To the outsider, the statistics are staggering. No Cork title in 21 years. No appearance in a county final since 1991. Jack Lynch, Christy Ring, Niall Toibín: your boys have been taking a hell of a beating these past two decades.

The last county final Glen Rovers won? Liam Martin remembers it well. A seven-goal thriller, 4-15 to 3-13, against Sarsfields back in 1989. Tomás Mulcahy was in his pomp. John Fitzgibbon was elevating goalscoring to an art form. It was the Glen's first title since 1976. They thought the famine was over. Little did they know it was only beginning.

The last county final Glen Rovers contested? Liam Martin remembers it even better, 19 years on. He cannot but, given that he was the full-back and captain. The Glen played against the wind in the first half, trailed by two or three points at the interval, assumed they had the hard work done and were unable to respond when John Fenton and Pat Hartnett lifted it for a Midleton team that also contained Kevin Hennessy and Ger Fitzgerald.

"The classic game of two halves," Martin recalls with a sigh. "And also a classic case of the wind never winning a match for you."

Martin is a selector this afternoon and the Glen are back on the big stage at last. On the face of it, that should be the height of it. Where once they would have been the team with course and distance it's Sarsfields, contesting their third consecutive county final, who wear that mantle today, and Liam Cashman, who knows his hurling and knows his Glen, has the wearers of the hoops pegged at 7-4. No matter; they're back where they used to belong and, even more importantly, they're back there with a young team, the product of the wealth of underage work that's taken place in the club over the past decade. This shouldn't be a one-off for them. It mustn't be allowed to be.

Their very presence today is an unlikely story in itself. To say the Glen haven't exactly swept all before them this season is an understatement. In three of their outings they've been level at the end of full-time before twice progressing in replays, most recently against Midleton in the quarter-final, and once after extra-time versus Bride Rovers. The latter fixture was notable not so much for the outcome as for a brawl that saw both clubs thrown out of the county championship. The Glen were actually training one night subsequently when Ian Lynam, the manager, broke the news of their expulsion to the players; Martin can still picture the shock on their faces. Still, strength through adversity and all of that. "It really had a galvanising effect, not just on the team but on everyone in the club, families, everything," he asserts. When the ban was lifted, the Glen found themselves bound by a common purpose. The sumptuous recent form of Patrick Horgan, who hit 2-8 out of 2-13, 2-2 of it from play, in the drawn game with Midleton and 1-5 against Douglas in last Sunday's semi-final, has constituted the other key factor in their progress.

We'd be here for the rest of the day if we were to get stuck into the causes of the Glen's decline. The inescapable realities of the cycle, meaning that a strike rate that saw the club harvest 22 Cork titles between 1934 and '69 couldn't be sustained indefinitely. Demographics and the flight to the suburbs, with obvious implications for an ageing northside and a waning North Mon. The rise of the divisional sides. Lack of urgency, whether real or imagined, in getting stuck into potential new areas of recruitment like Ballyvolane. The failure of the 1989-91 team to kick on, compounded by John Fitzgibbon's departure to the US. The extensive physical development work carried out by the Glen over the past quarter of a century that drained at least some of the energy from the club.

It is arguable whether, as one trainer of a few seasons ago declared at that year's agm, the players were unwilling to go through the pain barrier. "Look, it wasn't complacency on the club's part," one insider insists. "It was lack of quality. Because of demographics, we weren't getting the numbers we had been getting. Hence we weren't getting the quality players of old."

Today may mark a watershed between the Glen Rovers of the past 20 years and the Glen of the next 20. Although the players cannot view it in anything other than tunnel vision, the club elders acknowledge that this afternoon is also the means to an end. "We've been impressing on the lads that today isn't about going out and enjoying the occasion," Martin says. "They have to be focused on winning, then take it from there.

"But if they do win, it'll be about more than winning a county final. A win would copperfasten the club's place in the hierarchy and help safeguard the future. The Glen built a tradition over many years. It declined. Now it needs to be renewed."

The spirit of the Glen. Alive once more.

emcevoy@tribune.ie