A legend who had to rebuild his legend (Part 1)

His eyes are popping. His feet are jigging. Jimmy Barry-Murphy is out of his seat and the words are coming quickly now. Showboating, big talking, crazy rap stuff.

"Ah am soooo pretty," he is saying, sticking an index finger into the dimple on his chin and grinning wildly. A crowd is gathering to catch the riff. "Prettiest boy in the Barrs. Always was. Not pig ugly like a Glens man. I'm the prettiest ever wore the blood and bandage, boy. Not just that but ah'm the best ever there was. Best in Croke Park. Best in history boy. And that's what you gotta remember. There's nobody can touch me. Not you. Not lightning. I did it on the pitch and ah'll do it on the sideline. They'll name this damn city after me yet."

That's the dream. That's JBM's entitlement, the bragging rights that come with a career which might be eclipsed in terms of medals but will never be found wanting in terms of glamour. He should be the Mohammed Ali of hurling, a crazy beat poet singing the song of himself. Instead he says:

"Me you want to do, is it?"

"Yeah. You don't sound keen?"

"Well, sure nobody wants to hear about me."

"Well. We'll see about that."

"Ah. Is there nobody else you could interview?"

And he takes a sharp intake of breath and relents.

Jimmy Barry-Murphy is a polite but reluctant interviewee and when finally you nail him to a seat and confront him with a tape recorder he answers in a style at variance with his swashbuckling hurling. Responses come cautiously filtered through his pathological modesty. He'll give a 10, 20-word answer of impeccable vagueness and then sit comfortably in the silence waiting for the next inquiry.

When the interview is over or at a suitable pause he'll say "alright with that?" and as he's rising from his seat anyway, you know you are alright with it. Have to be.

The caution is a by-product of the man and his relationship with his environment. With the tape off and the zig zagging between on and off the record done with, JBM is as fine a companion as you'd want.

You can see it on a drizzly night in Pairc Ui Chaoimh, the young county hurling team he has built and boosted flock around him faithfully. From the outside his approach is no guru, no method; they perform for him because he's the type of guy people want to perform for and quietly he gets his type of hurling out of them with them scarcely being aware of the design.

All that is fine and dandy but the environment has no offswitch. In Cork Barry-Murphy has been an A list celebrity since God (with whom coincidentally he is often confused) was a boy. Cork is always watching. The immense fondness and regard in which Barry-Murphy is held is reserved for those who touch greatness without their feet leaving the ground.

JBM will never test positive for hubris and if anything the experience of managing Cork has reinforced the habits of a lifetime. His first championship outing as a general of the sideline was against Limerick in 1996. Cork were destroyed and, as JBM says himself, he "came away reeling".

The coverage in Cork was harsh and in a lot of cases hurtful. The Echo was moving to a more tabloid style of coverage and the first slings and arrows stuck in JBM's back. The Examiner, more stately in tone, published a series of cruelly critical letters. The overall tone placed a luminous question mark over Barry-Murphy's ability to manage.

He is reluctant to talk about it all now. If there are scars there certainly aren't grudges. He won't venture into specifics. Still as context for the risks he has taken in pursuit of his vision his feelings are worth recording.

"Yeah. Some of the things after we were wiped out by Limerick, the local media stuff then, was personal and I took that very bad. It was very hurtful and I found it upsetting I must say. It was a huge disappointment. Questions were asked as to whether I could coach a team. I took a while to answer them, I suppose."

That experience at the hands of Limerick when he looks back at 1996, the humiliation of it after the heady build-up and dizzy excitement about the dream team management set-up, it's the real start of the journey. That day marks the distance travelled on the map.

"I underestimated the problems and how far back we had gone and how much we needed to do. I was shocked by how bad we were, how far back we were. Shocked. I came out and I was reeling. We revamped the following year, began a new policy."

"Expectations were very high in 1996. Lots of things created a certain amount of expectation and we were naive enough to think we weren't that far away. It upset me, it upset my self confidence what happened afterwards. My belief in myself was gone but small things become great after that and step by step . . ."

They qualified out of Division Two of the National League next spring and gave a good performance against Clare in Limerick the following summer. Enough sustenance in the bit of hope to keep Barry-Murphy going.

"I thought then we were on the right road with a bit of hard work. I thought I'd be in Croke Park a lot faster than I am though. Silly boy."

The courage and decency he has shown during his tenure are what his game was really established on. He mightn't swash many buckles but players describe him as honest and fair with them and what loyalty they give is returned with interest.

He has answered the questions about ruthlessness too and the weeding of the panel which has been done in pursuit of his vision has reflected not just a toughness but a willingness to gamble in a big way. This summer he started out against Waterford with six new faces in what was a young team. Waterford were ravenously hungry.

"Before the Waterford game I felt the pressure. Every county does the same amount of work, I presume, but when you don't get to the big days, well they don't count the hours you've put in down in Cork."