Waterford GAA chairman Paddy Joe Ryan is optimistic that the county will have completed redevelopment work on Walsh Park in time for next year's Championship but admits it's not yet certain.
It was confirmed this week that in May the Waterford City venue will host a Munster Championship hurling tie for the first time since 2003.
The Déise were forced to play their 'home' games last summer in the Gaelic Grounds and Semple Stadium and Ryan admits that being forced to travel "probably didn't help" results in a campaign that ended at the round-robin stage.
The capacity for the games against Clare and Limerick this year will be 11,000. Attendances would have been capped at 8,000 last year due to an unstable boundary wall, which has since been removed.
The expansion of the stadium to a 16,500-person venue, given the green light by An Bord Pleanála last month, will begin at some point following the Limerick game on 2 June.
However, whether the construction will be finished in time for the 2020 campaign is not set in stone.
"We hope it will be finished by May next year," Ryan told RTÉ Sport. "As far as we are concerned, we would be ready to go the day after the Limerick match but it depends how quickly we can start.
"There are discussions with the [Waterford] council we are having that will decide that."
In the event that Walsh Park is not ready, it remains to be seen whether Munster authorities would accept Fraher Field - previously deemed unsuitable - as an alternative for the 2020 home games or insist on neutral venues within the province, as in 2018.
Waterford's neighbours in Cork have hit the headlines recently with issues over the pitch and cost overruns at the new Pairc Ui Chaoimh.
However, Ryan points out that the Walsh Park work will be a relatively modest redevelopment costing an estimated €7m, not a "€40 or €50m full stadium reconstruction", and that Croke Park have been consulted on the plans "from the start".
The county board expect to have stump up somewhere in the region of €1m of that cost, with Ryan projecting the remainder will come from government sports capital grants, GAA HQ and the Munster Council.
The work involves upgrading the seating in the Slievekeale Road stand, covering the existing Keane's Road terrace, adding a new uncovered terrace on the northern bank and building new dressing rooms and offices.
Ryan thinks that the lack of heavy construction work, "only the current dressing rooms will be knocked" means that the pitch may not need to be relaid at all.
