Keith Duggan talks to the trainer who helped prime the county's hurlers for the rout of Clare in Thurles

For Gerry Fitzpatrick, the pleasure in watching Waterford's destruction of Clare on Sunday was to be found in the marriage of time and performance. Although Fitzpatrick is better known as a driving force in Irish basketball, he has been working as trainer to the Waterford hurlers since the new season began.

Justin McCarthy met him last winter in Cork city and vividly described the direction in which he wanted to take his team. The conversation made it clear the championship game against Clare was paramount. He wanted Waterford to achieve a perfect pitch. In that context, Waterford's performance in the sunshine at Semple Stadium must have been approaching high art for Fitzpatrick.

"It was beautiful, yes. It was beautiful," he enthuses. "I think what pleased the players, as well as the victory, was the way they responded to one another as a team. You could see them growing out there. They were enjoying the satisfaction that comes with hitting the right note as a team more than anything else."

Schooled in CBS in Limerick where he played hurling "with no great distinction", Thomond College graduate Fitzpatrick trained Fitzgibbon teams in Waterford IT and also worked with the county senior panel in the mid-1990s. He happily declares himself a novice when it comes to the finer techniques of the game. But he has a formidable knowledge of physical education and as a basketball coach has demonstrated traits regularly attributed to McCarthy: shrewdness, an unorthodox and rare insight into his sport and a proven capacity for producing winning teams.

The inspiration behind the exceptional Waterford Wildcats women's team and more recently the coach of a rejuvenated Neptune, Fitzpatrick delivers silverware.

"I don't think I am given away any secret in saying that winning is what Justin laid out when we spoke. He wanted to produce a winning team and he has very clear ideas about how he wants to do that. I was delighted to have an opportunity to work in such a set up.

"On the training manuals the players received, the motto was, 'The will to win is common, the will to prepare to win is rare".

"What I found with this bunch of guys is they were extremely willing to go the extra mile and to embrace techniques they may not have been that familiar with if it meant improving. They are wonderfully pro-active in discussing what they feel they need to improve as players and Justin's really great at encouraging that. It is not an authoritarian scene where three guys come in and bark orders. I have found the training has been tough but also, I think, fun."

However, Fitzpatrick insists there is "nothing overly sophisticated" afoot at Waterford sessions. As well as conditioning work, training sessions have been based on McCarthy's well-publicised doctrine of 'hurling, hurling, hurling'. Individual strengths and weaknesses were analysed and specific drills were devised to work at complementing and rectifying those."

Maybe it is time to patent the drill devised for big Dan Shanahan as the popular perception is the Lismore man has been transformed into a scoring machine, exuberantly symbolised in his hat-trick of goals at Semple Stadium.

"Well, Dan's case is representative of the team, I think," says Fitzpatrick. "It's sometimes hard for people to appreciate the work these guys put in and Dan was just really anxious to improve his game. And Sunday was just payback for the last seven months."

Fitzpatrick says the team were deeply disappointed not to have won league honours the previous week and insists they tried but it was just a case of nothing working. However, he allows that some of the frustrations of that day fuelled the more extravagant turns of hurling during Sunday's stunning rout of a Clare team regarded as solid and persuasive. That is why he does not necessarily concur with the funereal commentary that has followed the manner of Clare's defeat.

"It has been said that a week is a long time in hurling and I guess in terms of results, that has been borne out as a truth. But a team doesn't just cease being a team overnight. Clare, I think, only missed out on the league final on a scoring difference so they had developed a level of consistency this season. Obviously it did not go to plan for them on Sunday but I think that fact may make matters very complicated for the team that has to face them next."

As for Waterford, expectations have returned within the county at a precariously early stage of the summer. Mastering those as they build towards the game with Tipperary is the hurlers' next task.

"Well, absolutely. Justin has already spoken about that with the players. But it is not something anybody has lost sight of. We are not champions. That distinction remains with Kilkenny and the task for us has not changed: it is the same as every other county and that is to try and take the title from Kilkenny. This was just a first step and now we have to consider the next."