Kevin O'Dwyer and Philip Clifford cut strange figures. There they were out on the pitch before last year's Bank of Ireland All-Ireland football final against Meath smiling away, apparently not a care in the world. O'Dwyer knew the score and Clifford had a fair idea. Seize the day.

"Myself and Philip are good buddies and we were laughing and joking on the field beforehand," remembers O'Dwyer. "You could be gone with an injury after a few minutes. The idea was to relax more on the pitch, try and enjoy it.

"I can't remember anything of the '95 game against Dublin except the Jason Sherlock goal because I've seen it so often since. The game was over before we knew it and we had to wait four more years before getting back. There's no guarantees."

There had been a time when such caution was alien to him. Days when you could feed the country off the length of the pig's back: All-Ireland colleges with St Fachtna's Skibbereen in 1991, minor with Cork later that year; club with O'Donovan Rossa Skibbereen in '93, call-up to the county senior panel the same year; under-21 12 months later. "I didn't think about the future," he says. "I was half expecting success all the time."

"He is," according to John Fintan Daly who coached the 1994 All-Ireland under-21 success, "far and away Cork's best 'keeper. He was flawless for us. A tremendous reaction goalkeeper and a good communicator with his defence. He only conceded two goals on that campaign, one a penalty against Mayo and the other against Kerry that he could do nothing about. Last year he was the linchpin in a defence which was Cork's main asset."

His shot-stopping ability was very good, according to John Meyler, coach of the Cork IT Sigerson team with which O'Dwyer played in the mid-1990s. "While he had to work at getting his kickouts to the right place, he was good at finding the two midfielders. This was the team Kevin, Owen Sexton and Joe Kavanagh played on but we didn't have enough like them to do justice to those fellas." Last year was a great year for O'Dwyer. League winner and Man of the Match after the final against Dublin whom he defied with a number of bravura saves, he won a Munster medal, admittedly got squeezed out in the All-Ireland final but rounded off the year with an All Star. But if he was picking up the trail of earlier success, there was plenty of graft in between.

People now speak highly of his kickouts, their accuracy but earlier it was a facet which required a good bit of work.

Billy Morgan was the manager who first introduced him to senior football and as a former goalkeeper, devised specialist drills which O'Dwyer still remembers. Morgan was aware of the young goalkeeper's exceptional under-age record but equally aware of the rough edges.

"He communicates well with his defence," says Morgan. "In fact we had to talk to him about talking a bit too much but he organises the defence very well. The first thing we looked at was his kickout which wasn't as good as it should have been but it improved. We worked on the general side of goalkeeping, leg work because a goalkeeper's strength comes from the legs. He's more often coming from a standing position.

"He was always very good to train. The one exception was that I used ask Alec Ludzic (former Cork Celtic soccer goalkeeper) to take some specialist goalkeeping training. Kevin went once I think and had different excuses for not going again. That was the only time."

Since establishing himself on the senior team in 1995, O'Dwyer has had a relatively untroubled tenure although he was passed over in 1998 in favour of the temporarily returned Michael Maguire from Castlehaven. "He went out of favour because he lost form," says selector Paddy Sheahan. It is possible to get the impression that under the Spartan regime of Larry Tompkins, O'Dwyer occasionally struggles. A garda based in Kanturk, he has already had to take 12 days annual leave this year for football-related duties - despite what he acknowledges as a very co-operative station.

"Larry is strict, he's a disciplinarian but he's not asking anything of us that he wouldn't do himself. You get your reward if you live by Larry's rules."

But not being asked to do anything Larry wouldn't do is about the scariest reassurance in the world of sports preparation. It's no secret that not all players share the manager's relentless devotion to fitness.

"I'm probably one of them," he replies. "I took success for granted early on but when you're young, you can get away with certain things but not any more. Yes it's hard but people are getting sick and tired of players complaining. It's a way of life."

Equally he acknowledges Tompkins' own point about a severe regime testing commitment as much as physical fitness. Last year was a case in point as a new-look Cork team evolved through a successful National League campaign.

"Drink is out," says O'Dwyer. "Larry picked a couple of games when he let us have a drink but apart from those, there was no drinking. It was good. There were four teams up above in Croke Park after the league semi-finals and we were the only ones on the orange. We felt good about keeping our discipline.

"We had beaten Meath and qualified for the final but it had been a brutal game of football. We won 0-6 to 0-3 but in previous years we'd have been losing games like that. But we ground out the result then. We had been negative enough to grind out a result."

That ability to grind out results paid spectacular dividends in last year's Munster final against Kerry. "Two weeks before they hammered Galway in a challenge. They were supposed to flying it. They were raging hot favourites. But in Cork and Kerry games there's never much in it, one mistake or one moment of brilliance. The first half was a disaster and we conceded two bad goals.

"That programme about referees (Blowing the Whistle shown on RTE a couple of months ago) where you saw the noise coming from our dressing-room into the referee's. I don't remember Ciaran (O'Sullivan) shouting like that but we shut them down in the second half. I remember Don Davis chasing back 60 and 70 yards and blocking down and then we scored at the other end. Don may never block another ball like that. Had we been losing matches all year, we might have let our heads drop."

Tomorrow he faces the same opposition. Despite being champions, Cork are once more outsiders. Despite signs that the team hasn't the momentum of last year, O'Dywer remains upbeat and consoles himself with the unreliability of form.

"We know what people say: `Cork are the most overrated team in the country'. I'd be the first to admit that our formguide hasn't been great at the moment but on the day the formbook goes out the window. We played Mayo a few weeks ago and they were flying. They went out of the championship last Sunday."