Everything was on the record . . . except one thing:

the reason why Tipperary would rattle Kerry. In one corner they had Peter Lambert and in the other, an 18year-old. At the time, Lambert was one of the best corner forwards in Munster yet Foley confided that for every one he'd be playing into Lambert, he'd be playing another three into the other.

"I'm telling you now, " said Foley of his clubmate, "he's another Canavan."

Ten years on from the goal and a point Browne nicked off Kerry that weekend and you can merely disagree with Foley's thesis. You cannot discount it. After this year's league, in which Browne scored 2-50 and never less than five points in any game, the best full-back of our generation, Darren Fay, declared that Browne was the most lethal forward he'd ever marked. Joyce, Canavan, Kavanagh, O Cinneide in Croke Park; Murphy and Geraghty in training; he'd marked them all, but while he found they might only score with three out of every four balls they'd win off him, Browne would score four from four.

Browne has long been a player's player. In 2000 Martin Daly outrageously backheeled the ball for a point against Tipperary, yet the Clareman made no secret afterwards that Browne had stolen the show in Limerick's Gaelic Grounds that day with points from play. At a time when Canavan's career was in a hiatus and Gooch hadn't even played senior for the Crokes, Daly couldn't think of another active county player who could have notched those scores.

Browne himself would soon have his inter-county career interrupted for nearly two years, his pubic bone eventually relenting to the ridiculous number of games with college, county and club; at a presentation to the GAA's new burnout committee last month, Browne was cited as being the ideal profile of the elite, burned-out athlete. But since his return in 2002, he's been nothing short of phenomenal. He hasn't missed a championship match. He's won a second All Star, played for Ireland, won the Tommy Murphy Cup. But one stat says it all. In every league and championship game he's played for Tipp in the last six years, he's scored from play.

Just think about that. In his last 45 games straight, despite all those niggling knocks, all that close attention from defenders who know if you stop Declan Browne you stop Tipperary, he's always found a way to score from play. Canavan, his 2003 All Star teammate, didn't score from play in half of his eight championship games that year. Last year Gooch failed to score from play in three of his four Munster championship games.

Only Tomas Freeman, on 30 games, and Ronan Clarke, on 21, are within an ass's roar of Browne's current streak.

The question will always be what would he have done and won had he moved to a bigger county, even if playing for a weaker, hurling, county, has had its compensations; there is no other way to explain how himself and Matty Forde have three All Stars between them while Paddy Bradley has none.

Instead we have to make do with those annual occasions when he plays against one of the big guns.

This year it's Cork, for the first time since the 2002 Munster final saga. There are reports he's carrying an injury but Browne has a habit of playing through the pain barrier. There have also been dispatches that, a decade on from Foley's prophesy of a new Canavan, there's a new Browne in Barry Grogan, who took Michael Shields for 3-3 from play in this year's Munster under-21 final.

You'll hardly witness a shock in Limerick today . . .

Cork have surpassed Donegal as the hottest team in the country . . . but you should witness a treat. Anytime Declan Browne plays is just that.

CORK P O'Shea; M Shields, G Canty, K O'Connor; N O'Leary, G Spillane, A Lynch; D Kavanagh, N Murphy; C McCarthy, P O'Neill, K McMahon; J Masters, M Cussen, D O'Connor TIPPERARY P Fitzgerald; M O'Brien, P King, M Phelan; P Morrissey, C Maher, E Connolly; P Johnston, G Hannigan; B Mulvihill, H Coughlan, W Wallace; D O'Brien, D Browne, B Grogan MUNSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL TIPPERARY v CORK Gaelic Grounds, Limerick, 3.30 Referee E Murtagh (Longford)