The impoverished circumstances of Cork hurling in the middle of this decade had a hothouse affect on Joe Deane's career. A star under-age player, his budding talents were too much of a temptation for the strapped senior set-up to resist. Consequently in his fourth senior championship, he faces into a first All-Ireland final as the kingpin in Cork's attack and carries this burden as a 22-year-old.

For so long has the county faced crisis and growing pains of evolving a top-class challenge that their emergence this year was a bit of a shock. Deane was on the minor team managed by Jimmy Barry-Murphy that won the All-Ireland in 1995 and has been a member of JBM's senior teams every step of the way.

This entailed a debut in the rain at a steamed-up Pairc Ui Chaoimh in May 1996 when Cork surrendered an unbeaten home record stretching back seven decades. And surrendered it well, by 16 points. Barry-Murphy conceded at the time that it wasn't ideal to be playing someone a year out of minor level and physically small in a struggling team, but equally argued that he didn't have better players with more experience.

Cork's improvements have been incremental. A good display against Clare a year later was followed by a league title last year, but a pummelling from Clare in the championship a month or so later. Through all this Deane steadily established himself in the full-forward line.

This year has been a graduation of sorts. As well as being the top scorer with 1-21, he has led the team from the front. Named for whatever reason as left corner forward, he has started each match on the edge of the square and his influence both as a threat in open play and also as a clinical dead-ball hitter has been immense. In common with most of the team and management, he saw the first championship match against Waterford as the critical test.

"Things have been going well," he said, "We're in an All-Ireland final so we can't complain, but there was an awful lot of pressure on us this year to win something and the Waterford game was really the key game for us. If we didn't beat Waterford it was back to square one and we knew if we beat them, we'd be hurling for the summer at least and it would bring us on a lot if we did. "The Waterford match put most pressure on the players and the management because coming into it Waterford had a championship game behind them. We had played okay during the league, but the practice games coming up to the Waterford game didn't go well."

His deftness and pace are the main concerns for any full back and his goal in the Munster final against Clare effectively decided the match. He ghosted into the goalmouth and touched Seanie McGrath's sublime one-handed knockdown into the net. It wasn't a foregone conclusion but Deane steered it delicately into the far corner of Davy Fitzgerald's net.

In the early years of his senior career, he was a physical target and quite an inviting one because of his less-than-imposing size. Even in the Fitzgibbon Cup, which he helped UCC dominate for three years, he could be forced out of a game by tight pitches and wet conditions. This year has seen him with greater physical confidence which has made roughing up Deane a less useful tactic. As well as receiving the benefits of physical maturing and experience, he worked on weights last winter and this has helped.

It does beg the question about how long a career he hopes to sustain given that he has been subject to the rigours of inter-county training at this level for four years.

"If I was to be involved up until September for the next five or six years, you might have enough of it at that stage, but if you're beaten in the first round for a few years it's different. Freshness is what it's all about and if you're still enjoying it and fellas like Joe Dooley obviously are, playing 15 and 16 years later. It's a huge commitment and it really affects your personal life."

This decade has taught us all not to be sure of anything in hurling, but it does seem likely that the early-exit phase of his championship career is now behind him - however he copes with that.