Waterford's damburst the last for a while

May you live in interesting times. The Chinese curse didn't seem so malign at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday. The scenes that followed Waterford's Munster final success were familiar from similar great days for Limerick, Clare and Wexford. And it reminded you that the past 10 years or so have been great ones for hurling.

One statistic bears this out. During the last 10 years the average number of years since Munster champions had previously won the title is a massive 13.9. This compares with figures for the three preceding periods - 1983-92, 1973-82 and 1963-72 - of 3, 3.4 and 2.8. The disparity comes about because of the success in the same timeframe by Limerick, Clare and Waterford after substantial fallow periods.

Given the odds on all of those counties going through further lengthy, unproductive spells and emerging from them within a couple of years of each other, we have seen the last of such scenes for the foreseeable future.

As Waterford manager Justin McCarthy put it in his recent autobiography, Hooked - A Hurling Life (surely set for an updated edition at Christmas), "when you look at hurling over the past 15 years, every county has had its day in the sun except Waterford." Now, since Sunday, Limerick is the county in the worst throes of what is conventionally called "the famine" and it is only six years since their last provincial title.

The provincial championships are not in the long-term interests of hurling. The Munster championship has been very good in recent years and effectively carries the hurling season up until mid-July but one out of four - or three if you discount Connacht as the province itself does - does not justify the system. But it is only fair to acknowledge the significance of the Munster and Leinster championships to the counties involved.

Offaly's 1982 football captain Richie Connor said that his team regarded their Leinster title in 1980 as a greater cause for celebration than the All-Ireland two years later. This was on the grounds that it was a bigger step from nowhere to winning Leinster than from Leinster to an All-Ireland.

This has been evident in the three big hurling breakthroughs of recent times. Clare made no bones about saying that the Munster title in 1995 meant more than the All-Ireland. The county rocked for days after the Munster victory whereas players quickly got ready for the county championship in the aftermath of the All-Ireland. Ger Loughnane explained that a Munster title was all that the county could aspire to because they had pursued it for so long. An All-Ireland only came into focus once Munster had been won.

At the end of Wexford's great year in 1996, captain Martin Storey spoke about the memory of looking down from the old Hogan Stand at the county's supporters celebrating as he raised the O'Keeffe Cup at the end of the Leinster final. Should Waterford win the All-Ireland this September it's unlikely that the victory could trigger any more intensely emotional a response than last Sunday's.

Their captain Fergal Hartley echoed something of this response after the match: ". . . it's still a long shot for Waterford to win anything more than this. This is as much as we wanted to achieve for the time being."

Victories like this always encompass players for whom you feel personally glad. Hartley is one of them. On a purely personal note, I recall talking to him on a variety of disappointing occasions: shattered after captaining Waterford to an agonisingly-narrow defeat to Kilkenny in the 1998 All-Ireland semi-final; twice on the field after his club Ballygunner had lost Munster club finals; a few months ago after the Gunners lost to Clarinbridge in the All-Ireland semi-final.

He was always as obliging and articulate in defeat as he was in victory last weekend. And it was immensely cheering to dispense with the "Disappointed - obviously . . ." stuff when talking to him.

His team-mate Peter Queally spoke about going straight to the spot in front of where his family was in the stand and how emotional it was for them all - "Something I'll remember for the rest of my life," he said wistfully. Life as an intercounty hurler wasn't always as rewarding for Queally. Only a matter of weeks too old for the All-Ireland under-21 success in 1992, his early career at senior level mired him in controversy.

Indiscipline during the notorious 1995 championship match against Tipperary earned him a reprimand from the authorities at the Garda College in Templemore. He was punished by having his passing out suspended. The very public controversy must have been distressing for him and the family with whom he shared the very first moments of jubilation after Sunday's match. Over the past seven years he has become a more controlled player without losing the aggression that makes him such a ferocious competitor.

TEAMS who gradually and then suddenly realise that the drive to create history is irresistible often fling away the shackles rather than merely break them.

There's little point - and less dignity - in being wise after the event but the match illustrated the pitfalls of forecasting and previewing matches. Two years ago Waterford ran Tipperary to three points in the championship despite having Ken McGrath reduced to the status of an onlooker because of an ankle injury. He had opened the match in a blaze of kerosene which threatened to engulf Philip Maher but was shortly afterwards restricted to hobbling around until substitution in the 57th minute. Last Sunday he scored seven points from play.

Yet it was reasonable to assume that Tipperary had progressed since then and that last year's All-Ireland title had brought them on further. But maybe the role of Waterford's win over Cork in building their confidence was underestimated - whatever the standard of the match. That hard-fought win was more formative than Tipp's bloodless coup against Limerick.

But the biggest surprise was the display of so many younger players such as John Mullane, Eoin McGrath and Eoin Kelly.

Their continued emergence from the shadow of the team's big names will be of the greatest significance as Waterford chase a first All-Ireland since 1959.