On quiet afternoons in Lebanon, Canice Brennan would grab a couple of hurls and a grumbling accomplice and make for a stretch of dirt ground near a remote outpost. Dust would rise with every ground stroke as they hurled in lonely heat.

Although Brennan could not have been further removed from his sport, it was those puck-abouts in the Middle East that re-awakened his zeal.

"After the All-Ireland last year, my club (Conahy Shamrocks) went from intermediate to junior level and I knew I was going away on service," he recalls. "The game just wasn't on my mind. But I returned in January for the holidays with the lads and had a talk with Brian Cody. Then when I went back out to Lebanon, I began doing a bit on my own. It was grand, it kept the touch there. The local kids took a bit of a shine to the sliotars, though."

Brennan's nomadic streak has coursed through his hurling life as well. He reckons at this stage he has played virtually every position through the centre for Kilkenny. His bleakest hour came in a league game two seasons ago when he was jeered by the home crowd after been withdrawn at half-time by his brother Nicky, who quit the post of manager the next day. Although the intensity of the derision left him smarting at the time, it is a distant cloud now.

"I was told then that the only reason I was on the team was because I had a brother managing it. If you get stuck on these things, you simply wouldn't be playing the game," he says.

Since that nadir, Brennan has remained a constant. In Kevin Fennelly's regime he was a half back before Brian Cody declared him Kilkenny's first choice full back at the start of the summer.

"I suppose it's a bit different in that if you let the odd ball through at centre back there is another line waiting to sweep up. At full back you have to recover and clear it yourself. It's new to me, but I'm helped by the fact that I am being coached by Cody, one of the greatest full backs to come out of the county," he says.

His conversion stemmed from a challenge game against Cork in Thomastown in early May, when Cody put him in cold and liked what he saw. Brennan dealt assuredly with opponents throughout Leinster, but began squirming a little in the opening minutes of the All-Ireland semi-final against Niall Gilligan, Clare's live-wire full forward.

"It was very close heat wise that day and quite hard to get air into the lungs early on. And there was a lot of space which had them running through our half-back line. Things go through your mind then, you think, `God this is going to be a bad day'. But you try not to worry about it. And eventually we got the upper hand. And I was chatting to the Clare lads afterwards and they were telling me how hard Niall is to mark in training. I didn't feel so bad after hearing that. But I'll tell you, I'd still prefer to mark him than any of the Kilkenny forwards. They're a nightmare," he grins.

Sunday ought to provide him with a similarly stiff task, when he is expected to match up against the razor-sharp Joe Deane.

"Yeah, well Cork in general are a very hungry young team with a lot of good quick players. But our forwards are going well at the moment as well, with something like 13 goals in a few games and we have the bit of experience now, having gotten to a final last year. I know we are supposed to be favourites, but I dunno if that's justifiable. Cork have beaten Waterford, Clare and Offaly to get here, three fine teams. I doubt that they feel like underdogs now."

In 1993, Brennan was denied an All-Ireland medal through illness and last year found himself facing a winter abroad with a runners-up medal for consolation. Some days he believed that that might be as close as he'd get. Now there is Sunday.

"We are right back where we were last September," he says. "Anything but a win would be a step back. That's been our aim all summer."