"Well done, lads. Ye contributed marvellously to a great game."

Great game. Marvellous contribution. Short of an against-the-head win, what more could Cork fans have asked for in Thurles last Sunday?

To claim that the defending Munster champions lost a match but may have found a new soul is overdoing it. Perhaps not by all that much, though. Throughout the process of setting new standards of dedication and micromanagement during the previous seasons, Cork had been wholly admirable . . . yet somehow antiseptic with it.

A little too clinical, a little too studied, a little too happy to build their attacks by going through dance steps choreographed to the nth degree.

Compare and contrast with Waterford's brand of glorious, occasionally-puerile erraticism. Painstakingly-rehearsed baroque fugues versus extemporised guitar solos.

Missing three players with over 100 championship appearances between them, however, all bets were off seven days ago. And Cork's response was joyous. They hurled from the gut as well as from the cerebellum. From a neutral point of view, they were all the more likeable for it. Not that that will offer them any succour. Not that it should.

But the addition of the new faces will have served to open a few windows in a room that needed a blast of fresh air.

Last Sunday marks the spot where Cork's provincial campaign ended and their All Ireland campaign began.

In terms of the numbers on the scoreboard at the finish, they couldn't have done much more to win . . . 3-18 amounted to more than Cork have hit in any championship match, their meetings with Kerry and the 2004 All Ireland semi-final against Wexford excepted, in the past 10 years. The tally would have sufficed to win them each of the nine games they lost in the same period.

Like Carlsberg, Cork don't do moral victories. But if they didf The game wasn't quite as good, not that it could have been, as the 2004 Munster final between the counties. It didn't have quite the same epic scale. Where scores had to be quarried out then, here the goals came too easily, too cheaply, too frequently. In a real classic, progress has to be ground out at Somme pace, inch by inch. Still, only former defenders or the pathologically narrow-minded will carp about the treats that were served. Cork/Waterford, the affluent man's version of Limerick/Tipp, is the gift that keeps on giving. We are blessed to have it (a blessing for hurling too that RTE were simultaneously showing Dublin and Meath on the other channel).

Simply by not being there at all, Diarmuid O'Sullivan has rarely played a better game;

this was Hamlet without Falstaff. In his absence, Waterford did the sensible thing and went for the jugular, again and again and again. Where in previous games against Cork they'd have popped over their points at the sound of the oncoming defender's tread, here . . . sniffing blood in the water . . . they ran on and took the sliotar into the tackle and the offload. They should have had five goals on the board by the interval, indeed, but if Seamus Prendergast was the wrong man in the right place when a whipcrack first-time stroke was required on the ball that presented itself 10 metres out in the 20th minute, he was the right man in the right place to outfield Kevin Hartnett and set up the Big Man's first goal. So it goes.

And yet, and yet. Only the width of Clinton Hennessy's crossbar at the death allowed Waterford to win a game they dared not draw, never mind lose. What would we have said about them in that case?

About their force of will, about their powers of concentration, about their mental strength?

Leopards not changing their spots would have been about the very mildest response.

Truly, victory covers up every blemish.

Their decision-making was as sound as their accuracy (two wides in each half); not since Kilkenny managed three wides in the 2002 All Ireland final has a team been as economical in a big match. Nor was the talk of Waterford's options on the bench a chimera; Brian Phelan thundered into proceedings on his introduction while Eoin McGrath . . . a kind of Donie Ryan with accessories having refloated Waterford's boat at the three-quarter stage of the league final by coming in and landing their first point of the second half . . . here hit one of the most important balls of the afternoon, uncorking that prodigious crossfield pass for Tony Browne to put the winners three-up stepping onto the 18th.

The first, last and only Cork/Waterford meeting in the 2007 championship?

Heaven forbid. They keep on giving.

INCOMING TODAY

Connacht SFC semi-final LEITRIM v GALWAY, Carrick-on-Shannon, 2.00 TV Leinster SFC semi-final DUBLIN v OFFALY, Croke Park, 4.00 TV Ulster SFC semi-final DERRY v MONAGHAN, Casement Park, 3.30 Munster SHC semi-final replay LIMERICK v TIPPERARY, Gaelic Grounds, 3.30 TV SATURDAY, 30 JUNE Christy Ring Cup DOWN v MAYO, Newry, 3.00; MEATH v KERRY, Pairc Tailteann, 3.00; DERRY v KILDARE, Maghera, 3.00; WICKLOW v CARLOW, Arklow, 3.00.

Nicky Rackard Cup ARMAGH v TYRONE, Crossmaglen, 7.00;

LONGFORD v DONEGAL, Pearse Park, 3.00; FERMANAGH v MONAGHAN, Lisnaskea, 7.00; LOUTH v CAVAN, Dundalk, 7.00.

Liam McCarthy Championship ANTRIM v CLARE, Casement Park, 2.30; LAOIS v GALWAY, Portlaoise, 7.00;

DUBLIN v CORK, Parnell Park, 3.00;

LIMERICK/TIPPERARY v OFFALY, Limerick/Thurles, 3.00 SUNDAY, 1 JULY Leinster SFC semi-final WEXFORD v LAOIS, Croke Park, 2.10 Leinster SHC final KILKENNY v WEXFORD, Croke Park, 4.00 TV Munster SFC final CORK v KERRY, Fitzgerald Stadium, 2.00 TV