Waterford 2-22 Tipperary 2-22: The width of a post has often been the difference between victory and defeat. Not here.

Shortly after my wife and I took up a pair of seats about four rows from the back of the covered stand in Cusack Park last Sunday, I could hear a young fella behind me asking his father: Is that Tony Browne?

Derek McGrath is discussing the sanctity of the dressing room. It couldn’t be more important now as seemingly everyone but John Mullane has them down to be also-rans in Munster this year.

Whiplash is not an injury often associated with hurling, but the condition kept Kilkenny’s Eoin Murphy out of three league games.

Kilkenny boss Brian Cody was encouraged by his newer, less experienced players’ commitment to closing out yesterday’s narrow win over Tipperary in Nowlan Park.

Cork manager, John Meyler, is facing up to the prospect of being without Conor Lehane, as well as Seamus Harnedy, for Sunday’s crunch clash against Tipperary, in Semple Stadium.

Strategy requires thought, while tactics need only observation. Does that help us with what happened yesterday, in Nowlan Park?

Cork must beat Tipperary in Thurles next Sunday to have a chance of avoiding a relegation play-off after this third consecutive defeat.

UL 4-18 UCC 0-8: Hard to know which camp held greater disbelief at the final whistle.

UCD put one foot in the quarter-finals of the Fitzgibbon Cup thanks to this surprise win away to UCC.

UCC 1-19 - CORK IT 0-12: UCC’s class was always going to be the telling factor. And so it proved, even if it took a little longer than expected to boil to the surface.

Former Waterford attacker Seamus Prendergast reckons Derek McGrath’s counter-attacking approach has about 60% support in the county and that critics will pounce if they struggle in the Allianz League.

Tom Devine was hardly expecting his first Páirc Uí Chaoimh performance to be like this.

Jamie Barron says the UCC players are not to blame for the furore surrounding their involvement in the Cork senior hurling championship.

Should either UCC team score a quarter-final victory this weekend, then the disquiet which greeted the hurlers’ surprise win over Midleton last Sunday will swell considerably.

Limerick 1-28 Clare 1-15 

Prior to last year’s All-Ireland U21 hurling decider, Waterford selector Paul Flynn opened up on why the grade is his favourite competition

Not that he sees it this way but it’s a triumph that Stephen Bennett is this evening expected to be named in the Waterford team to face Cork.

The Waterford hurlers have been dealt a substantial blow ahead of the championship, writes Michael Moynihan of the Irish Examiner.

Galway 2-22 Waterford 2-19

Kevin Moran says Waterford are more than a match for any team when they work as hard as they did in Sunday’s Division 1A win over Clare.

UCC 1-18

Waterford defender Noel Connors paid tribute to his teammates for the “incredible amount of steel” they showed against Kilkenny last Sunday.

Allianz HL Division 1A

A powerful first-half showing delivered Waterford a first All-Ireland U21 hurling title since 1992.

Galway manager Tony Ward has described Saturday’s opponents as  one of the best U21 hurling teams of all time.

They’ll enter Thurles on Saturday as unbackable favourites because of what Austin Gleeson did to Kilkenny in last month’s drawn All-Ireland semi-final, because of what he did in the replay six days later, because of Conor Gleeson’s assuredness when thrown in for his second afternoon of championship fare in the All-Ireland quarter-final win over Wexford and because Patrick Curran and Shane Bennett, between them, clipped 3-73 in the national league.

Waterford 5-25 Antrim 1-8: Concrete solutions may have been thin on the ground, but at least there was general agreement Saturday’s futile exercise in Thurles did no-one any favours. 

Waterford 2-19 Tipperary 0-15: A powerful final quarter burst — in which the home outfit outscored Tipperary by 1-8 to 0-1 — delivered Waterford a first Munster U21 hurling title in 22 years.