Confidence of youth nets Cork ultimate prize

Cork's victorious manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy indulges his only known vice - that of under-statement - as he wraps up his view of the 1999 Guinness All-Ireland hurling final. "A lot of us laid to rest an awful lot of ghosts out there. I've been tempted to say this all year: we haven't gone away, you know."

He's right. Even after this great decade of hurling exorcisms, the number of ghosts laid before a 62,898 attendance was impressive. In five of the last six finals between the counties, Kilkenny have defeated Cork. On five occasions in their common history, Cork have been beaten by a mere point.

JBM himself reserved his two least distinguished All-Ireland performances for the two years, 1982-83, when he captained Cork against Kilkenny. Yet, with a last-quarter scoring burst, his young and largely unfancied team - average age 22 - overhauled the Leinster champions' four-point lead and ended the match winners by one point. He's not going to pretend omni-confidence either. "Of course I had doubts. It's an All-Ireland final and you're playing an outstanding team like Kilkenny. Your heart is in your mouth every time the ball goes into their forward-line, but our defence was brilliant today as it has been all year."

The inextinguishable confidence of youth has been on show from this side all summer. Successful at minor and under-21, many of the team are new to the senior championship and all, except peerless centre back Brian Corcoran, novices to the big day.

"It's the one thing we hammered home to the players all week," said Barry-Murphy. "These opportunities don't come along every year. The competition is so intense that you mightn't get the chance again next year. . . When I was playing my least-pressurised year was the first. You don't think about it, you don't know what the pitfalls are."

One player facing his own crisis by half-time was Seanie McGrath. His trick-box of gliding pace and immaculate ball control had by half-time carved three good scoring chances out of the unpromising terrain of Willie O'Connor's corner - but he had availed of none. After the interval he hit the tracks, first in the corner and then on the wing.

"I was very disappointed - Jeez, I was terrible disappointed, especially the time I took Willie on and kind of left him and put it wide. It's all experience. It happened me against Waterford earlier in the year and my head went down. But I kept my head up this time and kept plugging away and I knew that if I got one, I'd get a few. I ended up with three and I was delighted."

He rattles out words of praise for the team spirit, half observational, half witness testimony.

"A lot of teams would have dropped the heads in the bad conditions and the ball not really running for us. But we kept plugging away. I was talking to Fergal (McCormack) in the shower there and we knew we weren't going to be beat even when the score went to 10-6. We knew we weren't going to be beat. I knew and he said he knew. I don't know what it was."

Selector Tom Cashman survives an epidemic of back-slapping to offer definite views on what went right and isolates the contribution of Timmy McCarthy, the Castlelyons express whose solo bursts and three points tally were so vital.

"I though the biggest move was bringing Timmy Mac to midfield. It settled the team. They do that themselves. Fergal goes left and right to give Donal something to aim at. There's no point in driving ball in on top of Pat O'Neill."

For favourites Kilkenny, the bitterness of defeat for the second year running infuses an atmosphere of shocked gloom. Manager Brian Cody has had a great year reviving the team and drawing some belting displays from them. Try telling him that.

"There's a winning dressingroom and a losing dressingroom," he says. "Unfortunately, were in the losing one for the second year in a row."