When nothing's certain except uncertainty

At 20, you can't possibly realise how easily things fall apart. In the early minutes of the 1993 All-Ireland final, Joe Kavanagh danced through Derry's defence and delivered a chillingly confident goal which seemed to affirm a natural order. Cork would win this, for no better reason that they were Cork.

Six years on and the sharpshooter still finds himself wondering "what if?".

"Just small things. The game probably turned when Tony Davis was unfortunately sent off and a few things went against us after that. "I had only come into the senior panel the summer before, so making it to an All-Ireland so quickly, you tend to think, well, at least we'll be back, at least I'll win one sometime. You find it hard to believe that six years have gone by and Cork are still waiting to get back. Every year, you think, maybe this season. Of course, now is no different."

Bittersweet as the day would prove in retrospect, Joe Kavanagh still regards that blistering goal as his defining moment as a gaelic football player. In the relatively lean years that were to follow, he remained a crucial lynch pin in the Cork attack, relentlessly given to style, a purist's dream. This April, there has been a tangible buzz around Cork city at the prospect of the championship. They open against Waterford, with the prospect of Limerick to follow, matches they know are eminently winnable.

"It's so vital to get some kind of momentum going into the championship and that's why the league is so important to us now.

"Naturally, we have been preparing with the championship in mind, but having reached the semi-finals of the league, we would dearly like to win it and I believe that competitive games against teams of Meath's calibre can only be of benefit to a team."

A couple of weeks ago, Kavanagh was one of the players who skipped past a lethargic Derry team half-heartedly fighting off collective comatose and drawing whispers that they, like other teams, may have been keen on departing the league.

"Well, I don't believe any team goes out to lose a game," says Kavanagh. "Whatever about teams not believing in the league, no player goes out to consciously lose a match. But Derry got hit for three goals and when that happens to a team weeks before their championship opens, maybe you think, well, this one is gone. But tomorrow, I think we in Cork will learn a lot more about ourselves, win or lose."

Larry Tompkins runs a smooth boat nowadays. There was friction in the early days, certainly, when the former terrace legend imparted his philosophy on total fitness and was guilty of, well, not being Billy Morgan.

"Larry did things his way and made no secret of his dedication to fitness, which really wasn't a bone of contention because every other county was beginning to approach it in the same way. "Larry tends to distance himself from the players slightly, which would have been different to Billy's style, but at the same time, any of the players can sit down and talk to him, on a one-to-one basis. "We are developing a nice style under him. I suppose we used to be criticised for maybe holding the ball up too much. Now we try and deliver crisp ball into the forwards. Tomorrow may give us some idea of how successful we are at that."

So it's another Sunday out for Joe Kavanagh, damn near being a veteran at 26, certain of only one thing - that nothing is for certain.