All the time Waterford were pushing the envelope.

It hadn't yet ripped. Then, on 7 June 1998, they travelled to Pairc Ui Chaoimh to meet Tipperary in the provincial semi-final. Nothing about Waterford hurling has been the same in the meantime.

How far back were they coming from? From the same remote fastness as Clare and Wexford had journeyed. Limerick had had their shot at the title too; Waterford, without a championship win in six years, were the last remaining project, the one former power yet to come in from the cold.

In his five seasons as a championship starter with the county, Fergal Hartley appeared in five games, one per summer. Crucifying.

Teammates like Sean Cullinane, Stephen Frampton and Billy O'Sullivan had been walking this Via Dolorosa longer still.

Just to make their task in Cork more daunting, this wasn't the nouveau riche of Limerick or Clare they were facing. It was Tipperary, All Ireland finalists the previous September. Their neighbours.

Their betters. In 30 championship encounters, walkovers aside, Waterford had defeated their neighbours on only five occasions. They hadn't beaten them in championship action since 1983, they'd beaten them only once since 1963, they'd been beaten out the gate in two of the pair's three most recent encounters, both of them affairs more notable for the belts than for the hurling.

But under Gerald McCarthy, now in his second year as manager, Waterford had ascended to what Hartley describes as "a whole new level". Total professionalism, absolute discipline, ferocious training, seaside runs, Nutron diets. They'd carried their supporters with them in droves, the rising tide of the 1998 National League bringing increased expectations.

Shane Ahearne, the assistantcoach, discovered as much the day down in Tralee.

In his other capacity as the management's Hermes, the man who carried instructions from the selectors to the players during games, the less than hirsute Ahearne was accustomed to hearing goodnatured catcalls from the terraces, usually a "Good man, Shiner!" or a "Go on, Shiner!" When Kerry pulled level with a quarter of an hour left, one irate Waterford fan greeted him with, "Ahearne, ya baldy bollix!" Springtime's honeymoon had ended.

To Leeside on the first Sunday in June. In reflecting on the match, hindsight has not furnished the victors with rose-tinted glasses. "I don't think it was a particularly brilliant game and certainly Tipperary weren't as good as they'd been a few years earlier, " Fergal Hartley recalls.

"The winning of it was all that mattered." Whatever breaks of the ball were going, Peter Queally adds, Waterford got them; Liam Cahill hit Brendan Landers' crossbar and Declan Ryan the upright within five minutes of each other during the first half.

Luckier, perhaps, but also better prepared. They'd learned in advance that Tipperary were planning to field Declan Ryan, their number 11, at top of the right on the grounds that he'd have a height advantage there over Brian Flannery. Waterford decided to counter by employing Tom Feeney on Ryan instead and warned their defenders to on no account take their places for the throw-in until the Tipperary forwards had lined up in their positions. Then and only then did Feeney and not Flannery go over to Ryan. "We felt straightaway we'd stolen a march on them, " Ahearne reflects.

Tipperary led by five points at the break, 1-10 to 0-8, but were blown out of it in the second half. Paul Flynn finished with 10 points to his name and Tony Browne was a blur of perpetual motion alongside Queally in the middle of the field ("I didn't realise till I watched the video how much ground Tony covered, " Queally reports), yet the abiding Waterford folk memory of the day is that of Frampton crumpling John Leahy . . . big, bad John Leahy . . . early in the second half. The winners had three points to spare at the final whistle, 0-21 to 2-12, some young lad called Shanahan from Lismore hoisting the final point from under the stand in injury time.

Having been caught in flagrante by the TV cameras and subsequently suspended for his role in the row that broke out behind the Blackrock end game. The back door only came into in once you reached the Munster final. So that's all I was thinking of when the final whistle went. How great it was to be into a Munster final. How we'd have another day out regardless of what happened there. How great it was that we now had the chance to go to Croke Park for an All Ireland quarter-final."

Shane Ahearne allowed himself a tear as Declan Ryan, an old adversary, came over to shake hands. Afterwards, one of the Tipperary subs asked Ken McGrath if they'd be allowed out for a pint or two that night under the terms and conditions of the Nutron diet. Opponents intrigued by Waterford's preparations: this was novel indeed. The management took it as an acknowledgement that not only had they arrived on the scene but that everyone recognised it.

Waterford's modern incarnation as a leading hurling county dates to that afternoon. They've appeared in and won Munster finals in the interim, hurled in Croke Park, stepped out on All Ireland semi-final day and participated in 28 more championship matches, winning 13 of them and drawing two. Of the 13 defeats, three have been by five points, one by four points, four by three points, one by two points and one by a point. They've lost two All Ireland semi-finals by three points and another by one point. The last time they departed the championship by more than five points was in 1999, when Cork beat them by six. Their recent championship record against Tipp reads Played 5 Won 3, a historical aberration if ever there was one.

With most other counties, those statistics would be just that, statistics. With this county, they serve as an emblem of how far they've come and how well they've settled in at the table. Waterford haven't had it so good since the days the man who coined the phrase lived in Downing Street.

"For the first half of my inter-county career, we were completely brittle, " Fergal Hartley says. "No confidence.

We were as likely to go out and get hammered as we were to play well. You just didn't know what would happen. But nowadays with Waterford you go to a match in the knowledge that if they don't win it, they'll certainly be there or thereabouts."

Every hope of more of the same today.

TIPPERARY TO STAY ON AN EVEN KEEL AND SURVIVE UNPREDICTABLE WATERS ALL IRELAND SHC QUARTER-FINAL TIPPERARY v WATERFORD Croke Park, 4.00 Referee B Kelly (Westmeath) Live, RTE Two, 1.55 Could it actually occur? Could it possibly happen that the most talked-about . . . and not for the right reasons . . . team of springtime will arise, wash themselves, don the luminous new clothes of the transfigured and have all the Doubting Thomases eating humble pie for the rest of the year? In short, might Tipperary win the All Ireland?

Of one thing we can be sure.

Whichever team emerges from this side of the draw to reach the final will do so with, in theory, two serious recent tests behind them. They'll have momentum.

They'll have confidence. They'll be a better side on 3 September than they were this weekend.

High stakes today indeed, with one of the subtexts surrounding which of the two trainers . . . Tipp's Brian Murray or Waterford's Gerry Fitzpatrick . . . has brought his charges to the boil at the right time to meet their biggest challenge of the season.

In full flight, Waterford have a rhythm and fluency about them that Tipperary cannot match . . .

that no team in the country can match. Most of it springs from an electricity Ken, Eoin Kelly and Mullane produce on their own on their day. But Waterford, being Waterford, are likelier than most to short-circuit. To assume that they'll right the supposed wrongs of Pairc Ui Chaoimh last month solely on the basis that the missing have returned to action, moreover, is lazy thinking. That Waterford at their chainedlightning best can get to a place Tipp cannot is not the nub of the matter. That they'll first have to earn the opportunity to right the supposed wrongs of last month is.

With Paul Ormonde back in the left corner and Eamon Corcoran his old self again, Tipp have a dash and cutting about them in defence they haven't had for four years. That said, Corcoran's travails against Joe Deane in last season's Munster final ought to have forewarned Babs and co about the problems Declan Fanning, another jerrybuilt corner-back, would face in the position. Good competitor notwithstanding, Fanning is liable to suffer at the hands and dainty feet of another career cornerforward before the summer is out. Apropos of Francis Devanney's recall, meanwhile, let's not use the word 'bizarre' just yet, irrespective of the temptation.

The upward curve of their graph slow but steady, WYSIWYG is the acronym that springs to mind with Tipp. What you see is what you get. Also, to return to a hobby horse we ran here a couple of months back, they tend not to lose 50/50 matches. They're the safer if uninspired bet.

Verdict Tipperary TIPPERARY B Cummins; D Fanning, P Curran, P Ormonde; E Corcoran, C O'Mahoney, H Moloney; P Kelly, S McGrath; J Carroll, F Devanney, J O'Brien; L Corbett (c), D Fitzgerald, E Kelly WATERFORD C Hennessy; D Prendergast, T Feeney, E Murphy; T Browne, K McGrath, B Phelan; S O'Sullivan (c), D Bennett; D Shanahan, S Prendergast, E Kelly; J Mullane, M Walsh, E McGrath