Imagine if he'd gambled. Where would Cork be now? Where would Cork have been this past four decades? Would the team of all the talents in 1973 have been good enough to win it all without the captain and Texaco Footballer of the Year between the sticks? How long more might Kerry's stranglehold have continued through the '80s without him taking over the helm? Absent Morgan's willingness to lure players like Dinny Allen and Dave Barry back from the wilderness, is there any guarantee the triumphs of 1989 and 1990 ever happen? Not to mention how many more European Cups Celtic could have won.

There have been more naturally talented Cork footballers but none as influential or enduring. Run your finger along the history of the county and it's difficult to find anybody, apart from Christy Ring, to whom the red jersey ever meant quite so much. Over the course of 16 years in goal, and that initial stint as manager during the most successful decade in our Gaelic football history, every triumph of the modern era has had Morgan's fingerprints all over it. Remove him from the equation and the best Cork might have aspired to this past half-century is the status of a Mayo or a Cavan or a Kildare, capable of producing very good teams, incapable of closing the deal.

He is our Mick O'Dwyer except he would never train another county no matter how lucrative the compensation might be. He is our Kevin Heffernan except it is impossible to envisage him in his pomp coolly walking away and leaving it all behind. He is our Sean Boylan except he never sought to use personal charm to obfuscate his team's ability to occasionally straddle the border between legal and illegal play.

To best understand him, it may be necessary to move beyond the confines of the GAA. If you combined the managerial eccentricities and gut instincts of Brian Clough, the paranoia and raw passion of Alex Ferguson, and the obsessiveness of Bill Shankly, you'd be some way towards an outline of his character.

Throw in Roy Keane's sense of entitlement about winning medals and the portrait begins to fill out nicely.

It's not a stretch to picture any of that quartet behaving in the same admittedly offensive manner as the Cork manager did last month with Irish Examiner journalist Brendan Larkin.

An immature and uncalled-for incident, you must remember though that, with Morgan and Cork, it's always personal, it can never be just business. A more controlled individual would be better able to handle the barbs of the pundits and reporters. A more controlled individual would not have led his county back from obscurity. Twice. And at two very different stages of his own life.

His irascibility around the media also needs to be put in a proper social and historical context. He hails from a place where hurlers are adored and footballers are tolerated. He has devoted his life to a code many Corkonians, including some of the most powerful figures within the GAA, look on with disdain and treat accordingly. After half a century tilting at windmills overstuffed with hurling snobs, how could Morgan be any other way but burdened by a hefty persecution complex?

A lifetime trying and failing to establish parity of esteem is liable to do that to a person.

It's often forgotten too that a quarter of a century before the Cork hurling strike, Morgan was battling county board apparatchniks in The Three Stripes Affair.

Back when Cork players had to supply their own shorts and socks, he saw the offer of free gear from Adidas as an opportunity for the team to start receiving the same treatment as their rivals in other counties.

Just like the manner in which he established the principle of the goalkeeper passing the ball rather than hoofing it downfield, he was merely way ahead of his time in that regard.

What makes matters worse is throughout all these battles succour has not always even been available within the ranks of the hardcore Cork football community. In those circles, his beloved Nemo Rangers are regarded at best with envy and at worst with something approaching hatred by their rivals. It's a measure of the bitterness towards them that only in Cork would the prospect of James Masters, the county's top-scoring forward in the championship, returning to the team for the All Ireland final be interpreted by many as some dastardly Nemo conspiracy.

Much of this unpopularity is due to the small city club committing the cardinal sin of being too successful and too clannish, a pair of qualities which are probably related and perhaps best exemplified by its most celebrated member.