They were just after beating Waterford in Croker, he was just after holding the human tornado that's Dan Shanahan to a single point and it was just after that photograph.

"Did you see that picture in the Tribune, man? !" an incredulous Des Bishop gushed on Tubridy Tonight, and unfortunately for his sporting hero the response nationwide seemed to be affirmative. "For weeks I couldn't go anywhere, " Sean Og O hAilpin smiles but winces, "and be taken seriously." At work with Ulster Bank, he'd be talking to colleagues and customers about figures of one kind and he could just tell that they were thinking of a figure of another, "the guy in a near thong" with the six-pack working out in the basement of Ger Hartmann's old clinic.

But for all the slagging he endured in those weeks, all was good in his world. Word got back to him that the Waterford boys passed the paper over to Shanahan on the train up and that Dan's jaw dropped, the sight of little old him on the opposite page, with the smaller article and smaller pic, going up against He-Man O hAilpin splashed all over the other.

More importantly, O hAilpin had an All Ireland final to look forward to. One more win and they'd a third All Ireland secured. Immortality beckoned.

Looking back, that was the problem, along with, naturally, "a super, ferociously hungry Kilkenny team" that reminded him of Cork two Septembers earlier. A fortnight before the final, everything seemed in place. They went down to Inchydoney for the weekend, devised and practised their game plan of hitting the full-forward line as soon as they could with that full-forward line then having the option of hitting the half-forward line thundering in at speed. No one, not even Kilkenny, was going to stop them.

But then they went back home and the next night, in a training match, the midfielders and half forwards were instructed to take on their men instead of releasing the ball first time to Corcoran, Ronan and Deane. It might have been just a Plan B but, for too many of the players, it was an unnecessary spanner in the works and that machine was never quite the same. And some of the physical sessions that week were very tough.

Too tough. All these years on from Justin's criticisms about the heavy training in '72 and '82 and John Power's condemnation of Cody's slaughter sessions in the lead-up to '04, and Cork had failed to obey that most constant of commandments which decides Cork-Kilkenny finals: Thou Must Be Fresh.

"We overcooked our preparation. We over-trained a small bit and I felt physically a couple of lads, including myself, suffered from it. The fact we were on the brink of history, we ended up overdoing it.

They wanted to make sure every angle was looked at, every stone was unturned, that they ended up nearly doing too much."

That's how Championship 2006 ended.

Championship 2007 didn't start off much better.

? ? ? It's the last thing he wants to talk about because, as he puts it, "The furthest thing from my mind running out of that tunnel was I'd end up in something like that." It's not so much a no-go area as just one big turn-off. The title they gave it, for starters. Semplegate.

Semple is the name his mother Emeli christened the back garden where he and his brothers as kids would hurl from sunrise to sundown, the stadium where he won his two All Ireland under-21 medals and four of his senior Munster medals; for others to reduce it to some form of shorthand for an event blown out of proportion, well, "it's disappointing".

It was regrettable, of course, but it's hard to know what else he could have done. From the moment it started to the moment it ended, it should have been obvious to everyone he didn't want to be there. The instant he got sucked into that wrestle with Fergal Lynch, he dropped his hurley. And he never swung, he never struck out; that would have been the aggressive choice and he'd like to think that's not what he's about. But as he was locked in that tussle with Lynch, he was left with two other choices:

be assertive or be unassertive.

To be unassertive, to back down, would not have been fair on himself, just as to lash out would have been unfair on Lynch. So he chose to be fair to himself, to be assertive, to stand his ground, even if it led to the unseemly sight of falling to it.

Again, he's reluctant to say anything new about it; to do so would be exhausting, as if the saga wasn't exhausting enough. The statement himself and Diarmuid O'Sullivan and Donal Og Cusack released virtually said it all . . . their regret that it happened, the sensationalist coverage by some media outlets, their incredulity that something that was over in 20 seconds was dragged out for 20 days, the authorities' latent antiCork bias. The facts of the case speak for themselves.

Lynch wasn't charged or suspended, O hAilpin was. Even the DRA accepted in its judgement that O hAilpin's and Cusack's contention that it was illogical that they had been charged while others identifiable on the video were not had "some force to its argument".

It had more than some force. Often when a player is hauled before a disciplinary committee or, these days, a disciplinary committee is hauled before a player, it's cited in his defence that he has rarely, if ever, been sent off in his career. O hAilpin not only has never been sent off, he's never been booked since an under-14 match with Na Piarsaigh. Just think: all the football games, all the hurling games he's played with Cork and the club . . . as a defender . . .

and not a single booking in 16 years.

Liam Moggan, the performance coach and sports psychologist to Ken Doherty, tells the tale of another game between Cork and Clare. The two sides had just served up one of the most gripping All Ireland semi-finals in recent memory and, as the devastated Clare players filed back into their dressing room, O hAilpin was waiting along the corridor to remind and comfort them of that fact. And as O hAilpin stood there, one hand shaking his opponent's, the other on that opponent's shoulder, it struck Moggan, who had worked extensively with Clare that year, O hAilpin could and should have been in the Cork dressing room, savouring such a glorious win with his colleagues. Evidently, for O hAilpin, the token postmatch, on-field handshake and jersey swap with an opponent wasn't enough. Every single one of them deserved his empathy because every single one of them had earned his respect.

"I just said, 'Sorry, thanks and well done, ' says O hAilpin when asked for his memory of that moment. "Because I've been there. When you win, everyone says, 'Well done, ye were great' but you might play just as well and lose yet no one ever says a thing."

He thinks . . . knows . . . he's still the same Sean Og today.

Whatever about diminishing his reputation, Semplegate has not diluted his values.

"More than winning, I think it's important that you're a good sportsman because, long after you leave the game, how you played outweighs what you've won. Like, sport is not all about winning. To some people it is; to me, it's not, really. Other people tell me I'm stupid for thinking like that but that's just the way I am.

How you conduct yourself on the field reveals a lot about your character. Please don't come up to me and say, 'It doesn't matter what you say about me, I've my five All Ireland medals.' If you haven't conducted yourself in the way that the sport should be played, then I don't rate you."

That's why he rates Waterford. When they play, especially against Cork, it's like, as Tom Kenny put it so beautifully during the week, "three or four school kids playing until it gets dark". The biggest compliment he can give them is his final word on 'Semplegate'. The suspension itself, the actual 70 minutes he had to sit out and watch, was the brightest, not the darkest, hour of those murky weeks.

"Once that game was over, even though Cork had lost, I just stood up and said to myself, 'F*** me, what a game of hurling. If that's the way hurling is going after my playing days are over, well then I'm looking forward to being a spectator.'" It's about more than winning. It's about having and showing some class. Like a certain fear mor from Lismore that he'll take up today.

It's an honour to be playing against them fellas . . . and bating them.

Dan Shanahan on Cork, in 'Final Moments: 2004' He's always been Dan to him, never Shanahan, ever since the day their paths first crossed. It was up in Na Piarsaigh at the Pat Kelleher under-13 tournament, the year before Feile. St Vincent's from Dublin had come down, Midleton were there and Lismore from Waterford had made the trip over to Fairhill as well. At centre-forward they had this "tall, dangly" lad with a tan . . ."Dan, " claims O hAilpin, "he has a nice complexion, like" . . .and the Na Piarsaigh centreback that day recalls that Dan "was as much a handful then as he is now".

It would be another four years before they'd brush shoulders again, in the 1994 Munster minor final, and O hAilpin was struck by how the coltish Dan from the Pat Kelleher weekend had filled out.

Since then they've regularly come up against each other. In the '95 Munster minor final ("My first time coming across Ken [McGrath]. He was centre-back. Colossal"). The '98 league final. The '99 Munster semi-final. And famously, the 2004 Munster final. By the time O hAilpin had switched onto him, Dan had taken John Gardiner for 1-3 but the rest of that game would be vintage Dan too.

"Dan, " smiles O hAilpin, "he's a character. He's funny, like. I'd love to laugh during a game but I can't. I suffer from white-line fever; when I get over that line, I'm just 'Right, where's the ball?' If someone tries to talk to me, f*** them, I'm not talking; if someone tries to crack a joke, f*** it, no time for a joke. But Dan, fair play, he can fit that in. It doesn't seem to affect his game to engage in those things.

"That Munster final, the one they all talk about, we came out onto the pitch for the second half a good bit late.

I made my way towards Dan and he was there waiting for me with that grin. 'What was keeping ye, Sean Og? ! Were ye talking about tactics, were ye?' Sure, I could only nod.

'That's right, Dan. Tactics.'" Fifteen minutes into that second half Shanahan would win his first ball in the air since O hAilpin had moved onto him, earning a free in the process. It was about 40 yards out from goal and though O hAilpin would take up a spot on the small square standing right behind Shanahan, he assumed like everyone else in Semple Stadium that Paul Flynn would take his point.

"Next thing, Dan starts shouting, 'He's going for my head, lads! Telling ya, he's going for my head!' I'm going, 'What's Dan on about? Is he off his head?'" But he wasn't. Instead, just as the sliotar zoomed towards it, he ducked that head. Cork had been the victims of what John Mullane calls "the Flynn dipper".

Over the next 20 frantic minutes the sides would continue to exchange scores to the point, in injury time, Shanahan had trouble telling what the score was. So he asked the man beside him.

Were they level? It wasn't in O hAilpin's nature to lie, and when it came to Dan, no way he could refuse to answer. "No, ye're a point up, Dan."

It would stay that way and some other things haven't changed since either. Like the continued renaissance of Dan and O hAilpin's admiration for him. O hAilpin doesn't think he's marked anyone as often, and even though he's held Carey and Shefflin scoreless in All Irelands, doesn't think he's marked anyone better either.

"Dan's incredible. I think it's true to say, in his earlier years, his attitude was different to what it is now. Hurling is definitely his number-one priority now and it shows. We've had great battles and we'd be the keenest of rivals but there's a cord there. I have great respect for him and I'd like to feel that he has great respect for me."

The feeling so is mutual. It's an honour to play Shanahan . . .and to bate him.

Today it would be more than an honour. It's mandatory.

More than a year could end here. An era could too.

He saw one end for Armagh this past month. He's been good friends with Aaron Kernan since the 2004 GPA awards, even before Kernan broke onto the Armagh team.

"Most young footballers and hurlers you meet, " says O hAilpin, "there's an arrogance about them; they're nearly running the show as if they've been there for 10 years. But straight away I could tell that Aaron wasn't any of that. He was so enthusiastic and sincere and willing to learn, he reminded me of myself when I was that age."

And he knows Donal Og and Kieran McGeeney are close; "to Donal Og, " says Sean Og, "McGeeney is a god." In the autumn of 2002, when the rest of the hurlers were in a standoff with their county board, Cusack was in Dublin racking the brains of his GPA comrade as to exactly how the Armagh footballers were so well facilitated by theirs. There are a lot of parallels there: the breakthroughs in '99, consolidating provincial supremacy in 2000, followed by a blip, some bloodletting, and then September glory. Armagh, he knows from Aaron, had serious ambitions this year, but now they're gone, their summer over before it had barely begun. Cork are staring at the same abyss and the view is frightening.

"It's strange. Like, I can't imagine not training in August. That would be back to 2001, 2002 stuff. Back then, we had nearly become accustomed to not training in late summer; there just came a time when we were fed up seeing other teams involved in All Ireland finals and said, 'Jesus, we're as good as these fellas!' And since then, whether we've won the All Ireland or not, we've seen the year out.

"Sunday is a huge challenge for us. Like, Waterford have beaten us twice in big games this year. We haven't beaten them at all. That's a huge incentive, like. To lose to them again. . . we can't allow it."

And yet, in a way, today shouldn't define or end any era. He looks at the players from both teams. Tony Browne at 34, Dan at 30, Joe at 30, Donal Og at 30; they're all playing the hurling of their lives. Waterford, he knows, are an even better team than the one that pushed Cork so hard last year. And yet, he feels, Cork are better too.

He knows most people don't believe that and, for a good part of the year, he couldn't see it happening himself.

"It would be true to say that Gerald [McCarthy] and ourselves probably didn't start off the best. We seemed worlds apart. For years he'd watched us but he didn't know us. But as the year has gone on, the players have grown into Gerald and Gerald has grown into the players. He came in, saying, 'Look, I want ye to be more direct, get the ball in', which I agreed with, but at the same time you have to have the proper personnel too. Like, Brian Corcoran, Setanta, Alan Browne, they're not there anymore; it's not as if Joe and Ben [O'Connor] are going to be jumping 10 feet in the air. But over the year he's asked for our feedback and we've asked for his and together we've nearly got the blend right."

That's what a lot of people forget. They've been written off since the Tipperary game yet the reason Tipp were written off before they played Cork was because of how slick Cork had looked against Offaly. That day they hit Offaly with the Inchydoney gameplan they were meant to hit Kilkenny with last September. The Offaly game still stands.

They're still the same team.

"Our attitude definitely cost us against Tipp, " he says.

"Even though you'd try to convince yourself Tipp were going to be formidable, at the back of our minds we thought, 'Yeah, they'll give us a hard 20 minutes but after that we'll be fine.'" The important thing is that they learned from it. Like that, for all the stick himself and Gardiner and Curran have been hit with since, those opening 20 minutes were probably the slickest they've ever played as a unit. And like that, if your attitude isn't right, then in this game you're punished.

Over the last two weeks, Gerald's been preaching the same message as old mentors.

John Allen use to tell them they must fight for Every Single Ball. Before him, Donal O'Grady would talk about the old Meath football team of the late '80s, and how, though it pained him as a Corkman to admit it, he had nothing but admiration for how they'd just wave aside any mistakes and play right to the final whistle.

Today they'll have to. But he's secure in the knowledge of one thing. Waterford will have to as well.