All-Ireland SHC Final/Interview with Diarmuid O'Sullivan: "Ah sure," he says, "Such is life. Such is life." All-Ireland final week brings a steady hail of obligations. Tickets. Plans. Tickets. Worries. Tickets. When to finish work. Tickets. Getting out to see the family. Tickets. Last training. Tickets. Focus. Tickets.

Not that the county board play Scrooge anymore with tickets. Just everyone you've met in your entire life wants one. From you. They want it at the last minute. Transferred from your paw to their paw. With some inside gossip about the team maybe. A little chunk of your time. He read once about Roy Keane running around trying to get tickets on the morning of an FA Cup final. Roy! He sighs again. Such is life.

Every river finds the sea. Diarmuid O'Sullivan obeys the rules of nature in that respect at least. He didn't wend and meander. He burst forth, broad and majestic, exploding from the lovely hermetic fold of hurling that is Cloyne. Born in the shadow of Christy Ring, a year after the legend died, his own story lacked digressions. By 20 he had an All-Ireland senior medal in his pocket, jingling with a pair of under-21 baubles.

It could have been left like that, O'Sullivan standing on the steps in Croke Park with a great future behind him. People had furtive doubts about the Cork team which pocketed the last All-Ireland of the millennium. Too much, too soon. Too young. Too precocious. Too blithe. Too pampered.

The team duly spun their wheels for a while and if O'Sullivan was no longer the elemental player he had been in the late 1990s, nobody raged more fiercely against life in the mire. He stormed like a hurricane throughout the 2000 semi-final against Offaly. The following year he scored that point against Limerick, emerging like a Panzer from his square and launching from 100 yards. Ka-Boom! The world was catching up on him though.

Football briefly seduced him. Martin Comerford left his calling card in the National League final of 2002 with 1-3 off "The Rock" before the chime for half-time tea. Cork enlivened a fallow winter with a players' strike. By spring Donal O'Grady had arrived and O'Sullivan found himself standing outside the door for classes. He missed the old beat. It missed him. He reformed and refocused. By the Wexford semi-final of last year we knew he was back to something like his best.

His best. When he reaches that altitude he stands with the very best full backs in an era blessed with many fine practitioners. He hurls with a fury and force that stirs the terrace and lifts the heart. Since the under-21 final of 1997 against Galway, when his head erupted great geysers of blood, he has been one of the game's great swashbuckling heroes. He gives plenty and takes enough in return to make one wonder if the blood rule wasn't introduced with him in mind.

That's The Rock in a nutshell. Such, as he might say, is life. His life. He doesn't know when the business of calling him The Rock started. He grins ruefully. If he ever had an image, he says, it wasn't one that he'd think anybody would be taking notice of.

He remembers the first time he crossed the line on to a hurling field. He almost had to be shoved with a cattle prod. Cloyne's under-12s were playing their closest and fiercest rivals, Aghada. O'Sullivan was seven or eight not yet grown into his heft and filling out the subs with a gaggle of other young fellas not expecting or particularly wanting to get in the action. It was a cold, damp evening and at half-time he was told he was going on. No Ringy. No magical tale. He doesn't remember if he touched the ball. He kept out of the way but fell in love with the clatter and clashing all around him.

"I went on not knowing what I was leaving myself in for but I knew when I came off I wanted more of it."

He was in the right place. The right family. The right club. The family lived a couple of miles outside the town. Nice house, big garden. Four brothers. Simple hierarchic values prevailed. The O'Sullivan garden had a bit of a hill on it. When you started hurling in the garden you were at the top of the hill. Less ball and easier ball. As you got older you got sent down the hill. Harder work.

Ring was less of an influence than the bloodlines were. Gerry O'Sullivan was always involved in the game. A couple of uncles too.

"Since I started walking I remember them playing . . . My first memory of hurling matches was going to see my father play an East Cork final in 1986. I was eight. There was a big build-up in Cloyne. For me it was the first major sporting occasion I had come across in my life and in the build-up I realised my father was playing in it. I couldn't believe it. It meant so much.

"There was a couple of uncles playing too alright but my Da! If you're a young fella, normally you'd be just running around the field playing with your friends when a match would be going on but on a sporting perspective that was the first real memory. They won it. Playing Killeagh. Da was centre back and a good one at that. He played till he was 42. He played an intermediate county semi-final at 42. Watching him. That's where the hunger came from."

Ring was there, of course, like Table Mountain is there for Cape Town or the Opera House is there for Sydney. He was there but if you lived in Cloyne you hardly noticed.

"We were young fellas hurling. There were lots of us who still play. Donal Óg was a year or so ahead in school. There was Ian McCarthy, Liam Driscoll, Killian Cronin, Ian Quinlan, other lads. We played away and we were wrapped in our own thing really. We were just mad to be out playing."

In primary school in Cloyne, Monday afternoons were for hurling. Michael O'Brien would take them but if it was wet or too cold and their mothers were likely to complain he'd herd them into the classroom and stick on a video. Ringy in action.

"We'd watch old hurling games with Michael. We didn't really know it then because we wanted to be outside but looking back it was a fantastic experience. It hasn't changed in Cloyne. Hurling is still number one by a mile. We think it's unique. It's still the main sport. Nothing else influences life in Cloyne."

Somewhere along the line O'Sullivan discovered the world outside Cloyne. In secondary school in Midleton something clicked and drove him into obsession.

"I realised in Midleton if I worked really hard at the game, and trained hard things would come, opportunities. If I practised every day and pushed myself I'd make school teams and Cork teams and winning teams. I'd get more out of it."

He did. He won a Harty Cup with Midleton in 1995 and hurled at intermediate level for Cloyne the same year. The school used him as a wing forward, a position he neither fancied nor believed he had a future at. Either that or politics cost him a place on Jimmy Barry Murphy's minor team of 1995.

"I was overlooked for JBM's minor team in 1995. There were seven or eight from the school team on it so it was a fair kick. I was disappointed. I felt I hurled well enough at intermediate grade for Cloyne. Any young fella from 16 up playing in their club's top team is worth a look. I suppose when you look back there's always some bit of politics. Somebody looking after their own."

The setback was jarring but temporary. He made minor the next year but on a lesser team. It took till a winter's day in 1997 for him to realise he was going places. "After 1995 I wasn't sure how JBM looked at me but I knew Jimmy had some meas for me as a hurler after a game early February."

The game was a challenge in the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick. Wind blowing. Frost in their bones. Limerick up for it. O'Sullivan was playing half-back at the time and early on he took a ball and went up the line with it. Wishing to show some finesse to go with his granite shoulders he opted not to dip the shoulder when he reached the first Limerick shirt but to tap the ball over the head and meet it on the other side.

"I flicked it up over, well up over the opposing player and he just . . . well it was the first learning experience I had at senior intercounty. I was killed. Nailed. Hammered. Hit on the spot. Lights out for a second. But I noticed JBM came out like a man possessed at the referee. I never really saw him react ever but he went mad that day. I knew he had a bit of time for me and a bit of faith in me after that. I just had to convince the rest of the lads with him."

Two years later they had nothing left to learn. So it seemed. He hasn't committed every detail of that cold, wet day in Croke Park to memory of Cork's victory over Kilkenny. He was young. He thought there'd be more, soon. All that remains is the feeling of relief that came with the final whistle. Twenty years old only and he felt as if he had been climbing the mountain for an age.

"We were underdogs all year and we actually did it. The relief. The whole lot. Donal Óg behind me when it was over. Pat Ryan came running in from the dugout. We'd played under-21 with Pat. The cup was back in Cloyne on the Friday night. We had a great weekend, not just a night. It was the first time since Ringy that Cloyne had anyone. That made you think a bit."

The team met at the crossroads. The populace from surrounding areas funnelled into the little village. There were speeches and songs and the cup bobbed above heads through the town's couple of bars.

"We were young fellas. Growing up. Some of us are still growing up. My Uncle Paddy says you should learn something new every day but you only appreciate that as you get older. We came out of nowhere. We were young. There was nothing frightening for us. It was a good feeling. Only looking at the older people in the town made you wonder. Paddy Joe Ring, Willie John's brother. He's gone now but to bring the cup back to those lads. You could see it in their faces. This didn't happen often. Even Willie John to this day, the enthusiasm he has. It makes you think. That older generation. It all meant so much to them.

"There were no other great emotional moments for me. It's only now when you look back and you've lost things, lost games, had some real life, some things going against you here and there, you realise now what it meant. There was a couple of years after that, when we had achieved and we thought we still wanted to achieve but we didn't know if we were hungry enough. There's been times when it's been hard to see where we were going. The expectation in Cork is always high."

He strayed a little himself. There were people in Cloyne who'd rather have seen him mainlining heroin in the gutter than playing football in the summer. His touch went. His reactions slowed but the stuff of dreams is insistent. He'd always wanted to see what it was like playing Kerry in championship football. Would it be like hurling against Tipp or Kilkenny? He loved the experience, made a lot of new friends but hurling was his love and his hurling was hurting.

Then there was the strike. Hurling lopped around family again. O'Sullivan was on the top table with the players. His father was across the room.

"With Dad being involved on the county board executive it was awkward. It was never discussed between us. I don't know if we were both nervous. We could feel the tension if we were left in a room together at times. You wouldn't know where a conversation would have gone but we got over it. We sorted it out. He's still involved. I'm still involved. It was never spoken of then. It was never spoken of since. Probably best."

This year has been a happy one. Last year was pockmarked with injuries and uncertainty and feeling his way in the O'Grady regime. Now the world is filled with certainties again. Gyms. Tickets. Training gear. Physios. Masseuses. All those things they fought for have come to them. "Donal came in and he never spoke about it. I can honestly say, the issue never arose. He had his job. He had his sessions, his programme. We were given a programme at the beginning. This is going to be the way. Let's go. Things have been on the up since."

Under O'Grady no player is better than the next player. His style is direct man-to-man management. O'Sullivan is fascinated by the attention to detail.

"He must have the biggest supply of cereal boxes in the world. Every night he comes to training with his list written on the back of a different cereal box. Everything on the list gets done. If it takes three hours everything gets done and given the right amount of time. We work on hooking, blocking, flicking. With drills and the bit of work we do we never do precisely the same thing two nights running, always something is changed around. It's the basics.

"The amount of time we spend hooking, blocking, picking up the ball, two hands on the stick, getting in the right way when you are hooking and blocking. Attention to detail. He'd almost prefer to see you make three or four hooks and blockdowns then see you take three or four handy scores."

It has worked. With Setanta Ó hAilpín gone and the team still feeling the gap left behind they went to Limerick at the start of the summer just looking to get a result. They got one, ungainly as it was, and moved on.

"I suppose when you look at the Munster final we received a lot of criticism afterwards. We played some fantastic hurling, though, and there was some undue criticism. Waterford won by a point and they were highly praised. It could have gone either way, though. We sat down and decided the All-Ireland started after that. Knockout competition. We played Tipp and for 20 minutes or more in that game we played as well as we have in years."

So September and Sunday. The story stretching further. Cloyne feting its sons again. Heady times. He's old enough to appreciate it now.

A couple of weeks ago Cloyne played their other great local rivals, Midleton. It was the first time they'd met the Magpies in championship hurling since Cloyne came up to senior in 1997. Cloyne won. The five O'Sullivan brothers played for Cloyne. Donal and Diarmuid in the half backs, Colm at centre forward, Eoin at corner back, And Pádraig, still 15, playing at corner forward. You suggest at 15 the lad must be able to take care of himself to be playing senior championship.

O'Sullivan shrugs. Four brothers on the field. The taking care of himself bit takes care of itself. Not that Diarmuid has had to ride shotgun. Those days are done. "I'm getting older. You realise the day for reacting is gone. You get a belt you take it. You have to be manly enough, big enough. It's part and parcel of the game. These things happen. You get old."

Such is life.