Cruising along the banks on the way to Pairc Ui Chaoimh last week, a city cabbie considered the position of the Cork footballers in the wake of the hurler's coup de grace the previous weekend.
"The pressure," he began gravely, "that those boys are under now is unbelievable. With the double, like."
He sighed deeply and appeared genuinely unnerved by the plight which Larry Tompkins's team face.
"There is no way," he then vowed, "absolutely no way I'd be a part of that team."
Such was his conviction that suddenly the prospect of a place in the last All-Ireland football final of the century did not seem quite so rosy and a winless league campaign followed by a drubbing on the first day of the championship might have been an altogether cosier option.
Stories of the homecoming for the Cork hurlers on Monday night are already becoming the stuff of legend around Cork city.
Larry Tompkins wisely decided to hold a training session on the same night, 25 miles away from the city centre. The screams of victory did not carry quite that far.
That his young team have been paired against Meath has inevitably revived memories and talk of the state of the game at the beginning of the decade, when the entire championship was beginning to look like a curtain-raiser for the inevitable September clash between those same counties.
It is difficult to imagine any county except Cork bracketing a decade with hurling and football All-Irelands and, arguably, the opportunity which next Sunday presents does heighten the pressure on this Cork team.
An attendance of 65,723 watched the Cork footballers complete the feat in 1990 when they vanquished Meath by two points in a match which Paddy Downey of The Irish Times described as "an awesome test of physical courage and endurance, the toughest All-Ireland final this writer has ever seen".
To the majority of GAA fans, resident in counties that annually struggled to send out half-decent teams in just one code, the sight of Corkonian supremacy at both sports was only vaguely comprehendable, almost too farfetched to provoke any real envy.
Tipperary had been the last county to achieve the feat, back in 1900 and in modern times only Offaly and Galway could claim to have reasonable double ambitions.
Widely hailed as the double was at the time though, it was far from uppermost in the thoughts of that generation of Cork footballers. Although they had beaten Mayo in the All-Ireland final of the previous year, they went into the Meath game in 1990 wracked by the ghosts of earlier seasons.
"Beating Meath was the whole focus that year, there was the sense that unless we did it now we'd never beat them. It was because of the rivalry that has built up, it totally consumed every other aspect of that match," recalls Niall Cahalane, cornerback for Cork in 1990.
In the 1987 All-Ireland final, Meath had taken Cork by 1-14 to 0-11 to win their first championship since 1967. Cork, trying to bridge a void which stretched back to 1973 (chasmic in Cork lore), were unhinged by old failings and hit just three points in the entire second half.
Still, it was a daunting Meath team they faced and no-one was particularly surprised when the southerners showed up gamely again the following September to face Meath.
That match ended in a controversial draw; Larry Tompkins nailed a long free to give Cork a minimal advantage as time lapsed, but then Tommy Sugrue whistled for a dubious foul on David Beggy. Brian Stafford chipped over the equaliser.
Afterwards, the consensus was that Cork missed the boat, even allowing for the by now obligatory spate of shocking second-half wides.
The replay was drenched in tension and Meath's Gerry McEntee lasted all of six-and-a-half minutes, lined for striking Niall Cahalane. After that, the match was punctuated by a succession of frees - 56 in all - but Meath forced their way into the lead in the 50th minute through Bernie Flynn and held on for another narrow win. Pretty it wasn't, but the loss was deeply galling for the Cork side.
Hence, when the two teams popped up again in 1990, the weight of recent history totally overwhelmed all talk of the double. Again, it was a physically shattering match - particularly for the viewers - and this time, Cork full forward Colm O'Neill was sent to the line.
Paddy Russell was the unlucky man in black on this occasion and whistled for 69 frees. Shea Fahy landed four points from play, Tompkins an equal number from frees as Cork went on to win by 011 to 0-9. The double was done.
"I don't really think the double sunk in for a few days," says Cahalane.
"And even when we realised it, it was sort of incidental to what we had done. I mean, there was nothing tangible, no extra medal for winning the double. It was nice, I suppose, to be part of what was an historical thing, but it was not a thing we were too conscious about."
The one exception to that was dual player Teddy McCarthy, who became the first man to win medals in both codes in the same year.
Sean Og O hAilpin has the chance to emulate that on Sunday.
"The thing about Teddy was that he was a very cool customer. If the pressure got to him, he kept it to himself. He kept his thoughts to himself and took things in his stride."
Outwardly, at least, O hAlpin would appear to have the same attributes; he is a wonderfully laid-back and open youngster who certainly seems to be more or less carefree.
So although Sunday's pairing throws together old foes and affords Cork with another stab at history, the context is totally different. Some of the current players on both sides can hardly remember the dour if captivating clashes of the late 1980s and 1990.
The one similarity is that Cork, like their predecessors 10 years ago, are out to win a football match.
"Larry's been there, he knows the score. Of course they feel some pressure, but I doubt it has anything to do with the double," says Cahalane.
"I mean, I've stepped away from football now to an extent, it's no longer such a big part of my life and even though you might occasionally think about those days, it's not the double you remember."
