GAELIC GAMES: Waterford and Cork will play each other again in this month's All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals. That was the headline fixture in yesterday's draw. The quarter-finals are an innovation introduced this year to give hurling four competitive matches, involving the top eight counties.

The other ties are a combination of the rare and commonplace. Leinster champions Kilkenny will play Limerick in a championship pairing last seen 31 years ago when the counties met in the 1974 All-Ireland final. Kilkenny won and achieved a measure of revenge for having lost the previous year's final to the same opponents, who haven't won an All-Ireland since.

Limerick lost Saturday's final qualifier match in Group A against Galway, giving the latter the easier draw against one of the provincial runners-up rather than the champions.

Leinster runners-up Wexford have been drawn against yesterday's surprise packets Clare, who hit four goals to claim top spot in Group B of the qualifiers. The counties last played in the summer three years ago when - as now - Wexford were emerging from a creditable performance in the Leinster final against Kilkenny. Unfortunately the team let itself become distracted by a futile campaign to try to extend the one-week gap between the provincial final and the qualifier. Clare ended up comfortable eight-point winners.

The fourth quarter-final sees one of the most familiar pairings of the last two decades. This will be the eighth time in 18 years Tipperary have played Galway in the championship. Under the old system the counties were regular contenders in All-Ireland finals and semi-finals from 1987-'91. They have played at the old quarter-final stage five years ago after Tipp had lost the Munster final to Cork, just as is the case this season. Since then the counties have contested another All-Ireland final, 2001, and a qualifier two years later - both won by Tipperary.

Waterford will be doubly disappointed with the weekend in that they went into yesterday's match against Clare in Ennis as favourites to win and top the group, which would have meant avoiding the provincial champions Cork and Kilkenny. That the match went wrong is bad enough but having to play Cork again is a daunting prospect. Waterford lost May's semi-final to the All-Ireland champions.

It had been originally thought counties would be protected from playing sides they had already met but it turned out that the motions establishing the new format, passed at congress, omitted to include that safeguard.