At the same time, he realises, he was very lucky to be part of it. Lucky to be part of such a good squad of players. Lucky to participate in an All Ireland final. "Like now, I kind of came in from nowhere."

He's still not quite sure how he managed it back then.

First off, Allen was a country boy in a predominantly city team. Secondly, in an age when the Barrs and the Glen and the Rockies bestrode the national club scene, he was doing his hurling with modest little Aghabullogue instead.

Thirdly, the vast bulk of this hurling was done at junior level. Factoring in the one senior match he played each year with Muskerry, the local divisional team (only one because Muskerry always bit the dust in the first round), he hadn't played four senior matches in his life before coming on against Tipperary in the Gaelic Grounds on 13 June, 1976. "The guys on that Cork team . . . I'd never even played against them. To me they were heroes I looked at from afar. I looked up to them too much to be on the inside track. I suppose it was really 1978 before I felt part of it."

They must have had a great bond alright, he agrees.

Through no fault of his own, Allen was "too young and too far removed" to be aware of it.

The wonder is that the boy from Aghabullogue came to share a dressing room with the McCarthys and the Coughlans and the Cumminses at all.

The spirit of the next Cork team to attempt the threein-a-row: now that's a subject he could write a thesis on.

It dates, he contends, to as far back as the 1999 All Ireland victory, to which he had an input as team masseur, and the extent to which the subsequent holiday in Thailand served as a bonding agent.

Yet all the while, something smelled rotten in Denmark.

"Things were going on behind the scenes for a number of years . . . only small things, and they've been well thrashed out in the meantime . . . that shouldn't have been going on." For Cork hurling, the 21st century didn't commence until 2003.

There is no secret to what the All Ireland champions do and how thoroughly they do it. The "whole new professionalism that came in in 2003", as Allen terms it, endures. "The players come to training and you can put them through as complicated or as simple a set of drills as you want. But you can't have players going out on the field on the big days and looking over to the sideline and thinking, 'What's he saying about me?' The conditions within the camp have to be conducive to fellas feeling safe.

Players knowing to be careful about their diet, about their resting time, about preparing properly. Guys not being barked at by the manager. I don't bark, I thinkf" We can't imagine it either, John.

Given that the team leaders are at this stage probably beyond surprising Allen with their ambition and drive, his method of gauging the collective temperature is to cast a cold eye on the wannabes.

The climbers bubbling under the Top 20, the likes of Peter Kelly and Conor Cusack and Shane O'Neill. How hard they work, how hungry they are to learn, the diligence with which they keep the pressure on the incumbents. "As much as Sean Og and Donal Og have set the standard of professionalism and dedication at one end, these are the guys keeping it tight at the other end."

Himself, he's still not quite sure how he managed to be where he is now. "I certainly took the job at the only time it would ever be offered to me. I mean, I have no pedigree as a senior team manager or intercounty coach."

Donal O'Grady was, he's only too willing to agree, the right man in 2003 in a way that Allen could never have been.

"Oh, absolutely." O'Grady had the strength and bloodymindedness to push players;

Allen, a chairman rather than a chief, wouldn't have had.

But the rhythms and priorities of the team have evolved in the meantime. It's not always necessary to have a drill sergeant shouting the odds. There's more than one way to skin a Cat.

And sometimes Allen is more than a facilitator. Sitting down at the All Ireland football final two years ago, watching Kerry pull a rabbit from the hat by unleashing a long-ball game that had Mayo floored by half-time, he was bowled over by Jack O'Connor's flexibility. The memory produced a twang when he observed Galway's troubles in the full-back line against Kilkenny last August. Hence Cork's switch to Plan B for the final. "I reckoned it was a nobrainer. Get the ball in fast and try and expose them. So yes, it was satisfying from a tactical point of view to win with a different gameplan."

Whatever happened to the old saw about going out and playing your own game? "Any manager would be foolish not to look at the other team's strengths and acknowledge them. I'm very keen to play to our own strengths, I always am. But you can't close your eyes either."

He didn't do that early in the second half of the All Ireland semi-final with Clare.

"There came a stage that day where I said okay, whatever else happens . . . and had we lost, I'd have been the one hung out rather than the selectors . . . we're going to make a couple of moves. We had no option. It was a case of move then or throw in the towel. People made a lot of it afterwards, how well the changes had worked, but we were at the brink and that was it. And our players are intelligent enough to know that if they're not contributing enough on a particular day, other fellas might."

In response to the charge that Cork are returning to the table with the same hand, Allen points out that they've nobody starting today who hasn't proved himself in the past. The 15 who take the field in Thurles will do so not because they were the best 15 last year but because they're the best 15 available now, the one or two who were under pressure a few weeks ago having shown up more than adequately in the interim.

Allen professes himself reasonably pleased with his team's form during the league and is happy that Cork are "marginally stronger" than they were this time 12 months ago.

Sooner or later they'll lose, of course. To a hungrier team? To opponents who crack their possession game?

Or will it be more because the champions have run out of gas?

Not the latter, Allen contends. He doesn't see the petrol tank running dry in the short term. "I'm always listening to Brian Cody saying that hurlers want to play matches and I can see the wisdom in what he says. I haven't seen any sign of fatigue or of fellas not putting it in. But I am mature enough to know that when that starts to happen, there's a slippage on. Everybody out there has, if they're worth their salt, analysed our strengths and weaknesses. It has to be a worry that some day some other team will get it right on a lot of fronts and stop our lads from playing."

More than one pundit has asserted recently that, come the afternoon of an off-day in defence, Cork will be up a certain type of creek without a certain type of implement.

Allen nods in semi-assent. "If the backline don't play well, we'll be under pressure. That goes without saying. Because they've been so good. Because they haven't been found wanting." There he parks the topic.

Well, you didn't seriously expect the man to diss his forwards, did you. . ? He hasn't detected any antipathy beyond the county borders to the prospect of yet another red and white-ribboned McCarthy Cup. Neither, rightly, is the thought that his team is respected rather than loved one that keeps him awake at night.

Whichever of the two impostors he meets on his journey in 2006, John Allen will emerge at the other end the same John Allen. With his interest in music, books and travel, he's one of the few hurling or football managers who appears to possess and enjoy a life beyond the white lines. He saw Sharon Shannon in d'Opera House lately but hasn't yet bought the new Springsteen . . . a particular old favourite . . .

album. Despite the riptide of negative reviews, he'll probably go to see the film version of The Da Vinci Code, the book he famously read in the week of last year's Munster final (a latter-day twist on Tipp bet and the hay saved). And though he's dutifully digested the recommended intake of business management and sports psychology books, he enjoys a good autobiography in order to see how high achievers made it to the top and is currently reading the crossover children's hit The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

Final question. What are ye trying to win this year, John, the All Ireland or the three-in-a-row? Momentarily he looks scandalised. "Oh God, the All Ireland. No doubt about it. No, not even the All Ireland because we haven't set our sights beyond today.

But certainly not the three-ina-row. That's only a little tag that comes because we've won two." Any game, he philosophises, is "a great unscripted drama. Who can tell what will happen?"

Showtime for this most unlikely and most admirable of impresarios.