Clare v Waterford
All Ireland Senior Hurling semi-final
Croke Park, 3.30 p.m. . Sunday

The lads and lassies in charge of ‘The Crystal Ball’ agreed to break new ground this week and have decided to have a shot at predicting the result of a major hurling match. Normally, they’re more at home poring over old League results and championship scores from the Fifties in the realm of the ‘big ball’ game. However, after a good few hours in the back ‘shnug’ of Ma Molloy’s famous drinking emporium (on the Main Street of Gowlnacalley), knocking back large bottles of Phoenix Ale, here’s what they came up with …

Sunday’s hurling clash between Clare and Waterford promises to be one of the best seen at Croke Park for many a long year …

All the portents are there: A great venue, the sod in good condition, a pitch of maximum length and width … two teams of skill, courage and determination, led by shrewd managers … tens of thousands of colourful, devoted and loyal fans who will travel … and good track records behind each team in reaching this stage of the competition. If that old GAA institution, The Clerk of the Weather, delivers a fine day, then we could be in for the finest hurling experience so far in the new Croke Park.

Possibly the most intriguing aspect of the team selections is Waterford’s placing of former Tipp hurler, now of Ballygunner, Andy Moloney, in at centre forward. If he starts and plays in that position, he will be policed by no less a man than the formidable Seánie McMahon himself. On the known inter-county form of both these players, Moloney’s selection is difficult to understand. His main championship role to date this year was a cameo appearance in Waterford’s defeat of Cork. He was substituted after only twenty minutes and in the final against Tipp he made another Hitchcock-like walk-on appearance with minutes to go, when the hay was saved and Tipp were well and truly bet.

Moloney’s advocates – most of whom, it has to be said, dwell in the Ballygunner parish - say he was injured that day against Cork and had to come off. However, nothing he did in the opening twenty-five minutes suggested he was going to make any sort of a useful contribution over a full game. Again, his supporters cite a sterling, domineering display on the same Mr. McMahon when Ballygunner defeated St. Josephs Doora-Bearefield on their way to annexing the Munster Club championship. But, as they say, that was then and this is now. In any event, Moloney’s later displays for Ballygunner were, to say the least, somewhat clumsy and uninspiring. Is this the man, then, chosen by Just-In McCarthy to rattle the strong and experienced Clare backs.?

What is the inscrutable McCarthy up to at all, at all we wonder? Can it be that he sees something in Moloney that others have not yet seen? Moloney is tall and strong and will be well able for McMahon in the ‘physical’ stakes. Perhaps his job is to keep McMahon fully occupied, thus releasing space for some of the lighter, less experienced Déise forwards? However, a hallmark of McCarthy’s tenure at the helm in Waterford has been his ability to motivate and prepare players to perform above themselves. Thus, the already great – like McGrath, Browne and Flynn – are lifted to super performance, while the hitherto very good – like Greene or Queally – in turn step up to become excellent. If, by any chance, McCarthy has wrought some sore of similar transformation of Moloney’s ‘head’ on the day, then the selection is more explicable.

Elsewhere on the Waterford side there are the usual ‘ducks and drakes’ of a Just-In McCarthy selection, with many players shuffled around into unaccustomed positions. Whether this is folly or supreme confidence will be known within five minutes of the throw-in on Sunday. Past experience would suggest that a current Waterford team sheet bears about as much concession to reality as a UVF plea that they are simply engaged in some kind of ‘community work’ in North Belfast!

Clare will be pleased to have inched by Galway in the quarterfinal. Each championship game has seen them improve over the previous one and Sunday’s tussle will be no exception. Many of the players who led them to their last All Ireland championship in ’97 are still around and – like good wines – seem to be improving with age. Men like the Lohans, McMahon, Baker, Gilligan, Jamesie and Colin Lynch are playing as well as they ever have. Cyril Lyons, Louis Mulqueen and John Minogue increasingly look like a management team that has finally got the hang of the post-Loughnane era and is marking its own stamp on events. Clare have had the benefit of very competitive matches against Galway and Wexford and, indeed, an earlier pipe opener against Dublin. Much is being made of the six weeks long lay-off by Waterford before the weekend game but The Crystal Ball believes that, under the current management, this will have been factored in and well taken care of. That Waterford team on Sunday will be as fresh and determined to win as if the Munster final had never happened, but they will have the added confidence of having despatched the hurling aristocrats of Cork and Tipperary.

The will to win, nay the need to win is so strong among this Waterford panel and their supporters. In the past, that has proved to be as much a burden as a benefit to Déise teams. Not so on this occasion, we believe. At club and county level, they have tasted the sweet wine of Munster championship victory. There’s enough of a leavening of experience in the panel – eight in all – who also drank the bitter dregs of the semi-final of ’98 when a single point separated them from a shot at an All Ireland. Between these two mixtures, the potion should be strong to overcome the Clare challenge, maybe even handily enough, in the end of the day. The snag for Clare is that the line between 'buckets of experience' and 'over the hill' is a thin one and, sometimes, you don't know you've crossed it until it's too late.

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