DJ CAREY flashed the gimlet, Pat O'Neill dipped the shoulder and this antic summer changed hue once again as Kilkenny came bursting through the backdoor of the All-Ireland hurling championship.

Legends are spun from afternoons like this. Kilkenny, having bungled their way enthusiastically through a frenetic first half, found themselves nine points astray and needing life support at Thurles yesterday.

They emerged, reinvigorated, from their half time concave and whistled 1-5 past Galway before the stragglers in the crowd had resettled in their seats. The 22,826 paying customers drew breath and fastened their safety belts.

At that point only a fool would have guessed at the tilt and camber of the rest of this crazy ride. If every second All-Ireland quarter-final is to be like this, popular demand will ensure the survival of the new format.

Galway steadied themselves and hung on for dear life. It looked like another afternoon might be needed to separate the sides. Then Kilkenny got ruthless and scored a fourth goal. Galway gave a last kick, but DJ Carey picked a loose ball and punished a pair of Galway foosterers with the score of the game, a sublime point from the left wing, to effectively kill Galway's challenge.

And so Kilkenny sweep on to an All-Ireland semi-final with Clare on August 10th in Croke Park, an emphatic return to the big time for a county just beginning to feel the strength in their stride.

Galway, for their part, will put down many late summer days looking back at it all with justifiable regret, and on sleepless nights they will dream of quicksilver DJ Carey darting between them quick and elusive as a fish.

Carey helped himself to 2-8 yesterday, the first score after just a minute looking in retrospect like the thin end of a mighty wedge driven between the sides. After a Leinster final where he was all but anonymous, this was a sweet redemption. Afterwards he shrugged his shoulders and subscribed it all to happenstance.

"It didn't happen because the team needed leadership. Well I mean I tried as hard the last day. If you ask (Wexford defender) Rod Guiney, we did a fair bit of running the last day and I came off the worst of it. If the ball falls for you it's great. If it doesn't there is absolutely nothing you can do. Today it fell for me and I got on the end of a few scores. "If I played well and we lost it's the same as having a bad game. I'm disappointed if we play badly and nobody knows it better. I don't read the papers and I don't follow the media. That's just a thing I do. It doesn't bother me. It's nice to play well if it's possible. If it's not possible, well it's not for the want of trying."

Carey's interventions were most critical in the early stages of a helter-skelter second half. Having contributed the last point of the opening period he scored a hefty 1-3 in the first 10 minutes after the break, reward, he felt, for a first half which should have yielded more for Kilkenny.

"We didn't hurl that badly in the first half, we got bad breaks that were no fault of anybody. We didn't want to give up and be beaten easily. Galway came out today and they fired on all cylinders; you'd have to feel sorry for them. They are a big addition to a hurling championship. Know what it's like to be on the end of a losing effort."

Carey has the eyes down, pokerfaced demeanour of a man looking for the big pot this summer. He means to freckle the last years of the hurling decade with the same greatness which lit up the early part.

"When we lost the Leinster final, I said to myself that we were three games away from winning an All-Ireland. Today we are two games away from winning one. That's all we have to worry about."

During a tense half-time break, Carey would have been one of the few players exempt from the threat of being eternally deprived of a Kilkenny jersey if the game was lost. Nicky Brennan had seen the evidence of good hurling but had witnessed a sequence of errors which bordered on being comical. "The half-time score was terribly flattering to Galway," Brennan said. "It was a mountain that we left ourselves to climb, but in fairness they climbed it. I told them in the break that they had 35 minutes to stay in the championship, and if they lost today there was some of them could say goodbye to ever wearing a Kilkenny jersey again, not the older guys necessarily either.

"They had made some stupid mistakes, they were too casual about the way they were playing. Maybe the three matches stood to us in the second half. We played with more intensity. "I think the players we introduced were able to withstand the physical side of it, not that it was an especially tough game, but the players were able to withstand it better than in the Leinster final." As for Carey's rich contribution, Brennan was relieved to see signs of the old familiar excellence.

"You can keep a good man down now and again but you can't keep him down all the time. I was delighted with him."

There has been a shift in hurling philosophy regarding the new format for this year's hurling championship. Brennan, always one of the leading thinkers in the field, articulated the view that losing provincial finalists have the chance to inspect their own souls and then do a little dusting.

"In fairness, I'd say we had one big advantage over Galway, we've had the chance to sort out some issues. I'm not saying they are all sorted out, but we have been able to look at ourselves and sort a few things out. "I have always agreed that the back door system should be there. I'm delighted it's been tried and that it's working well. That's nothing to do with Kilkenny. In two years' time I'll give you my verdict and I won't be shy about letting you know what it is."

Adrian Ronan isn't shy either, which is fortunate because he will be featuring in lots of opponents' highlights videos. Yesterday was another of those days. The blame for two of Galway's three first-half goals got dumped at Ronan's feet. He pleaded guilty, but with mitigating circumstances.

"There was sun out there and a bad wind. The first one hopped and I lost sight of it in the sun. The second one, your man was coming in and I thought he was going to drill it and I went down and he mis-hit it. One of those days."

And his thoughts on the system, now that rehabilitation is done with and high summer beckons?

"I think it has worked for us. The Cork game in the league was very useful to us. It blew away a lot of the cobwebs. Blew them off everyone but myself, I suppose. We learned a lot. We'll be looking forward to getting in there against Clare. Today at half-time we had a lot of lads whose reputations were disappearing fast. Now we are a game away from an All-Ireland final."

Outside, the Kilkenny supporters were still banging on the doors, dizzy with delirium. It's not even August yet. The aristocracy are forgetting themselves.