Such wild and whirling words would have constituted quite the most public suicide note of the GAA summer had Shanahan not proceeded to do exactly what he did against Tipperary three weeks later.

Having talked the talk, he swaggered the swagger. He hit his team's first point of the All Ireland quarter-final. He hit his team's last point of the All Ireland quarter-final. In between he hit another three and landed the one goal of the game's four that would matter.

The score marked Shanahan's 11th goal in 14 championship appearances over the past three seasons. Didn't realise he had such an impressive strike rate, did you?

An impressive strike rate rendered more so by the fact that it isn't bloated by meaningless goals in turkey shoots.

Dan Shanahan . . . the new and improved post-2004 Dan Shanahan . . . is far more likely to hit the net against the big names than he is against the lesser lights. Of the four games in the aforementioned 14 where he failed to hit the target, one was against Dublin, another against Offaly and a third versus Laois. In wild contrast, he's found the net in each of his last three appearances against both Cork and Tipp. Even if the 2004 All Ireland semi-final remains a blotch on his recent copybook, 'big-game player' is . . . and pardon the cliche . . . the apt, the obvious, the only phrase for it.

To Gerry Fitzpatrick, Waterford's trainer, Shanahan's goals are the oaks that grow from the acorns he scatters on the training ground. "There's a consistency of effort there from Dan, both in training and in matches, " Fitzpatrick asserts.

"Sometimes things go right for him in games and he scores goals. Other times he doesn't shine but he's still working hard, and only a keen observer will appreciate the amount of work he does." Fitzpatrick has far too many fingers to count the number of poor training sessions Shanahan has put in over these past three seasons. As ye sow, etc.

Our man was no hidden diamond in his youth. Young lads built like Dan Shanahan are rarely hidden. As well as commitment and his obvious physical attributes, however, Shanahan possessed such skill during his time in Lismore CBS that Brother Dormer was only too happy to stick him in goal on the Lismore mini-sevens team. "Your goalie and your free-taker, " says Brother Dormer. "They're always your two most skilful players. Dan was one of our two."

Nor was he a secret in his late teens. In Waterford it's easy, as Shane Ahearne, assistant-coach during Gerald McCarthy's tenure as manager, points out, to pick out a future star. Still, nobody saw him coming in his inter-county debut season in 1998. In six championship outings he played every minute and clocked up 14 points, including taking a suitably flummoxed Anthony Daly for three points in the drawn Munster final.

To appreciate the glory of the resurrection, though, one must first recognise the depth of the fall. His replacement by Eoin Murphy in the 2001 Munster semi-final against Limerick marked the first time Shanahan had been substituted in 10 championship appearances. Suddenly the number 10 jersey was no longer his property. The following season, Waterford's first annus mirabilis under Justin McCarthy, he didn't start any of their three championship outings and in 2003 he only started in the last of their five, against Wexford at Nowlan Park. Come 2004's throw-in, Shanahan had managed a single full championship match in four years.

It wasn't easy for him. It couldn't have been, not least for someone who stands out from the crowd as unmistakeably as Dan Shanahan does. The vitriol with which the fading of his star was attended stunned both opponents and colleagues. One Kilkenny player couldn't believe the viciousness of the abuse Shanahan received from spectators at Walsh Park one day he fell over during a league match. This may or may not have been the same day that Stephen Frampton, disgusted by the abuse his old teammate was taking, had it hot and heavy with a man in the stand.

"Ridicule, " says Frampton, "is probably the word for it. A lot of supporters ridiculed him there for a couple of years. After 1998, expectations of Dan were very high.

It's difficult for a young guy to shoulder that level of responsibility. He did suffer."

The suffering ended at the Gaelic Grounds in the 2004 National League final, the afternoon Shanahan's world spun 180 degrees. Galway skated to victory, for all the good it was to do them;

Shanahan hit 1-3 in defeat, and the good it did him was boundless. "Dan was our best player by a country mile that day, " his Lismore clubmate Dave Bennett recalls, "and he took it from there."

Nonetheless, if Clare tossed him any thought before the first round of the Munster championship seven days later, it would have been to the effect that Conor Plunkett, a big strong man himself, was surely able for Shanahan. He wasn't. Somewhere among the clouds above, Shanahan wiped out the enemy squadron and hit 3-1. He followed up with two goals against Tipperary in the semifinal, then made John Gardiner's life a misery in the first half of the provincial final before Cork belatedly summoned the fire brigade in the shape of Sean Og O hAilpin. It wasn't enough to prevent the Lismore man finishing the day with 1-3 to his name and a Munster championship medal in his pocket.

The All Ireland semi-final?

Nurse, the screens, please.

Catching the first ball that came his way constituted the A to Z of Shanahan's contribution; JJ Delaney cleaned him out thereafter. Seamie Hannon, one of the Waterford selectors, is quick to exonerate him. "The team didn't perform. Dan wasn't in isolation, he was only one of them." He's one of the ones hurling better than well now.

To Bennett, Shanahan's success is the result of diligent preparation, both on his body in the gym and on his nolonger-weaker right side on the training field. To Gerry Fitzpatrick he's simply a pleasure to work with. "Dan trains with a smile on his face and brings that smile everywhere with him." To his employer Paddy Joe Ryan, the former Waterford county chairman, he's as good a salesman as Comeragh Oil, where Shanahan has been employed since being made redundant at Waterford Crystal a year ago, could have on the books.

To Shane Ahearne he's more appreciated outside the county than inside. Forget the goals, Ahearne adds; look at the movement and variety Shanahan brings to the Waterford forward line. Twice in the quarter-final he peeled off Hugh Moloney to materialise in Eamon Corcoran's stamping ground on the opposite wing under a puckout. Corcoran it was who was caught in no man's land for the goal, the right-half back having spotted the danger as Shanahan drifted in from the wing but unable to prevent the goal.

"When he moves away from his marker and heads for the edge of the square, that's when he's at his most dangerous, " Corcoran reports.

He is, and always will be, Dan the Man. He couldn't be a member of any other team.

Despite the strutting, the badge-kissing, the jersey-waving and the tattoos, or more likely because of them, there's an individuality about Waterford, an almost childlike pleasure in their hurling that acts as a neat counterpoint to Cork's grim and regimented remorselessness. If Cork are Versace and Kilkenny are Armani, Waterford could only be Burberry. Just like Dan's baseball cap.

The windows of hurling's closed shop have been shut ever tighter in recent years.

The one real blast of fresh air has been provided by Waterford. And nobody fresher, more bracing or more utterly and proudly himself than the big man. If you don't know him, don't judge him.