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

Somebody in the local media described the team picked for the Waterford match as a series of experiments waiting to go wrong. If the experiments went wrong there was only one face the shards of test-tube glass were going to lodge in.

"It was a fair comment," says JBM now. "It looked that way. We hadn't done a lot of good things during the league and the public perception of us wasn't helped by that. We had gone on training though, played Kilkenny in Thomastown and played very well. A worthwhile challenge match we felt.

"With challenge matches sometimes you have to say you took something out of them and training was going great. I was pretty confident we had them right. All along we were picking a summer team."

And the team came up with a big result. Mickey O'Connell, whom JBM had called personally and gently removed form from the panel at the end of last year, had received another call inviting him back when his club form demanded it. He blew Tony Browne away and suffered only a slight dip in form when tossed in like a Christian between Colin Lynch and Ollie Baker weeks later. And tomorrow Barry-Murphy takes the Munster champions to Croke Park.

"It would have been very hard to have been beaten by Waterford. Your reputation as a coach wouldn't be very high. It would be hard to walk away without having delivered. It doesn't matter so much what you did as a player, people judge you now as manager. You might think you did well but in Cork unless you deliver then you haven't.

"That's life though. I wouldn't be the first coach to have had to walk away but we got it right against Waterford and what will happen now will happen."

He has learned how to wear the armour. He doesn't listen to radio phone-in programmes but somebody will always tell him what was said. He sees what is written in the local press and the national press and in it detects the support and expectation of a lot of people in Cork. The goodwill this summer has overwhelmed him and helped him understand the feelings expressed on the bad days.

The journey has been incremental. Winning the league last year helped with confidence but he is convinced now that it took an edge off them come the championship. Being beaten by Clare was another jarring lesson.

It took forever for the league to come back around, an eternity of watching club championship, looking at players he liked the look of.

He didn't go to Lanzarote with the team, continental holidays not being his thing. When he got them back, tanned and ready, he brought in more new faces and placed the total focus on the summer. Through the league on muddy pitches he and his selectors would reinforce each other. "`Think what they'll be like in the summer,' we'd say to each other. `Wasn't always easy'."

The personality of the team changed a little but he insists that is no criticism of players who went before.

"Clare beat us mentally but the character of the players last year wasn't the point. We needed fresh blood and something different. Needed players with good skill levels. We decided if we were going to go down it would be with skilful players and let everything work out as it may. There was a lot of talk about needing big strong men. We weren't going to pick a big fella who was useless though."

In the end came victory and vindication. "I was thrilled. I felt vindication, thrilled for the players, seeing a Cork team with a lot of young players expressing themselves. The goal was a great goal, Seanie knocking it back for Joe Deane - that was skilful hurling.

"And the last point by Ben O'Connor was special. I got a tremendous thrill out of that, it gave me a great kick on the day, seeing that point and the guts and skill involved. That was the vindication."

He talks fondly of coming into the square in Thurles on the team bus after the Munster final. So different, he says, from his playing days. As a player he never felt the weight of the county on his shoulders. Coming into the square in Thurles made that unique managerial sensation worth enduring.

He recognises the achievement and quietly acknowledges that a brave gamble with his own reputation paid off but, as he says, hurling is the only game that counts and, in Cork, hurling has been struggling above and below the waterline.

When JBM was a young fella with a crewcut and shorts he went to a national school which didn't preach Gaelic games. He relied on St Finbarr's and the street leagues around the Lough to pull him through his apprenticeship. That and the famous bloodlines which had brought All-Irelands to the family before he was even a twinkle in fatherly eyes.

He manages Cork's flagship hurling team these days in a totally different environment. Soccer has gripped the city hard. Roy Keane and Denis Irwin, the big shots, and big-deal Manchester United will eventually be replaced in the Cork imagination by Colin Healy and Liam Miller of Ballincollig and perhaps by Brian Barry-Murphy, late of Cork City now of Preston North End.

"Soccer has had a huge impact. I love seeing kids playing soccer but I'd love to see more of them playing hurling as well.

Denis (Irwin) played with the Barrs. Brilliant, brilliant hurler. He played in Croke Park for Cork schools. People have great respect for himself and Roy. Naturally kids want to emulate them, that's a fact of life.

"There's a number of ideas being mooted now involving the players going into schools and making an effort to get back to hurling. We need days like Thurles, days like this Sunday to keep that going. We don't have a GAA equivalent of Sky Sports."

He is a little reluctant to burden his own son with any expectation. His departure on a Bosman deal to Preston North End this summer was the final act in a series of flirtations with the English game, none of which worked out satisfactorily. The faith of Irish under-21 manager Ian Evans kept him in the shop window though. He heads for Deepdale without any illusions.

"Brian has been playing soccer since he was 11 or 12, hurling and football, he played with Casement Celtic. They gave him a great start and he went on to Cork City. He's always had an ambition to play full time, he had been over a few times with bigger clubs and it didn't work out, so he was invited to Preston on fortnight's trial, the manager David Moye invited him and it worked. It's hard to make the breakthrough, but he's very single-minded and dedicated."

Brian Barry-Murphy played hurling and football with St Finbarr's until his mid-teens when various activities began to clash. He opted for soccer. If the decision to alter the family history caused JBM a few moments of sadness he conceals it well.

"I told him to make up his own mind. You can't pressure them. He didn't want to be letting somebody down or coming back and taking somebody else's place. It was easier for him to play soccer perhaps. No comparisons. It might have been a factor, I've never asked him. It wouldn't have been easy for him, I suppose."

And the early word from Preston is good. He scored in a 5-2 defeat to an Everton selection this week and David Moye has mentioned him as one of the young players that Preston would like to build a team around.

Back home JBM is still plotting the revolution. His fourth championship as manager. His first big day in Croke Park. It's been a long time coming and the lessons learned have made the moment all the sweeter. The journey. Joe Deane and Sean Og O hAilpin were the first introduced, kids thrown in on the tide in 1996. Looking back now he says it was probably a mistake but the benefits are seeping through now. He added bits and pieces along the way, most of the others percolating through the under-21s.

This summer Ben O'Connor, Neil Ronan, Wayne Sherlock and others were tossed into an already fresh-faced team. Barry-Murphy was building implacably on his own vision.

"Those players were not part of our plans last year but broke through from the under-21s. A guy like Wayne Sherlock has been the outstanding player at under-21. He's what we wanted. a tough young lad, great mentality. We're looking for young fellas not just happy to get there, but looking for the extra step forward."

When his team beat Clare in Thurles with the help of a monumental display from Sherlock, JBM went to the Clare dressingroom and told the players there that they were the models that Cork had to follow. The way they played and the way they conducted themselves were lessons for any team. He believes it.

"Last year when we lost against Clare," he says, "I didn't look at it on video for quite a while. I'd seen enough to last me for quite a while. I'd seen enough to make me realise that it would be a much tougher breakthrough. "Clare exposed our weaknesses in a mental sense. We'd played Clare in the league semi-final and they weren't as focused on the league as we were. They have big players who can reach a peak for championship. That's what we all have to do. You wouldn't need to be a genius to work that out."

"I've only worked it out now Jim."

"Yeah," he says and laughs hard but ruefully, "so have I."