You're putting the cart before the horse. Invert things. The question isn't so much how well McCarthy will get on with the Cork players as how well the Cork players will get on with McCarthy. How these cultists will cope with an outsider, which in effect is what McCarthy is. How happy they'll be for a gameplan they slaved over to be refined, as it must be, if not downright abandoned. Whether, having scaled the mountain and then come down its far side, even this inordinately committed bunch possess the stomach to sign up for another long trek from base camp.

Though the professionalism and discipline that McCarthy brought to Waterford in the late 1990s aren't called for now . . . that would constitute a case of preaching to the converted . . . the manmanagement skills he demonstrated there won't be any hindrance in his new job. But his biggest challenge will be to keep the baby while dispensing some of the bathwater.

Much fatuous, kneejerk comment surrounded Cork's defeat on 3 September, most of it lazy stuff about how the champions should have changed tack once it became clear that Kilkenny had come armed with a strategy of their own. Abandon the gameplan that had helped bring them 13 straight championship wins? If their unbeaten run had taught the Cork players anything it was to stick with the plan . . . which had, after all, invariably come good for them amid the tightest of finishes.

Rightly, they did so. There's a good case for holding that it was their steadfastness in adhering to first principles that left the favourites within a puck of the ball of Kilkenny at the final whistle rather than seven or eight points behind.

That said, a look at the video of the first half will show McCarthy how much his new charges have become wedded to habit. It took Cork more than half an hour to score a point that was not either a free or the fruit of one of their choreographed moves . . . in other words, for one of their forwards to extemporise sufficiently well in a tight corner.

Orchestras become vapid in the absence of a soloist.

It is no slight on Ger Cunningham, or indeed on any member of the outgoing setup, to assert that a new voice and a portfolio of fresh ideas are exactly what Cork require.

When Plan A fails, the temptation for an insider is to revert to Plan A; unencumbered by preconceptions, an outsider will be more willing to start from scratch, or at any rate to retain the best of Plan A while adding his own touches. Whatever McCarthy may or may not achieve during his term, he won't be guilty of failing to see the woods for the trees.

One obvious move will be to shake up the training. Under John Allen and going back to Donal O'Grady, Cork religiously practised a 12-minute game in training once their skills drills were completed.

The first four minutes of the game consisted of ground hurling, the next four minutes emphasised handpassing and the final four minutes were freestyle.

Well and all as the regime served them over the past three years, by this summer Brian Corcoran was left pining for more matches and more intensity in training. In an irony-laden turning of the wheel, the studied Cork approach that had proved too much for Kilkenny's pressure game in 2004 proved insufficient for it in 2006.

In the micro, McCarthy will have other considerations. Pat Mulcahy's eclipse two months ago opens a vacancy at cornerback. One wonders whether Sean Og, not being blessed with the reservoir of natural talent of a Ronan Curran to call in times of personal recession, will ever regain his primacy of 2004. And two new forwards are a sine qua non;

neither has to be the reincarnation of Seanie Leary or John Fitzgibbon, but all the better if one of them knows where the enemy net . . . as opposed to the enemy posts . . .

is located.

An All Ireland-winning captain and proven coach taking charge of a group of multimedallists. What's not to like?