IT was All Stars night at the Citywest Hotel last November and after dinner the musical entertainment began when a band with guitars . . . no diddley-eye nonsense here . . . struck up on the dancefloor. Twenty yards away in the bar area, a number of the Waterford contingent began to jump around and generally do their own thing with glorious unselfconsciousness, John Mullane leading the festivities with a particularly nifty breakdancing routine. Being themselves, as only the Waterford contingent can.

"You'd love to see them win an All Ireland, wouldn't you?"one amused Corkman observed wryly. "But we can't just hand it to them. They have to earn it."

Precisely. Come the great day, whenever it is, that Waterford do appear in an All Ireland final for the first time since John F Kennedy occupied the White House, the cause for rejoicing will be sourced as much in the knowledge that they've paid for the ticket as in their very presence at Croke Park. For years they've strained against their shortcomings and one by one put most of them to flight. They've lost leads, they've lost matches, they've frequently lost concentration, they've occasionally lost their nerve. They've lost four All Ireland semi-finals, none of them by more than the puck of a ball. They've tried again, they've failed again, they've failed better. They've shipped gusts that would have broken the spirit of lesser teams, yet they've learned how to trim their sails and they've always bobbed back to the surface. Their endurance constitutes one of the minor wonders of the hurling age.

Kevin Ryan, a selector from 2004 to early this year, was a crew member for a lengthy stretch of the voyage. Ask him to identify the difference between the Munster champions of 2007 and their predecessors of three seasons ago and his reply is instantaneous. "Self-belief, big time."

What has bloomed these past few months was seeded, Ryan reckons, last season. He recalls the Thursday night after a weakened team had lost the Munster semifinal to Tipperary: the pretraining chat that evening, the realisation of how close they'd come to Tipp despite their injuries and Eoin Kelly's suspension, the determination to take it from there and look forwards, not backwards. He reflects on the atmosphere in the Croke Park dressing room after the Pairc Ui Chaoimh defeat had been avenged in the All Ireland quarter-final. He respools to John Mullane's late point in the semi-final as emblematic of Waterford's new-found, hard-won patience and self-esteem: two points down, a minute left, Seamus Prendergast grabbing a puckout and handing it off to Mullane, who charged forward, surveyed his options and eschewed going for goal in favour of tapping the sliotar over the bar.

"John's point was to me the real sign that we'd arrived, " Ryan reveals. "Okay, we lost, but we kept hurling to the end, the way Cork have done over the past few years. Beating Tipperary was important . . . winning a big match at Croke Park was a monkey off our backs subconsciously. We were back in the dressing room when we heard we were going to be playing Cork in the semi-final. Nobody batted an eyelid, which was another change. And when they did beat us, we were gobsmacked.

"There was absolutely no comparison with losing to Kilkenny in 2004. For that semi-final we'd gone up hoping to win. For last year's semi-final we went up convinced we could win. That was the difference. More belief. More maturity. And the lads have really carried it through this year."

The county's possession of the National League and Munster championship trophies offers the most obvious validation of Ryan's assertion. To win a race, however, one must first get the distance. In this regard, the contrast with 2005, when they imploded in the second half of the qualifier against Clare in Ennis and lost by five points despite hitting 021, then saw Cork pull away convincingly in the closing stages of the All Ireland quarter-final, is undeniable.

Waterford don't flinch from the whip these days.

Between the 60th minute and full-time in their last five matches (league quarterfinal, semi-final, league final, Munster semi-final and last Sunday) they've outscored the opposition by an aggregate of 2-21 to 0-16. The only one of those games in which they were outscored in the closing 10 minutes, the league quarter-final against Tipperary on Easter Sunday, they still managed to conjure a winning point in injury time after their opponents had pulled level. Not only have Waterford learned to see out the trip, they've proven to themselves they can see out the trip, a significant progression for a county not endowed with such a birthright by tradition.

They don't hit daft wides either, incontrovertible proof of the improvement in their decision-making. Last summer they recorded a highly respectable seven wides in each of their two outings in Croke Park. Since then they've taken economy to another level; against Limerick, as against Cork in the provincial semi-final, they recorded two wides in the second half . . . and here both wides were the result of offtarget frees as opposed to hasty shooting. In the present climate, the notion of a Waterford forward repeating Ken McGrath's six wides of the 2003 Munster final is laughable.

Not, mind you, that the late scoring burst seven days ago was the fruit of any deep-laid tactical masterplan, Kevin Ryan suspects. "The thing with Justin is that he leaves the lads to hurl on instinct. It was instinct that had Dan use the space the way he did in the last 10 minutes on Sunday.

Something like that wouldn't have been worked on in training. I know people won't believe it, but the forwards are left to their own instincts."

Gone are the days where McGrath, Mullane and Paul Flynn were all required to hit the high notes in unison for Waterford to win; the three of them are no longer soloists but members of a choir. Tony Browne's birth cert is not so much mildly misleading as the biggest work of forgery since Titus Oates. Flynn is currently merely Waterford's fourth most important forward; both they and he are better for it. And Aidan Kearney and Stephen Molumphy are vying for a crown worn by the likes of Mark O'Leary in 2001 and Cha Fitzpatrick last year: someone who provides the x-factor that can take a team over the winning line.

Concerns? It's as well they have a few to busy themselves tackling, most obviously the full-back line's softness in the air, as illustrated versus Cork and again last Sunday by Declan Prendergast's inability to make incoming ball his own. A full-forward line possessed of a crisper first touch than Limerick's would have been two goals up inside three minutes. Most full-forward lines are. Eoin Murphy, meanwhile, needs to rediscover his All Star form of last season sooner rather than later.

Of the three McCarthy Cup market leaders, Kilkenny's health and well-being are apparent, their readiness for a hard battle less so. But we know that Cork have, largely through force of circumstance, been revitalised these past two months, and we also know that, for the moment at any rate, Waterford have the momentum.

Nobody's handed it to them. They've earned it.

INCOMING

TODAY
Ulster SFC final TYRONE v MONAGHAN Clones, 2.15
TV Leinster SFC final DUBLIN v LAOIS Croke Park, 4.15
TV Leinster MFC final CARLOW v LAOIS Croke Park, 2.30
Ulster MFC final DERRY v TYRONE, Clones, 12.20

SATURDAY
21 JULY All Ireland SFC Qualifier Round 3
Galway v Rd 2 winner
Cork v Rd 2 winner
Christy Ring Cup semi-finals
Nicky Rackard Cup semi-finals

SUNDAY 22 JULY

All Ireland Hurling quarter-finals Kilkenny v Clare/Galway Wexford v Cork/Tipperary (Venues & times to be con"rmed)