Semi-final line-up - Tipperary v Wexford August 12th, Croke Park, Kilkenny v Galway August 19th, Croke Park.

Had you hyped it on the billboards or got planes to skywrite it on the blue canvas above, yesterday still shaped to be one of those listless Croke Park days.

Truth is, we came with grave faces, 36,853 of us to give a respectable send off to Derry and to Wexford.

We arrived begrudging them the time it would all take but resigned to our duty. We whispered that it was unfair to Wexford to be murdered twice in the one summer. . . .

Well, Derry slipped away quietly. Wexford, though, were having none of it. The best drama of the hurling season gushed forth from the most unlikely spot. Wexford bounded out and scored a goal before the line for the hotdog stand had broken up.

They were 1-3 to no score up after 10 minutes. Even then, we didn't believe them, we thought that these were fleeting moments of reprieve. All Limerick had to do was wake up and win the game. In Limerick this morning they are still wondering why they didn't.

Like the rest of us, they were victims perhaps of the faulty old syllogisms of sport. Munster hurling is healthier than Leinster hurling. Wexford are second best in Leinster. Limerick second best in Munster. Voila! Limerick must be better than Wexford.

With 30 seconds left, Limerick led by two points. If there is a team in the country which should never feel comfortable in the dying seconds of a big game in Croke Park it is Limerick.

Yet, their race memory failed them. They defended poorly and Wexford kept huffing and puffing. They won a 21-yard free. Damien Fitzhenry plucked a hurl from the back of his net and made the voyage upfield. No assassins blood has ever run cooler. He ripped the back of the Limerick net. If guys like Ciarβn Carey and Steve McDonagh gave each other horrified little glances at that moment we didn't catch it but the sense of dΘjα vu was palpable.

Strange day. Rory McCarthy batted down Wexford's early goal, a conventional enough score. The other three which Wexford fashioned were hewn out of desperate necessity though. Paul Codd from a free, goalkeeper Damien Fitzhenry from a penalty and from that late free.

Limerick, had they a mind to or if they thought it would do some good, could complain that several of the decisions made by referee Michael Wadding rode them hard - especially perhaps the denial of a goal scored by Seβn O'Connor at the end of a wonderful move.

Limerick got a free instead. The mathematics of what they lost in that trade will haunt them forever.

To dwell on that though is to deny Wexford the credit they deserve for one of the great resurrections of modern hurling. Anybody who witnessed their decrepitude in the Leinster final came away feeling nothing but compassion for a team that seemed to have regressed so rapidly.

Wexford came to Croke Park yesterday not having won a decent championship game in the last three seasons. Yet, they were hungry and capable of locating some of the old skills. Afterwards, when asked to locate a turning point in their summer, they pointed to the Leinster under-21 final in Wexford Park three days after the Leinster senior final.

"There were 10,000 people in Wexford Park that night," said Larry Murphy. Yesterday, they were a county with a future ahead of them again.

Hard to know what Derry have ahead of them. Yesterday marked their second successive trip to Croke Park as Ulster champions. If they are finding their way to the ground a bit quicker, well that sadly is the only improvement in the quality of their day. Galway didn't even have to look too interested to rack up a 21-point win.

Derry's minors lost by a greater amount even. The excitement that marked the end of the afternoon shouldn't disguise the fact that all is not well in hurling's garden.