That it would be distasteful to see a Cork side already beaten twice advance, perhaps to win the All Ireland, is neither here nor there. It didn't bother them in 1941, as any Tipp person will tell you. It shouldn't and won't bother them now, irrespective of the fact certain of their grandees have been heard to rage against the machinery of a system that doesn't instantly decapitate a team that's lost twice.

Look: Waterford read the fine print before they signed on the dotted line. Money paid, chances taken. And if they . . .the supporters rather than the players . . . are apprehensive about facing Cork again, well, more fool them; Waterford ought to have put away inherited fears by now. On the evidence of everything we've seen from Justin McCarthy's boys since springtime, they'll embrace the occasion rather than run from it. Good habits eventually become instincts.

Just in case it does go wrong for the People's Team this afternoon, by the by, let's please not have any nonsense about how Waterford couldn't beat Cork "when it really mattered". They were able to beat them in April when it mattered . . . in April terms anyway. They were able to beat them in June, when it mattered all the more and when Waterford, not Cork, were the guys in the no-win situation.

Admirable as the losers' resistance was the same afternoon, here's one who believes that it came about because of Semplegate rather than despite it and that the rejigging of the team energised Cork rather than enervated them. Back to their old, heavily stylised dance steps a fortnight ago against Tipperary, exhilarating though the routine looked for the first 20 minutes, they were running on empty long before the finish. As Kilkenny had demonstrated last September and the Tipp half-forward line eventually wised up to, wiring into the half-back line is the garlic-and-crucifix solution for Cork's opponents.

But what's a stepping stone for Waterford here is almost certainly an end in itself for Cork: be afraid. With Diarmuid O'Sullivan back to perform his human roadblock routine, another five-goal Waterford salvo is a non-runner, the more so as Sean Og will make optimum use of his upper body strength to prevent Dan . . . and Seamus Prendergast . . . drawing clean water under the puckout. Be doubly, trebly afraid. One shudders to contemplate what might materialise at the other end should Eoin Murphy and Declan Prendergast be as slow-reacting as they were in the opening minutes against Limerick, moreover.

The speed of the pigeoncatching duo of Tom and Jerry should allow Cork win the midfield, as they did on 17 June. Yet Stephen Molumphy is developing nicely and Michael Walsh is, in that glorious phrase employed exclusively by hurling folk and greyhound men, "a miller".

He'll be ploughing a furrow, to mix agricultural metaphors, till the final whistle. Quietly impressive in a supporting role in Munster, Eoin Kelly may be the man to detonate and make the difference. At any rate it is to be hoped devoutly he doesn't implode in the manner he did in the equivalent game two years ago, when the more vigorously he thrashed around the more ineffective he became.

Still, Kelly isn't as important to the commonweal as he was then. John Gardiner too needs to keep his temper padlocked.

Back in the days when the faithful of all creeds took heed of his summer urbi et orbis, Ger Loughnane was fond of declaring that there came a match in every team's lifespan they simply had to win. A month ago for Waterford that was the Munster semi-final. A month later it's today's, not least because they're playing for infinitely higher stakes.

Neither can survive while the other lives. The better team will survive. The team with the momentum, the team with the scoring forwards, the team who've been hurling all year with the hand of destiny on their shoulder. The crowd in white and blue.

VerdictWaterford
ALL IRELAND SHC QUARTER-FINAL CORK vWATERFORD
Croke Park, 4.00
Referee B Gavin (Offaly) Live, RTE 2

CORK D Og Cusack; S O'Neill, D O'Sullivan, B Murphy; J Gardiner, R Curran, S Og O hAilpin; T Kenny, J O'Connor; B O'Connor, T McCarthy, P Cronin; N Ronan, K Murphy (Sars"elds), J Deane.

WATERFORD C Hennessy; E Murphy, D Prendergast, J Murray; T Browne, K McGrath, A Kearney; M Walsh (c), E Kelly; J Kennedy, S Prendergast, P Flynn; J Mullane, D Shanahan, S Molumphy.