THEY KNOW about Shane McGrath in the Bronx. There was a moment during the snail-paced All Star exhibition match at Gaelic Park last December when the Tipperary midfielder sprang to life.

Plenty of gasps of admiration came from the freezing Irish-American gallery before McGrath resumed the generally accepted pace of the evening.

One of the natives remarked he had seen McGrath do that for 60 minutes on this surface back in high summer a few years previous.

Despite his youth - he is only 23 - hurling has brought McGrath to some interesting places but none more so than Sunday's baptism of fire. Playing in a Munster final is every Tipperary boy's dream.

He is part of the new wave of Tipp hurlers. They have been waiting for them to blossom in the Premier County for some time now and come Sunday they are expected to return to the provincial mountain top. The hunger of the new breed is expected to devour a Clare team inferior on paper.

"There is definitely (a hunger)," he says. "You just look at some of our league form this year. One game comes to mind, the one against Galway when we were down to 14 men in the second half against a very strong wind and a very, very good team and we really came out. That was one of our best league games when we came out and got a good result when no one thought we would.

"There is real hunger there. There are a lot of young lads who are really, really hungry for a bit of success this year. And more so than ever, I think. We have a great panel, a great management team and everyone is pulling the same way. It's going fine."

Beating Galway in the National League final made them automatic fancies for the All-Ireland. The malaise of last season and fallout from Michael "Babs" Keating's departure vanished. The floating sensation left them ripe for plucking by Cork at a venue, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, where they had been unable to tame the Rebels since the 1920s.

"It was great to get that monkey off our back, as they say. Everyone was talking about this 83-year hoodoo but this is our 2008 team. This is what we are now, we're Tipperary 2008 not Tipperary for the past 83 years. We're taking each step at a time.

"That's one step on the ladder taken and hopefully we'll take another step on Sunday but Clare are going to be very, very tough."

Tipperary have been down for so long - well, since 2001 - that, Eoin Kelly and Brendan Cummins aside, there are not many household names jumping off the team sheet.

"Maybe for the last few years a lot of people were depending on Eoin but if you look at it, Larry Corbett is one of the best forwards in the country but he has been plagued by injuries. He's coming right this year and his confidence is sky high. We have other young lads coming through, like Seamie Callinan. They're adding a new buzz to the whole set-up. Conor O'Mahony has really made the centre-back position his own, Paul Curran is keeping out the best full-back in the country in Declan Fanning.

"So people might say we have no stars but then again there's six lads there who would probably make any team in the country."

You ask McGrath about himself and, typical of a well-tuned player facing the biggest challenge of his career, he neatly deflects the attention elsewhere.

"The talent is there (in the squad) but a lot of credit must go to the back-room team as well. We have a very professional management with Liam (Sheedy) there and Eamon O'Shea and Mick Ryan. Physically we're in very good condition. A lot of that goes down to Cian O'Neill, our physical trainer."

The carrot of direct access to an All-Ireland semi-final is not something he will dwell on.

"There's the Munster crown. I have no Munster final at all, and bar the lads from 2001 no one has a Munster championship medal. Brendan Cummins is there since 93 and I think he has only two. There are lads like that who deserve another Munster championship medal.

"The All-Ireland semi-final is a great incentive. You have a break for a few weeks and maybe you can kind of relax the week after this match and refocus for the next few weeks. If you win a Munster final you are only two hours away from winning the Liam McCarthy."