Maybe next Sunday in Thurles the minds of Clare and Cork managers Ger Loughnane and Jimmy Barry-Murphy will briefly wander back to the Munster finals of 1977 and '78. Or maybe the hammering Loughnane's Clare team gave Barry-Murphy's Cork last year has superceded any reflection on those finals of over 20 years ago, events which came to symbolise how - unavailingly - close Clare hurling had been before the current Nirvana was attained.

League winners in 1977 and '78 and defeated both years by a Cork team in the middle of constructing hurling's last three-in-a-row All-Ireland run and showcasing the emerging talent of Barry-Murphy.

There were traces of heartbreak each year. In 1977, full back Jim Power was sent off early in the game before Clare went down 410 to 4-15. A year later playing poorly, they still pushed the margin to two points 0-11 to 0-13. Clare's final score was a huge, long-range point from Loughnane who was apparently trying to drop a last-chance ball into the Cork square.

Paddy Downey's report in The Irish Times the following day described the final whistle: When the game was over, Loughnane slumped to the ground in disappointment and frustration and as he thumped his hurley on the turf, one could imagine his feelings and those of many other Clare people in the crowd. It was a sad setback for a hopeful team and one hitch they may take some time to get over.

"Ger Loughnane was a key player in successive Clare teams," says then Clare coach and former Cork All-Ireland winner Justin McCarthy, "one of the leaders on the team and part of a great halfback line. In '78 he had an exceptionally good game. He was the best half back Clare had in that era and he was a very consistent championship player."

Gus Lohan, father of Brian and Frank of the current team, was at the end of his inter-county career when he marked Jimmy Barry-Murphy in the 1977 final. He remembers the genesis of Loughnane's career.

"I was captain of the county three times in the early 1970s because Newmarket were winning the county regularly. Part of my task was to get young fellas to hurl for Clare. In those days you might only have 10 or 12 players at a training session. So the idea was to get lads interested in wearing the county jersey.

"That year, 1973 I think, the county had got to a couple of Munster under-21 finals and Ger Loughnane was in one of them. The first year, he declined the offer. I think he felt he wasn't quite ready for it. The next year he came onto the panel."

An All Star and Hurler of the Year in 1977, Loughnane was a wing-back with priorities which were ahead of his time, according to Lohan.

"He was a bit loose, always liked to play the ball out in front of his man - like the way Brian (Lohan's son) does now and the way Loughanne has the defence coached to play. Jackie O'Gorman (Clare corner back in 1970s) used to maintain that he had to mind him because he didn't always stay put. In that way he was unusual at the time. Back then, defenders were inclined to watch their man and be happy if they kept him scoreless, no matter what the team conceded.

"Now it's different and the whole defence takes the blame if scores are conceded."

Justin McCarthy remembers Barry-Murphy's presence on those Cork teams very well as he had helped bring him from his teenage eminence as an All-Ireland footballer to the dual status which would culiminate in one of hurling's legendary careers.

"Jimmy Barry-Murphy was just after establishing himself as a key forward in an attack which was full of hurling ability. He started in 1977 on Gus Lohan and maybe we should have moved Ger Loughnane or Sean Hehir over onto him but Gus had played exceptionally well that season. Cork's game plan was to keep the Clare half-back line tied up and busy and that upset our plans.

"Jimmy had a lot of great players around him. I was involved with Cork when he first came on the scene in 1975. He was one of the fastest players in hurling and was used to make openings or cut through. He wasn't a player who'd hurl points from far out but he had anticipation and was very patient. He'd wait for a chance."

Lohan's version of the 1977 final actually differs from McCarthy's.

"Early on, Jim Power was sent off. He was perceived to have hit Ray Cummins. I moved in to the edge of the square to mark Cummins so I wasn't on Jimmy Barry-Murphy for that long. He was a very fast hurler, quick on the breaks but not a contest player. He was very quick off the mark, an opportunist.

"He took a shot that day from about 40 yards out at Seamus Durack just before Jim Power was sent off. There was some argument at the time that Ray Cummins was standing in the square. Anyway Seamus was distracted and took his eye of the ball.

"Because Jimmy Barry-Murphy was such a quick player, I remember Cork didn't put any ball down the middle, they put it down the wings where Gerald McCarthy was and he was great to contest ball and break it for Barry-Murphy to run on. Their forward line was very strong then - the two McCarthys, Barry-Murphy, Ray Cummins, Seanie O'Leary who's a selector now. It was a very settled, well-organised, all-round talented Cork team. It wasn't psychology, it was hurling that beat Clare."

Clare didn't come back after 1978. There were further Munster final defeats but the sense of imminent breakthrough never really returned. Even in 1995, their success was largely unexpected in both the Munster and All-Ireland finals.

Loughnane has always discounted bad luck as a reason for those defeats in the 1970s. But he also believes that lack of tradition had a paralysing effect on the team's morale. To look at his team on Sunday, feared and awesome as they face a fresh-faced crew from Cork who are in a Munster final for the first time in seven years, is to understand the scale of his achievement. He has changed tradition.