Hurling needs Cork and Waterford to be noisy neighbours

IF you are an old hurler, your Sunset Boulevard moment is picking out the jumper to go up to Dublin on All-Ireland weekend.

You’re not playing. You’re appearing on Up for the Match. “Des, I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

A lot of us old hurlers for whom the sun has set will be nostalgically watching Cork and Waterford this weekend. For a long time, the games between Cork and Waterford were the best games of the year, the best times of our lives. Cork v Waterford! We thought we were better than them, that our dedication, and our ‘Corkness’, would see them off, because they were duckers and divers, dodgers and dippers. And us? We were Cork! For me, Waterford were there at the beginning and there at the end. In 1995, we played them as minors in the Munster final. Won well. Job done.