One of the lads at the Saturday morning five-aside had asked him how he thought the following afternoon's replay would go. He quietly ran through some of the mental gymnastics he found necessary to answer to what should be a fairly routine question and his face lit up when he finally worked it all out. He was being set up.

"Replay? Yeah, right. The Community Shield is played as a once-off, and we'll hammer Chelski anyway. Even if it is a draw there'll be penalties to decide the winner on the day."

His teammate, a Waterford man, clarified the intent of the question. "I wasn't talking about the United and Chelsea game. I was talking about the hurling replay between Cork and Waterford tomorrow.

How do you think it'll go?" The United fan didn't even try to work this one out. "Is that on tomorrow? I didn't know that.

Someone told me that the hurling can be good sometimes."

By three o'clock the following afternoon, Waterford Man was sitting in the Hogan stand watching Kilkenny knock another seven bells out of Wexford and he was anxious on three fronts. The rain was coming in sideways and he was freezing. The way Kilkenny were hurling scared the life out of him and there was still a whole hour to go before it was Ken McGrath time. The family sitting next to him had travelled from Dungarvan for the second week running and it looked like the expense was beginning to tell. There wasn't a hot dog in sight, and lunch this week was a flask of milky tea, some sandwiches and a packet of jam tarts. They didn't seem to mind too much.

'Kenny Boy' was coming and they were exactly where they should be.

At precisely the same time, United Man was bone-dry and warm in the large warehouse that doubled as a pub in his part of Dublin. Sky Sports was yelling at the customers from all the television screens and despite an abundance of red-shirted viewers, there were no reported cries of 'Up the Rebels'. Twenty minutes later the Community Shield served up its first piece of excitement when a close range effort by Ryan Giggs was saved by the Chelsea keeper, Peter Cech, whose head was carefully secured in a protective helmet. United man and his friends groaned with disappointment before collectively agreeing that 'we' were taking them apart and that it was only a matter of time.

They were right. In the game's second piece of excitement, 15 minutes later Giggs skilfully guided one in. The warehouse erupted ecstatically and the boys got another round in to celebrate. There wasn't a cup of milky tea to be seen.

By the time United took the lead, Kilkenny had surgically dispatched Wexford, the rain was easing and Waterford Man was watching the controlled confusion that precedes big games at Croke Park. The Artane Boys' Band fought for pitch space with 50 galloping Munster men in red, white and blue while at the same time dodging a hail shower of sliotars. His boys were moving well and his anxiety was easing. During the week while the soccer professionals had been "taking each game as it comes", Dan Shanahan had offered a more evocative hurling analysis by publicly reflecting on the role of "O'Sullivan's fat arse" on the outcome of the drawn game. Diarmuid's backside didn't look any smaller since last week but Paul Flynn looked even fitter. As the second half kicked off at Wembley the ref threw the ball in at Croker and within minutes Ken McGrath had inserted an open fist into a swirl of slashing ash plant and charged clear with the captured ball in a passage that has defined the last few summers. The ground roared with blue and white pride and passion. His protective helmet was nowhere to be seen.

Back at the warehouse, United man and his friends had overcome the crushing disappointment of a Chelsea equaliser on the stroke of half time and settled in for the second half. Wayne Rooney's agitation before the break had raised the intensity of the game to the level of a Sean Og warm-up and there was real hope of a lively 45 minutes ahead. It wasn't to be. Ten minutes into the second half the text commentary on the BBC website remarked that "just as at the start of the match, it is slow and stately out there again. The pre-interval bite has gone." A few minutes later Joe Cole lightly brushed off the United defender Nemanja Vidic as he attempted a clearance but after a few moments of apparent agony the Serb found the courage to get back on his feet and continue the game. The next notable event for him, and the match itself, was when he fell over again in the Chelsea penalty area. He didn't get the penalty and the game limped on to an inevitable draw.

In Jones' Road each single moment brought a new frenetic incident. Dan Shanahan had solved the fat arse problem and had followed a firsthalf goal of powerful athleticism with one of surgical precision in the second.

Ben O'Connor was knocking over points with ridiculous accuracy and Stephen Molumphy was proving again that his growing talent was as unusual as his surname.

Not long after Vidic's bravery had thwarted the butchery of Joe Cole, Eoin Kelly came to the sideline for some quick treatment on a hand injury. It wasn't too bad. He would only need 10 stitches to repair the wound and right now his county needed him . . .

he would worry about the day job in the morning. He returned swiftly and eagerly to the fray.

John Terry's club needed him too, but he had hurt his leg in training the day before and was watching the penalty shoot out from the bench in the kind of suit that you can easily afford on a multi-million quid a year contract. None of his team mates managed to score from the spot but Ashley Cole still managed to smile brightly as he collected his loser's medal. United Man and his friends were singing proudly back in the warehouse, their favourite English soccer team had won and all was well in their world. Star midfielder, Michael Carrick, summed things up. "It wasn't the best game in the world but we won and a win's a win.

But today doesn't mean an awful lot."

None of the Cork players were smiling. They had lost by three points and despite all their success over the last few years it still meant an awful lot. Waterford Man embraced Dungarvan Family and together they anticipated the real possibility of their first final in 34 years. Only Limerick stood in the way now and as Jose Mourinho explained to interviewers that his team "didn't lose the game itself, we are not at a lower level than the opposition, " Gerald McCarthy was congratulating Waterford on their victory and telling RTE that the best team had clearly won.

It's unclear if this afternoon's games were discussed after the five-a-side yesterday morning. United Man would no doubt have been optimistic that 'we' could make a good start at home to Reading, while his buddy from Waterford would have been anxious on two fronts. We are better than Limerick, but would we be tired and complacent? He also knew there were only two more magic Sundays to go before Sheff and Kenny Boy would be fully replaced by Ronaldo and Drogba, before Jamie Rednapp and Andy Gray came in for Finnerty and Farrell. As Marlon Brando's character in the film Apocalypse Nowmuttered with his dying breath.

"The Horror! The Horror!"