quaid’s hurley. If you could stop the play and ask could someone else from Waterford get that ball, you would take it. But Mullane . . . I describe him as kind of an assassin, really. He just pounces, and we can have no cribs.”

Well, they could have had a few gripes and grievances, but the admirable thing about Limerick was that they declined all excuses. This defeat was their first setback since the North Mon schoolmaster began coaching the most turbulent county in the land and they accepted the toughest justice without flinching.

There was a period midway through the first half, after a free from the impressive Waterford new boy Pauric Mahony put Waterford 1-7 to 0-4 ahead, that it seemed as if that gulf caused by Limerick’s sojourn in Division Two might become apparent.

Instead, Limerick found their boldness after Wayne McNamara galloped onto a pass from Gavin O’Mahoney and went for broke with a goal in the 35th minute.

After that, all hesitancy left them and the second half was a hell-for-leather shoot-out, full of blocks and last-gasp defence and a see-sawing lead. On a grey June day, all of summer was locked into Semple Stadium.

Maybe it is fear of dishonouring the namesake that made Donal O’Grady perform as he did in the Limerick midfield, but he was wonderful here. Kevin Downes took the Waterford back line for two second-half goals, requiring Davy Fitzgerald to call Michael Walsh back to guard the younger man.

It doesn’t seem to matter where Walsh plays: the crowd follows the ball as it travels to the sky and, wherever it lands, Walsh is inevitably there to meet it, like a baseline master at Wimbledon.

“Bit of a change,” Walsh admitted of his switch to full back. “But wherever you play, it is great to be part of it. He (Downes) had a very good game. They had a huge amount of space, and maybe in the last 20 the quality of ball coming into him wasn’t great. But he is a handful, a very good hurler.

“It is hard to believe Limerick are supposed to be a Division Two team. We were blessed to get a win there and we are delighted to get through it.”

Waterford baptised five yesterday and lost Richie Foley to a sprained ankle yesterday morning. They had their own questions to answer.

Fitzgerald has watched his team stick their hands in the furnace before and come out unscathed.

“We are the kind of team, I suppose, we will have a pot,” he said fondly.

“I never believed we were gone until the final whistle. It is one thing we say at training: you will get an opportunity if you keep working. I think you will see they didn’t give up.

“It was some ball across to Mullane and I was giving him a tough time all week that he hadn’t scored goals in two or three years. I can’t say much after that today.

“But we have had five debutants and that is a third of the team: that is a lot. To come out of that, like? Limerick were coming into this game and people were writing them off.”

Not afterwards. The players in green were visibly pained as they trooped off the field but the fans who gathered around the tunnel were elated despite the scoreboard. After a year in the darkness, they had seen a performance to savour. They had seen Limerick go toe-to-toe in a fierce summer game, and only for that devilish strike they would be looking forward to a Munster final.

“They are talking about hurling,” Fitzgerald remarked of this old Munster fare. “But I think we have seen two great games. And isn’t it great to see a bit of heart and passion?”

It is.