In 2002, for all Colin Corkery's brilliance, there'd been no cup, no live cameras, no goal. The last time something had approximated it had been in the opening minutes of the epic 2001 Munster final.

Kerry would eventually win a game which was probably Darragh O Se and John Crowley's finest and Maurice Fitzgerald's last as a starter, but early on another All Star produced a moment that made the old bowl quake.

A ball broke around the Kerry full-back line and while virtually any other forward would have gone down and picked it up, Joe Kavanagh elected to do a Thierry Henry.

A shimmy and some quick feet later and he'd stroked the ball past Declan O'Keeffe. If it was a signature Kavanagh goal, it was also a farewell of sorts; by then Kavanagh was a shadow of the player he was. The final curtain eventually came a year later in Croke Park against . . . who else? . . . Kerry. At half-time Larry Tompkins and his beleaguered selectors opted to replace him.

Cork seemed to have problems everywhere else but Kavanagh wasn't in the mood to protest. He wasn't the problem but knew he wasn't the solution either. He was the past.

In a way, it was fitting that it should end with Kerry.

Games against Kerry have defined him and he'd defined them. Just like Derek's display at full-back was the one bright spot from the disastrous 2004 Munster semifinal defeat, his own debut and free-taking was Cork's one bright point from 1992, while the following year his sliding goal and celebration in Killarney encapsulated the spirit of a new breed of Cork player . . . Corkery, Corcoran, Ciaran . . . that considered it their birthright to beat Kerry every year. And for a few years they did, largely because of their dominance in midfield in the pre-Darragh era, and partly because of the craft of Kavanagh, a Padraic Joyce before there was Padraic Joyce.

But then along came Darragh, Larry's commando training and Kavanagh's constant back problems. Just like Joyce in recent years, the skill and guile was still there but the body and pace could no longer service them. Even though he wasn't yet 30, the kid who blew through for that goal in his first All Ireland final was someone else.

"By 2000, 2001, 2002, I probably shouldn't have been on the inter-county scene.

But I was probably afraid that they'd win an All Ireland and I'd miss out on it, while they [the selectors] maybe ploughed away with me for what I had done for them over the years. But I was going from physio to training back to physio to get ready for matches and I wasn't doing myself or the team any justice.

"The chiropractor said this isn't because of a tackle I took the week before. It was 12 years of hard knocks, hard work, hard training. It wasn't just running up hills [under Larry Tompkins]. That didn't help but that was the training at the time. If the injury didn't happen, I'd probably still be playing senior club football now but other fellas will tell you, when the back starts giving bother, your hamstrings, your agility, your speed go too."

The signs were there in 2000. The week of that year's Munster showdown in Killarney, Ambrose O'Donovan was asked about Seamus Moynihan's redeployment to full-back. O'Donovan saw the logic in it but by trying to solve one problem Kerry were creating another.

"Who's going to take up Kavanagh now? [Eamon] Fitzmaurice is a good player but he's not in Kavanagh's league. My fear is Kavanagh will tattoo him." It didn't happen. For the first time in his Cork career, Kavanagh didn't score.

"You could feel the yard was gone. You'd be past a fella that when you were at the height of it [your game], you were thinking 'I'm burning him, he's not going catching me' but now that doubt would be in your head: 'I'm going to get caught here, am I?' It was dispiriting, especially when I'd see it on the club scene. At 27, I should have had another two or three years of good football ahead of me but I didn't."

He still had moments. At the end of 2002 he took time off to rest and recovered enough to kick three points from play against both Errigal Ciaran and Crossmolina to help Nemo win an All Ireland title. His performance against Errigal prompted Larry Tompkins to wish him best of luck in the final and offer a possible recall to the Cork set-up but even after his impressive display in the final he was left in limbo, and ultimately the scrapheap.

Steven O'Brien would later say Joe Kavanagh was the luckiest man in Cork that he had nothing to do with Cork's humiliating defeat to Limerick later that summer but if Tompkins' call before the Crossmolina game baffled Kavanagh, then his failure to call afterwards slightly rankled with him.

"The writing was on the wall by then but I was left thinking, 'What was that call about?' I saw [Loughnane] on the telly last Sunday say that he had to pull Sparrow [O'Loughlin] aside and say 'Thanks for everything but the show's over.' I thought after 10 years of service Ciaran [O'Sullivan] and myself at least deserved that but it never came."

He's too laid back to be bitter. Regrets, he has a few, brief enough to mention. That Tompkins himself was injured in '93. That Corkery and O'Brien weren't there to come off the bench in '99.

That the backdoor era hadn't been in place 10 years earlier.

And maybe, just how quick it all goes by.

"Don Davis and myself were interviewed the night we lost to Derry and everyone was saying, 'Sure ye're only 22 and 19, ye'll be back.' We were gutted but we had our few pints, thinking, 'We'll be back here next year.' Next year was six years and we didn't do it then either.

"Does it eat away at me that we didn't? No. I would love to have won it but you look around at the other players who haven't All Irelands.

Colin Corkery. Ciaran. And at least I got to play and win minor and under-21 and club All Ireland finals; Ciaran didn't. You'd nearly swap one of the All Ireland clubs for it but that's just the way it went.

"There's a guy I'd work with who'd try to wind me up. He'd say in front of the lads, 'Have you an All Ireland medal?' I'd smile, 'I have four All Irelands.' He'd say, 'No, but have you any with Cork?'

And I'd say, 'I have two [minor and under-21] with Cork.' And he'd say 'No, but have you any senior All Irelands?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, two [with Nemo in '94 and '03].' It would have been nice to have the big one but like, those All Irelands, a league, five Munsters, five counties, [International Rules with] Ireland; I did well. You can't turn back the clock, you had your time, your chance."

And another consolation is, the brother still has his.

You'd never know they were brothers; that is if you only saw them play. Joe was a natural, a stylist; Derek couldn't even make the Colaiste Chriost Ri team when he was 17 and they won the Munster colleges.

Four years later he would play in an All Ireland club final with Joe and their other brother Larry, win a Munster under-21 medal and come on in the senior final, but as much as he progressed during that time, he was still raw and dispensable. After Nemo lost the 2002 All Ireland club final to Ballinderry, he wasn't recalled to the Cork panel.

That year Cork and Joe would win the Munster title but Derek had no complaints.

"Larry was totally justified.

I wasn't playing up to scratch for an inter-county midfielder at the time. I'd only have been sitting on the bench if I had been there."

Instead he was in Chicago.

It was the making of him.

Working 10 hours a day on the sites was hard, and the football, alongside Niall Buckley against the best midfields money could buy, even tougher. He beefed up, toughened up and since then is as indispensable as Joe once was. Of Cork's starting 15 today, only Nicholas Murphy and Anthony Lynch have more championship appearances.

He should have made one appearance less. Last year he played with a damaged ankle in the All Ireland semifinal. "That wasn't the real me out there. I showed myself up to be a very slow player and was beaten by William Kirby hands down. I've learned that no matter how big the game it is, if you're not fit, don't play. That's what the panel is there for."

They'd both like to think Cork and Billy Morgan have absorbed the lessons from their other All Ireland semifinal defeat to Kerry, Joe's last game with the county. In 2002 Cork and Corkery in particular learned Kerry were as well versed in the game's darker arts as its finest.

"It's probably what happened in last year's semi-final as well; fellas were naive, thinking Kerry were only about lovely football and we got slaughtered, " says Derek.

"That won't happen again.

They're a great team but they're definitely the most cynical team in Ireland.

They'll pull and drag you all day but they'll get away with it because referees have this perception of them being a lovely, clean team. That's probably the main thing we've taken from playing them this last few years."

They also know they can beat them. They outplayed them twice this summer. The world has changed since he lifted that cup though. Cork have lost their full-back.

Kerry have a new full-forward. Kavanagh's excited, not daunted, by the Donaghy challenge. He's been training at full-back for the past five weeks, Billy's gone through the videos with him, shown him things on the training ground. Graham Canty's been at every training session too, offering support, advice.

Joe likes to hear that.

"Before you were injured and you were gone, simple as that. Like O'Brien in '99.

[Damian] O'Neill as well, sure; he was captain at the start of that year; then got injured. But because of the set-up at the time and you were only allowed [a panel of ] 24, they were allowed drift away when they could have been the men to come in for the last 20 minutes of an All Ireland. No one looked at it like that."

Derek nods at the difference. "Brendan Jer [O'Sullivan] has been training all along with us. He had an operation but he's back to full fitness now. The selectors know he can do a job down the line."

Amazingly, one of those selectors remains one of Joe's.

After being reduced to a bit player as Ephie Fitzgerald chose to live and ultimately die by his youth policy in Nemo's Munster and All Ireland club campaign, this year Joe is back playing with the club's intermediates, coached by Steven O'Brien and Colin Corkery, with, when he's not training Cork, the indefatigable Morgan.

Together they're having a ball and are through to the county semi-final, with Joe pulling the strings at full-forward. "I've always enjoyed it, " says Joe, "but when you see the end, you enjoy it that bit more."

Nothing ever really fazed him. Dinny Allen once said, "If the house was on fire, Joe would be saying, 'Come here, we might have to think of getting out of here in the next few minutes.'" He's still his cool, breezy self. He offers you a lift and then a tour guide around Nemo's fantastic new leisure centre. You notice his registration car plate.

"Kildare reg, Joe?"

"Yeah, " he says, hopping in, "Larry gave me this."

Today he'll drive it to Dublin. A part of him appreciates Cork's time might be down the line ("Kerry are going to lose three or four key men after this year; Cork should be the real force in Munster for a few years after this") but his own experience says this year is as good as any. Not that Derek needs much telling.

"If we lose, it's a complete wash-out, a waste of a year, " says Derek. "We went out the night of the Munster final and that was it. We were back training two nights later.

Munster was just a milestone.

We wanted more straight away."

The only medal missing in the Kavanagh household.

THIRD-TIME LUCK TO SEE KERRY ADVANCE BANK OF IRELAND ALL IRELAND SFC SEMI-FINAL CORK v KERRY

Croke Park, 4.00 Referee J Bannon (Longford) Live, RTE Two, 3.40 First, this isn't right. The GAC can claim the current semi-final rotation gives teams proper rest between games, but this isn't right. It's not just because it's hard enough to outplay a team once, or in Cork's case this summer, twice, in the provincial championship, without having to beat them yet again, but for the sake of novelty. Cork and Kerry have met at this stage three times now in the last five years and when you foresee the respective strengths of both counties and other provinces, they'll meet here three times in the next five as well. If they're really that good, let some of those games be the final itself.

Right now the current system prevents that.

Now that they and the rest of us are stuck with Kerry again, Billy Morgan's team will embrace it. They know they can beat Kerry. Darragh O Se might have been outstanding all year but not on Nicholas Murphy's beat, Derek Kavanagh at full-back might not be his or Cork's preferred choice but it's hard to think of another player left in the championship better equipped to deal with Kieran Donaghy, while only Dublin of the remaining teams are as full of running in the closing 10 minutes as Cork. No team this year has scored more than 1-10 or 0-12 against them, and while Cork's attack is hardly lethal, they're capable of scoring that and more, especially against as vulnerable a defence as Kerry's.

It's not as if this is going to be a shoot-out anyhow. In Jack O'Connor and Billy Morgan's first big game in their current tenures, these teams played out a desperately ill-tempered affair, which Kerry won, 0-11 to 0-9, under lights in Tralee. That was only the league. This is an All Ireland semi-final and could well be either Billy or Jack's last game. Unless John Bannon stamps his authority and puts manners on the likes of Paul Galvin early on, this could get as ugly as Tralee that night.

For Cork to win, Kevin McMahon must go beyond being a handy, hold-his-own, onepoint-a-game inter-county footballer and look to pick up the number of breaks he did against Galway here last year, drive at that Kerry halfback line and either push on for that second or third point or create the space for James Masters to loop around and pop over his trademark points. Conor McCarthy can't be shy to shoot either, while Masters must look to get on the ball a minimum 15 times, instead of the 10 or so touches he's been satisfied with of late.

Once Kerry lost the Munster final, they were always going to re-invent themselves, and just like four years ago, a once-great but declining team felt the brunt of it in the quarter-final. Again the three O Ses, Sean O'Sullivan and the restoration of Eoin Brosnan to number 11 have been pivotal in that push but there are enough signs that like in '02 they'll once again fall short of going all the way. The fullback line is the most porous and generous it has been since the spring of 2000, Mike Frank Russell (left) is the one player well short of the form of '02, while is Diarmuid Murphy still a better goalkeeper than Kieran Cremin?

The one team Russell always plays well against though is Cork.

And as much as we can see Daniel Goulding coming on and doing for the footballers what Cathal Naughton did for the hurlers, Kerry, in the D O'Sullivans, have even more firepower to come on. Graham Canty's loss can't be overestimated either.

Jack's last game against Cork to end like his first against them.

Verdict Kerry by two.

KERRY D Murphy; M O Se, M McCarthy, T O'Sullivan; T O Se, S Moynihan, A O'Mahony; D O Se, T Griffin; S O'Sullivan, E Brosnan, P Galvin; C Cooper, K Donaghy, M F Russell.

CORK A Quirke; M Prout, D Kavanagh, K O'Connor; M Shields, G Spillane, A Lynch; P O'Neill, N Murphy; S O'Brien, C McCarthy, K McMahon; J Masters, D O'Connor, J Hayes