Owen Sexton didn't make today's starting line-up; Kevin O'Dwyer calculated the bench was no place for a newly-married thirty-something; Martin Cronin tip-toed away during the spring. And so, suddenly, Nicholas Murphy finds himself not just a vet but the vet. Anthony Lynch is today's only other starter from the heady summer of '99 but he didn't see action in Killarney '98; Murphy did. Funny. As the team Larry built was dismantled bit by bit, Murphy looked like he'd be the next fall guy for failures past. Instead he's still standing. Taller than ever and taller than most.

Consistency alone doesn't win All Stars; if it did, Noel Garvan and Murphy would have been last year's midfield combination. Their downfall lay in their last game of the season. Garvan entered the All Ireland quarter-final with a broken finger and left it with a tutorial from Armagh on the dark arts of winning midfield ball. A week later Murphy was similarly checked and crowded out by Kerry. His form demanded it. Kerry and Cork had probably been the last fixture in football to abide by traditional midfield terms and it had been an arrangement that had served Darragh O Se well for nearly a decade.

In last year's Munster final though Murphy didn't just take O Se on at his own game; he beat him, pulling down four balls alone in the second half. When the sides met again in Croke Park, Jack O'Connor decided that the rules of engagement had to change. O Se's brief would no longer be to catch as many kick-outs as possible but to stop Murphy catching as many as possible. With Murphy, they'd have to make this one a land war, not one in the air.

It was, Murphy admits, one of the most frustrating afternoons of his career. Even when he has had scope to show his aerial prowess though, he's ended up frustrated too. The 28-year-old might be one of the best five high-fielders in the game, something which last year's All Star nomination saluted, yet it's a status and art that continues to be diminished.

"You often find fellas are just standing on the ground waiting for you to come down and next thing you've given a free away for over-carrying. I don't know if it's because of how the tackle is defined, or how refs are interpreting it, but you end up getting hit a lot across the arms and the free is still going the other way. There's little consistency. If you had a mark it would maybe take some pressure off refs and encourage fellas more to catch the ball. Right now it's frustrating because if you keep coming down to be surrounded and give frees away, sure you'll start to think it's pointless catching the ball."

Such concerns, however, are those for the authorities;

right now his own revolve around Cork. He had no idea in '99 that he would go the next six years without playing in another All Ireland final.

Fermanagh in '04 was possibly the lowest point but that hammering to Kerry last August really jarred.

"It's still hard to understand what happened. Everything was going well going into that game. We were playing well, training was going well and we came out of the blocks that day well. But once Kerry got on top at all, we didn't seem to have anything to come back at them. Maybe it's the Cork-Kerry factor but it's something we have to get over, this Kerry hoodoo.

"People have said since we should have [Graham] Canty on Gooch but I don't think anybody in the country could have marked him the way we were set up that day. The backline were moved up the field trying to get the breaks and the rest of us didn't put enough pressure on the lads hitting it in. There was so much space for Cooper, he could go either way. I know it [the collapse] happened in 2002 as well but there are a lot of new faces now. We'd be hoping that last year was a onceoff for this team because we feel that the team is coming."

That's the thing. It's a young team, a new team. The defeat to Limerick in '03 serves today only as a reminder of the threat they face, not as a call for vengeance; Murphy, Lynch, Derek Kavanagh and Noel O'Leary are the only Cork men who will have started both games. It's even a radically different dressing room to the one Fermanagh silenced in '04. It no longer has O'Dwyer's wit, Ciaran's passion, Corkery's presence, nor, for this past month now, Philip Clifford's fury. For what it has lost, it has also gained.

The All Ireland minors of 2000 are approaching their prime. The under-21s have a likeable cockiness about them. "Practically the entire dressing room has won, " notes Murphy. "The thing now is to win together."

They're as well prepared as any team; Murphy in particular has benefited from the weights, fitness and dietary programme Morgan and the UCD sports department have put in place this past 18 months. Ask Anthony Lynch what he's noticed about Murphy's game in that time, and he'll use the term "energetic"; it's why Murphy has been looking for more return passes and looking for more scores. Ask Murphy why he's so energetic and he'll mention the UCD influence;

"you feel better going into training whereas before you might have felt tired." George Treacy's advice and tapes to help prevent players becoming over-excited or aroused on match days has helped too.

There's also been La Manga. They were there with FC Stuggart and Basle at the start of January 2005 and they went back last Friday fortnight. They needed to.

Collective training had been disjointed for the previous six weeks because of club commitments; Murphy alone played two championship games in both codes for Carrigaline. In La Manga all 30 players were there. "The minute we arrived, Billy handed us each a schedule for what was happening for the week. Every fella knew what we'd be doing, where we were to be, even what we'd be wearing. We had gear for each day to look as professional as we can."

The county hurlers have a similar protocol, a group and scene which Murphy knows well; himself and James Masters were on the county intermediate team that won the 2004 All Ireland. That same year he was at the homecoming for the senior team's triumph. Now it's time the footballers gave the people of Cork reason to dance in the streets.

"Even in '99 there was a massive crowd for us and you'd be thinking, 'God, what would it be like if we were to win?' The Cork public has become nearly apathetic towards football since but in a way they've been right.

We've given them hardly anything to shout about. But it's Billy's ambition to win an All Ireland with us. We all know what we're capable of. We wouldn't be training like we are if we didn't feel we couldn't be up there with Tyrone, Kerry and Armagh. I know training and challenge games don't always translate onto the championship field but the way we've been moving since the league, we feel we can beat anyone."

They didn't have Murphy, because of injury, for the league. They have him now.

MUNSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL PREVIEW LIMERICK v CORK Gaelic Grounds, 4.00 Referee: S Doyle (Wexford) Live, RTE Two, 3.45

After his team's tame defeat to Louth in April, Mickey Ned O'Sullivan explained that a team needs to have a certain level of anxiety to perform well; with promotion already in the bag, Limerick didn't approach it that day. O'Sullivan was right, so pass no remarks on that game. They won't be lacking anxiety today; the trick will be to ensure they won't have too much of it.

What they are lacking are key players. While the memory of 2003 will give them the belief they can win today, nine of the team that started then are now unavailable, through injury, retirement or hurling. As commendable a job as their replacements did in regaining the county Division One status, they'll struggle to retain it; any county, let alone one coming from Limerick's base, would after shipping so many losses. The days of rattling both Cork and Kerry in the one summer have passed. Rattling Cork in a onceoff, at home, is not.

Both defences this year have been virtually water-tight, even if their defensive averages might be flattered by their respective last home games being virtually waterlogged; indeed Cork conceded fewer scores than any other team in this year's league.

The midfield battle should break even. Though Derek Kavanagh and Nicholas Murphy are Cork's only survivors from '03, an occasion when they lost their own battles to John Galvin and John Quane, there is a reason why they've survived . . . they're both better players than they were back then and this time should measure up to Galvin and Jason Stokes (right).

What this game will come down to is scores. And while Seanie Buckley has been good for a goal every second game and Micheal Reidy has scored from play in every game this year, Cork have that bit more individual flair up front. Fintan Goold's leadership and long-range scoring power was one of the few bright points to come out of the All Ireland under-21 final defeat, Kevin O'Sullivan appears to be a more assertive player than the one who allowed Killarney '04 pass him by, while Daniel Goulding can offer some quick firepower coming off the bench.

For Cork to win what they say they want to win, they'll need James Masters to enter the O'Neill-McDonnell bracket, something the jury is still out on. Whatever, he and Cork should have enough to get through today, something along the lines of 1-12 to 0-10 or 11.

Verdict Cork

LIMERICK S Kiely; S Gallagher, J McCarthy, P Browne; C Mullane, S Lavin, A Lane; J Stokes, J Galvin; O Keating, D Reidy, S Buckley; M Crowley, J Murphy, M Reidy

CORK A Quirke; K O'Connor, G Canty, A Lynch; N O'Leary, G Spillane, S Levis; N Murphy, D Kavanagh; C McCarthy, D Niblock, K McMahon; J Masters, F Goold, K O'Sullivan