It's over, Billy. Grow up and take your beating.

Jack O'Connor, 'Keys To The Kingdom'

JACK O'Connor may be gone while Billy Morgan rages on, but for a while this year Billy was gone too.

Six months after being banished to the stand to watch his side's All Ireland dream once more disintegrate to the old enemy, and six months after questioning Kerry's style which so piqued O'Connor, Morgan was again railing with officialdom.

This time it was a referee, Syl Doyle of Wexford, that incurred his wrath. On the opening night of the league in P�irc U� Rinn, Cork and Donegal had just played out a tight, tense game which would set the tone for their respective campaigns and Morgan was livid. James Masters had been pulled and dragged most of the night and his role in most other altercations that of peacemaker, but in the closing minutes when he had bumped back, he was sent off. Nicholas Murphy, also more sinned against than sinning, was dismissed too. So Morgan crossed the field and waited for Doyle outside the dressing room door.

Within weeks Morgan been hauled in to Croke Park to account for his tirade. At that juncture other managers would have acted all contrite, like P�id� � S� famously had 10 years earlier on Cork's advice to beat a potential sideline ban. Instead Morgan stood over every word he'd said to Doyle before unleashing a verbal volley at the attending officials. Morgan resented that he'd been banned from the sideline the previous August when his old rival Mick O'Dwyer had somehow beaten that rap, and to him it was like there was an agenda against him.

Croke Park was never going to tolerate such defiance and duly landed Morgan with an eight-week suspension. Morgan knew what that meant. As often as Cork and Frank Murphy might challenge the interpretation of the rulebook, ultimately when the GAA decides on their interpretation of that rulebook, Cork and Frank then strictly adhere to the rulebook. An eight-week ban meant an eight-week ban. Morgan wouldn't just be prohibited from being on the sideline.

He wouldn't be allowed near the dressing room, the team bus, the team hotel, the team itself - not just on match day but during the week as well.

For Morgan, having his team cut off from him was like having his blood supply cut off, and on the way back to Cork that night, he seriously considered packing up the Cork job and the GAA for good.

By the time he'd arrived in Cork that night, Morgan had resolved to fight on, and for the following eight weeks would go for a run any night his own team were training; in that way, in a way, he was still with them and they were still with him. But those eight weeks were hard on him and they were just as hard on the team. Teddy Owens supervised training manfully but the sessions inevitably lacked the intensity and edge they'd have had in Morgan's presence, while on the line on match day the customary authority was missing too, to the point during the last league game against Limerick when the selectors were split 2-2, Morgan was phoned about a possible switch in a game he couldn't even watch.

But since he's been back, Cork have been burning it up, on the challenge game circuit and in the glorified challenge circuit that is the preliminary rounds of the Munster championship. The whole set-up has been re-energised more than it even had been by Graham Canty's return. Morgan's enthusiasm remains undimmed.

So too, his temper. Shortly before the team took to the championship field, Morgan bluntly ordered the county secretary Frank Murphy out of the dressing room, and when the county chairman Mick Dolan approached him the following Tuesday at training about the prospect of some kind of apology to Murphy, Morgan promptly stormed out of training. Players weren't even sure if he'd show up for training the following night.

But, of course, he showed up. How could he stay away when he knew what was around the corner?

This is the day the summer begins? Cork came down to Killarney and they were all business. They burst out from the dressing-room corner of the "eld and immediately hunted us out of our traditional Kerry dugout.

They told us in very certain terms to shag away off up to the other dugout.

Morgan knew what he was doing. He has an obsession with Kerry and he's been thinking about this for a long time.

Jack O'Connor, 'Keys To The Kingdom' A year on and another summer begins. For the last two, Cork have been only one game away from an All Ireland final. Only one side has beaten them. You Know Who.

And all the time the gap's been closing. In Munster during Morgan's second coming, Cork have gone from losing by eight to losing by three to earning a draw to winning by six. In Croke Park, it's gone from losing by 13 to losing by six. Over the winter a Kerry player told a Cork player, "Last year [2005], our semi-final with ye cost us the All Ireland.

This year [2006], our semifinal with ye won the All Ireland." The Cork player took some solace from that but until Cork win an All Ireland, beating Kerry en route, Morgan and that player will not be at peace.

In brilliant football book by a brilliant football man, Jack O'Connor writes openly about his respect for and yet distrust and dislike of Morgan's methods. And in a way, the relationship between the pair is a bit like this rivalry, especially in recent years. There's a mutual respect there but there's loathing and suspicion too, and it can get personal.

The Cork public has yet to take this team to its heart the way it has with its current hurlers or the football sides of the late '80s, but something about Kerry still stirs Josie Soap more than Kilkenny or Waterford ever will. Paul Galvin attended the local university, befriended many of the current Cork team, and in recent years worked and taught in a city school where he was very popular, but such was the regularity with which he was been confronted verbally and occasionally physically out on the town by mindless Josies objecting to his countless jostles with their countymen, he packed up the job last winter.

O'Connor's book rightly points out it was Cork who played on the edge in last year's drawn Munster final (and often over it too; Kevin McMahon alone had fouled four times out the field before he was even booked just before half-time), and that Nicholas Murphy did not outplay Darragh � S� in P�irc U� Chaoimh in the replay, but the subsequent rematch of those midfield heavyweights rankled in Cork.

Indeed, the week before that All Ireland semi-final Morgan had met with John Allen about Cork's response in the likely event � S� would steamroll into Murphy. Allen's advice was to adopt the hurlers' 'Silent Pig' policy of playing above manhandling and ignoring it. "Mmm, " Morgan muttered, "we were thinking of one in, all in." After what transpired in Croke Park the following week, it might be what they're thinking this afternoon too.

Today Murphy and � S� will go at it again. This time Canty will be there to take up Donaghy. And, of course, there'll be Morgan too, probably, as O'Connor said about him in Killarney last year, "raving like a lunatic, contesting every decision".

Because, on one thing, he'd agree with Jack. The summer begins today.