You pays your money and you takes your chances. So a Croke Park double-header that offered long odds on shock and but decent prices on entertainment value. In the end all we got was some home truths.

Wexford and Tipperary advance to the All-Ireland hurling semi-finals but will need to be much much better by the time they get there. Antrim still want for self belief. Offaly want another two years' experience.

Antrim nearly deposed Wexford in a sprightly enough curtain-raiser. They had an extravagance of wides, a five-point half-time lead and a square-ball decision on an early goal, and they lost by three points which rained in on them in the last two minutes.

Nothing but the same old story. As usual they came to Croke Park, raised a few eyebrows, drew some warm applause and some pats on the head and were sent home again. That fabled day when they beat Offaly is 14 years in the rear-view mirror now.

Antrim need more.

They will look back and reflect that they had the beating of a Wexford team which only fired in spurts during the game. Up front Wexford have some wonderful young hurlers but the new generation are light and fast and haven't yet got big players around whom they might operate as satellites. And the veterans reinstated for the last game were respectable but not inspirational this time. The absence of Darragh Ryan was keenly felt.

If Antrim needed more from this game so did Wexford. With respect to Antrim, who did more than enough to win the game, this was a poor performance by Wexford, one which had people looking back over the championship and revising the value they had put on everything.

Perhaps Waterford, whom Wexford surprised in the last round, were much worse than everyone thought. If they were, well where does that leave Cork? If Cork are weaker than we thought maybe Wexford can surprise them next month in the semi- final. And so on.

That sort of musing and reappraisal didn't stop when Offaly came out. Offaly should have beaten Wexford in June. They didn't and this anaemic performance framed their summer. Wins against Dublin and Limerick's nascent sides. Losses to Wexford and Tipp. Ho hum.

Tipperary brushed Offaly aside yesterday. An interesting start deceived us into moving to the edge of our seats but Offaly's three-point burst was no indicator of form. Tipperary swept back. Brian O'Meara scored a goal not long before the tea-break.

John Carroll added one just afterwards. Offaly got two goals later on to apply a bit of cosmetics to the scoreline.

"A lot of the pundits talk about us losing leads and we lost a lead there today but at the end of the day if we win we are happy. We were well ahead there," said Michael Doyle, the Tipperary manager, in the aftermath.

Bland as yesterday's game might have been, the outcome whetted appetites for the semi-final, which is a continuation of the modern rivalry between Kilkenny and Tipp.

Fine entertaining games in last year's championship and this year's league have established a pattern between two of the game's greatest names and next month's rematch promises to be one of the games of the season.

"I just hope we don't let in five goals," said Michael Doyle in a reference to May's festival of goals in the National League final, where the sides prompted 10 green flags between them.

Between now and then Tipperary would appear to have some work to do. They can be satisfied on yesterday's evidence with their full-back line, which held their counterparts scoreless from play most of the day and smothered virtually everything when the game was still live. But they lack muscle if not energy in midfield and the full forward position is anyone's for the taking.

All that and Eoin Kelly looks more like a very good player than a bona fide genius at the moment. Kilkenny have been wondering all summer about how they will contain him. Maybe the dip in his form will make those frettings redundant.

Summer drifts on. Three big hurling games left. How 2003 will be judged as a vintage depends on how they unfold.