All-Ireland SHC Qualifiers:Tipperary's win over Cork at the weekend was not alone the biggest surprise of the hurling championship to date but it has sent a current of anticipation buzzing through the All-Ireland quarter-finals line-up.

That it was achieved without so many first-choice players, including the team's most famous hurler, Eoin Kelly, only added to the shock.

The GAA's head of games, Pat Daly, has been a long-standing member of the Hurling Development Committee, including the one that devised the current qualifier system.

He was as surprised as anyone, given that the format hasn't produced many surprises in the past few years.

"It's unusual in that hurling has produced what's known in psychological terms as 'learned helplessness' - in other words, teams very demoralised by frequent heavy defeats. Apart from the weekend, there hasn't been much of a history of the qualifiers throwing up major surprises.

"At the same time, I think it has contributed to an equalisation process, because although there's an argument that it benefits big counties like Cork and Kilkenny, I'm not sure that the other teams would be making any more headway if they were restricted to playing one match a year."

Daly accepts, however, that a county like Tipperary, with a long and powerful tradition in the game, is more likely to be able to perform outside the context of poor form and low expectations when facing another major presence such as Cork. "There's an element of that all right."

The consequences of the result, which abruptly threw Cork and Waterford together and passed Wexford to Tipperary, have galvanised the quarter-finals.

The first match has become the latest instalment in the modern game's most popular rivalry, whereas Wexford would, by virtue of a better championship record against their new opponents, face Tipp with far more confidence than they would Cork.

Asked how his team managed to overcome the bruised morale of losing to Limerick over three matches and recording distinctly below-par displays against Offaly and Dublin, Tipperary manager Michael Keating disagrees immediately with the premise that his team were down-hearted.

"We had one game against Offaly that was a very good game, especially in the second half, and we were lucky to win. We got a few injuries and rested players. Against Dublin we did just enough and picked up more injuries, to Eoin Kelly and Paul Curran in mid-stream, but I thought the atmosphere before the Cork match was brilliant.

"In the Horse and Jockey beforehand I got a sense of a new beginning. The younger players were getting an opportunity to play at this level and they were ready for the challenge. I said to a couple of them: 'You've the same right to play for Tipperary as Eamonn Corcoran and all the others, who have won All-Irelands for the county'."

He dismisses suggestions that his improvised centrefield that proved so effective at the weekend was in any sense a gamble that paid off.

"Hugh Moloney had played there already and we were happy with him. Séamus Butler plays all his club hurling there."

Next Sunday Tipperary will be playing a seventh championship match in successive weeks - three against Limerick in Munster and another three in the qualifiers - which has to be a record. According to Keating, that won't affect the team.

"It doesn't bother me at all. But the clubs in Tipperary are hurting over the lost matches, and that's a huge concern for us. There's been no club games of any significance apart from those with no county players involved, and that's not right."