A subject dear to his heart.

Suddenly the man who spent five years as Cork hurling trainer is off on a riff about ball retention, about how too many people assume the "only good lineball is the lineball that travels a distance", about the continuing underestimation of the importance of the puckout (a longtime Owens hobbyhorse), about how at one stage in the 1998 Munster final Cork had Seanie McGrath and Barry Egan as wing-forwards under Ger Cunningham's puckouts while the much bigger Seanie Farrell stood idle inside in the full-forward line. Incredible when he looks back now.

In case you don't know Ted Owens very well, he's the Cork football trainer. Enjoys the job. Enjoys it not only because they're the new Munster champions. The coaching end of things, y'see. So much more structured than in hurling. So much more scope to reduce if not remove the ifs and the buts, the swirling motes of chance, the hit-it-and-see-what-happens mentality. So much more micro-manageable. So much more coachable. A baroque fugue as opposed to a jazz improvisation.

The opening two questions of the morning had elicited a more measured response.

Was it more satisfying for Cork to beat Kerry at the second attempt than had they done so at the first? And surely a part, if only a small part, of Owens, as a Corkman who chafed under the Kerry yoke of 1975-86, twitched at the very notion of a replay?

"In hindsight it was better to beat them at the second attempt. Had we won at the first attempt, people would have said it was a one-off, a fluke. And outside of that, the replay had the practical benefit of being another highly competitive championship match." After taking care to stress that Kerry "ain't gone away", Owens concedes to harbouring a slight . . . very slight . . . worry prior to the replay. Healthy nerves. "But there wasn't a feeling, of the kind you often have in sport, that we'd missed the boat.

Our performance in Killarney was a reflection of our ability. We felt there had been a consistency of performance there. We certainly didn't feel we'd be whitewashed like in the All Ireland semi-final last year."

The management's attitude was to focus on the performance, to accentuate the raft of positives of the drawn game and to emphasise to the players that they could improve even on that. Second day out, James Masters's goal told them that their worst fears ("if we had any worst fears") weren't going to be horribly realised. Come the closing minute or two, Owens finally allowed himself to exhale. Cork had done what the management had planned and plotted . . . and, yes, hoped . . . they'd do. They'd taken a step beyond, as he puts it, "the valiant performance, the heroic moral victory". A more satisfying afternoon, then, but not by much, given that the first day Cork had "taken the big step up", had shown themselves to be as good as they genuinely believed they were. "The first day was the cake, almost. The second day, the icing."

Confectionery compared to the penitential dry bread and water of last season's 13point All Ireland semi-final defeat by Kerry. After beating Sligo and "a good Galway team" in the run-up, nothing could have prepared Cork for the humiliation that was to follow. Though the trauma of that Croke Park afternoon took a long time to recover from, Owens isn't being falsely philosophical when he asserts that every new year brings new hope. "Getting over the Kerry match did take a few months, but no matter how poor the year before was, we all clutch at straws, we all try to be optimistic. With the Corks of this world, particularly in hurling, there's always the prospect of success the following year. But look at someone like the Waterford footballers. They turn around every year with the hope that next year will be better than the last. They're the real heroes."

Someone was heard to declare in warning tones after the Munster final replay that Cork had "nothing won yet".

Billy Morgan, being Billy Morgan, was quick to point out that actually they had.

Beating Kerry in a Munster final does indeed constitute success for Cork, Owens agrees. Yet from his perspective, bearing in mind his taste of glory with the hurlers in 1999, the ultimate aim has to be Sam. "The players and management won't be happy unless we prove ourselves in the later stages of the campaign." That said, because performance matters, he'd derive some satisfaction from reaching an All Ireland final and playing very well in it.

"While that goes against what Vince Lombardi said, you've got to measure your improvement in incremental steps.

After being destroyed in last year's semi-final, reaching the All Ireland final would be an improvement."

Not that Morgan would countenance anything less, of course, having won All Irelands as both player and manager. That's Billy, says Owens.

"He believes. He doesn't think Cork football is in any way inferior to Kerry. One of the things that bugs him most is people who are happy to wear a county jersey. To him, wearing a county jersey is not the aim. Winning in a county jersey is what's important."

The similarities, please, between Morgan and that other All Ireland-winning manager Owens has worked with, Jimmy Barry-Murphy.

"Great love for the games.

Great sense of pride in being from Cork and of Cork. Very good judges of players. Highly successful as players and managers." And the differences? "Jimmy would put more emphasis on diplomacy.

Billy Morgan is an extremely complex character. His public persona isn't necessarily reflected off the field. He's a shy person. You wouldn't think so, I knowf" Now Owens is motoring again, comparing the existence of Morgan and JBM in their Leeside goldfish bowl to that of Beckham, Zidane and even Princess Di on a larger scale. "These guys, from the moment they get up and leave the house in the morning, they're recognised.

There's a perception, almost a demand, that they'll be nice and diplomatic to everyone they meet. Every individual who meets Billy Morgan or Jimmy Barry-Murphy coming up to a big game expects them to engage in conversation. They'll have been nice to 100 people in one day . . . and if they cut one person short, it's all that'll be remembered and talked about in the pubs or wherever. They almost have to organise their lives each day because of their fame. They have to be careful where they sit at a game in which they're not involved.

They have to be extremely careful where they socialise.

As the media demands get bigger and bigger, it has to be realised that we're still dealing with amateur sportspeople. Or ex-sportspeople."

Ted Owens is glad he's Ted Owens.

To other practicalities.

Injuries have plagued the footballers this year and last.

Initially Owens was forced to look in the mirror and ask himself whether the allweather-surface training and explosive work they were doing was the root. Eventually he decided the problem was a broader one. Outsiders, he maintains, don't realise the primacy of club activities in Cork. "But the hurlers are in a better position to negotiate than the footballers. Our lads in the football team are playing a vast number of matches . . . football and hurling, because most of the footballers are dual players with their clubs . . . and that's one of the main reasons why injuries occur. Not enough time for recuperation."

Under their training programme designed by the High Performance Unit at UCD, Cork spend considerable time doing weights, the intention being not to increase their upper body strength but to sharpen their explosive power. A course of weights can, it seems, achieve the latter objective, a concept that Morgan has willingly bought into. In Lanzarote with the hurlers one year, Owens observed the French Olympic sprint team in training. "It was all weights, weights, weights. To say that doing weights leaves you musclebound is an old wives' tale."

Another area that continues to fascinate him is the razor's edge that separates success from failure. Back in 1999, prior to the hurlers' Munster semi-final date with Waterford, the Cork management were 70 minutes away from resignation. Three months later they were All Ireland champions. "Even after all the hard training and hard work and looking after yourself, nobody can say there isn't an element of luck.

The Cork hurlers expect to win matches. The Cork footballers expect to beat most teams but are probably more conscious of the traditions of other counties. In terms of the effort they put in, there's nothing between the panels."

Any other business? Well, Owens is adamant that winning an All Ireland football title is a significantly more substantial achievement for Cork GAA than winning the hurling equivalent; despite the victory against Kerry he's not sure if most of the Cork public would be able to name more than half a dozen members of the football team ("sounds dramatic but it's true"); after the drawn match he received a text that said, "Well done, proud of you, great performance" from an associate who was simultaneously busy assuring other pals that all Cork had done was to postpone the inevitable for a week; and while the future health of Cork football demands a longterm development plan, Owens freely accepts, so does the future health of Cork hurling. "The current success of both teams is masking the reality and the change in demographics in the city and county."

In the meantime, more weights to do and space to worry about.