What followed over the next hour and a half was exhilarating as Billy Morgan's (right) side gloriously tore into their hosts. By the time James Masters inveigled a point that ultimately wasn't a point right at the death, nails were gnawed down, the People's Republic tshirt had a damp patch down the back, and my ample stock of expletives was seriously depleted. When the umpires finally flashed the crossed flags signal to indicate a disallowed score, I was so angry I forgot for a moment what a joy it had been watching a Cork team speckled with newcomers put it up to Kerry like that.

The true significance of what I'd experienced only hit home a few hours later.

Sprawled on the couch watching Italy and France in the World Cup final, I found myself absolutely unmoved by the whole spectacle. Soccer may well be the beautiful game and is generally a lot more aesthetically pleasing than Gaelic football but this was like sipping stale beer having spent the morning quaffing champagne. I'd devoted a month to Germany 2006 but I've been living and dying with the Cork footballers for a quarter of a century.

As the drama unfolded in Berlin and extra-time loomed, I realised I didn't care who won. I was already thinking about the following Sunday's replay in Pairc Ui Chaoimh. That's the difference between the championship and everything else. It matters in ways other sporting events just don't and can't. I was sad to see Zinedine Zidane sent off but his expulsion didn't move me deep down like Anthony Lynch's had earlier that day. I've marvelled at Zizou's genius for more than a decade but I actually know people who know Lynch.

The sight of Morgan's face in the aftermath of that decision stirred primal emotions and brought back happy memories of once playing junior football against him (when he was way past 40). By contrast, Raymond Domenech's reaction to losing his talisman barely registered at all.

At nearly a year's remove, it seems that curious day was one of those incidents which remind emigrants that exile often brings a heightened appreciation for stuff taken for granted back home.

Facing into another long, hot American summer, it's not the loneliness that kills the long-distance fan it's the lack of proper context for their passions. Satellite technology and the internet make it easier to follow your county's fortunes but the sense of dislocation is never more acute than when you emerge from a darkened room at Sunday lunchtime blinking your way back into polite society.

Nothing stills the heightened pulse quicker than getting into the car, negotiating the Hamptons' traffic, and finding radio stations talking nothing but Bush and baseball. No matter how intoxicated you are by the events from Thurles or Killarney or Croke Park, the buzz is soon killed by the intrusion of a very different reality. At the 7-11 where you buy the Sunday papers, nobody cares Cork just beat Tipperary.

They don't know who Babs is, why it's important to always keep Tipp down, or how Kerry can be described as the Evil Empire.

By the time you join your family for an afternoon at the beach, there are radios on every blanket but they are inevitably tuned to the Yankees and the Mets as both local teams work through marathon 162-game seasons.

Entertaining in its own way but so different from the thrill of the championship. Even the back-door system and circuitous qualifiers get the adrenaline moving and heart beating quicker. Not to mention the complexities of the draw which require immediate logging on to the net to try to figure out where your team might be going next. At home you might discover that destination on Sunday night in the pub. Here, you probably find the information quickest on anfearrua. com or RebelGAA. com.

The absence of knowledgeable adult partners or a fitting venue for the forensic post-mortems that are such an essential part of the championship is just something else you miss about the Irish summer. So in an attempt to keep the vicarious high going, you often drag your son to the park of a Sunday evening with a pair of hurleys and a tennis ball. What begins as a gentle puck-around goes one of two ways. Either he repairs to the climbing frame and leaves you trundling around the handball alley alone or he changes the rules. He'll get into the baseball batter's stance, request that you put down your hurley, and ask you to start pitching to him.

Either scenario reminds you that you are someplace else now, in touch with the rites of summer but not really part of it.