MOSTLY HURLING:TIME AND Tom Waits wait for no man. Well Tom will wait for you alright if you have a ticket.

The American singer/songwriter played in a temporary venue in the Phoenix Park called the Ratcellar over the past two nights and indeed will be there again tonight. Oh, and all his shows are sold out. So there's little point in travelling to the capital unless you have a ticket. It's not like the All-Ireland finals, where many fans travel without a ticket in the hope they'll pick one up on the morning of the game or, as a last resort, do business with the touts.

Well if you want to see Mr Waits you have to buy your ticket directly from the official ticket agency and your name has to be on the ticket and you have to have photo identification when you arrive at the gate. If your name isn't on the ticket you don't get in, so selling on is not an option. The word on the grapevine is that the touts are livid.

Could the GAA learn from this in an effort to squeeze these pedlars out? I know that in sell-out terms, we're only talking about the two All-Ireland finals and the Dubs' football games, but it's infuriating to see fans paying well over the odds for tickets for these games. Surely it should be possible to have some kind of system to identify where tickets originate. Maybe a little advertising campaign before the finals this year with an email and phone contact number for anybody who pays over the odds for tickets might flush out the suppliers of these parasites.

That old familiar "Anyone buyin' or sellin' a few tickets?" was to be heard near the train station in Thurles last Sunday. Business was a bit slow, though, with an attendance of less than 40,000, more than 10,000 under capacity.

Those lucky enough to have made the journey to Tipperary witnessed the two most exciting games of the year to date.

We saw nine goals and 70 points. How many Premiership games would you need to endure before you'd see 79 scores? Not a single yellow card was flashed in the second game.

Is that a tribute to the teams or the referee or both? The answer is probably both.

Referee Dickie Murphy was anonymous, which is how you want the man in the middle to be. He is still the top man though. His common sense and intelligent underuse of the whistle meant this game flowed from beginning to end. There were only 16 frees in total over the 70 minutes.

You'd often see that many in the first quarter of some football games.

This was a no-nonsense, high-octane, get-on-with-the-business type of game. It was totally devoid of cynicism. It was hard, fair and sporting at all times.

This Cork team don't need any praise from me. I have the highest of admiration for them. They are a special group of people.

Waterford are now in the wonderful position of being back in yet another All-Ireland semi-final but this time they will go in as underdogs.

I was glad to see that gentleman Dan Shanahan get back his goal-scoring touch. They might need more of it the next day.

Clare, the 2008 edition, have been, in my estimation, the team of the championship so far. At the beginning of the year they were at the bottom of the Munster order of merit. I really couldn't see how they could make any progress in the Munster championship given how poorly they performed last year and particularly given they were drawn against Waterford in the first round.

A huge amount of credit must go to Mike McNamara and his management team of Ollie Baker, Fergie Tuohy and Alan Cunningham. They've restored a lot of pride in the jersey and were very honourable in defeat.

Another new manager from the same neck of the woods could take a leaf from their book in terms of sideline antics, playing to the gallery and general attention seeking.

It was also wonderful to see the form throughout the year of that hero Colin Lynch. What a role model for any aspiring young hurler! He has consistently performed well for his county for well over a decade, and while he came in for criticism for excessive enthusiasm in the 1990s, he developed into an earnest, fair, tough hurler who, although now in his mid-30s, is still one of the best midfielders in the country.

Niall Gilligan and Frank Lohan also deserve praise for their consistency over the years.

I do hope we'll see the three of them next year because without them Clare would be very much poorer.

Hopefully Clare's under-21 team will supply a few new names to the senior side next year. They could do with them.

John Meyler also deserves honourable mention for the last few performances of the Wexford team. They certainly have improved and were agonisingly close to springing a surprise last Sunday.

Meyler's team always looked like they were playing to a plan. Given the number of injured first-choice players in their squad they put up a hugely creditable performance.

There were a few days over the past two years when Meyler probably was quite despondent, but I think there's a glimmer of light appearing for the men of Wexford.

Joe Dooley also joins the honours list. The people of Offaly have much reason to be hopeful given the amount of young talent coming through - even though their result in the under-21 championship against Kilkenny was disappointing.

They are still a bit behind the Cats but I think they are in a better position now than they were at the same time last year.

So even if you have the €131 (plus service charge, whatever that's for) to spare it's too late to buy a ticket for Tom Waits

But for less than half that you'll see some top-class hurling in Croke Park again on Sunday week, and hopefully there won't be a tout in sight.