This is a last stand for Cork. Some of the players aren't that old, but this match requires them to roll back the years and pull off the unexpected, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THESE ARE extraordinary days. Tomorrow, Cork and Kilkenny resume what is the most venerable rivalry in hurling. But this time Cork are cast merely as outsiders, as being with The Rest.

Other counties have teams. Kilkenny have built what appears to be an Empire. Cork are the latest to embark on what has proven an impossible expedition for four whole summers.

Beating Kilkenny has become such a prized and elusive accomplishment even the keenest hurling men are beginning to forget what it feels like to do so.

Everybody – even Marble City men – say that sooner of later, Kilkenny will be beaten.

But there is no firm evidence to suggest it must be so.

When? How? Kilkenny’s mantra of one-game-at-a-time works on many levels. It means the squad stay close to Brian Cody’s insistence on humility and caution. It also means they are never distracted by what has been accomplished or what can be accomplished. If they never really think about having won 20 consecutive championship matches, then they go out each Sunday as if they are starting afresh.

Galway manager John McIntyre has, like most hurling people, spent the week chewing the fat with people about the various permutations.

“I have met nobody, with the exception of one individual, who is giving Cork a prayer,” he marvels. “There are a few reasons for that. Many people feel Kilkenny are genuinely invincible. But there is also a perception that Cork’s performances have diminished since they beat Tipperary; that they treated that as a kind of All-Ireland final and haven’t been able to re-create that form.

“But my attitude is that I find it unreal to have Cork quoted at 5/1 in a championship encounter against Kilkenny. It just seems incredible. These Cork-Kilkenny games have a history in which the favourites are often overturned and no Cork team can be written off in a one-off championship game. I think for Cork to win would require a monumental performance on their part and also for the Kilkenny team to dip in the way they play. And the problem is there is no scope for optimism there. You can’t assume that that is going to happen.”

This day has been coming for Cork. Last autumn, in an interview with this newspaper, Donal Óg Cusack marvelled at the metamorphosis his old rivals had gone through. It was no coincidence the Cloyne man had opened his autobiography with a chapter detailing his fixation with Kilkenny and how the rivalry had helped to shape the Cork teams he played on, from minor days to Cork’s surprise All-Ireland final win over the Cats in 1999.

Since then, Cork and Kilkenny dovetailed spectacularly.

“We are the troublemakers, the unforgiven, the outlaws,” he wrote. “They are the men you’d want your daughters to marry.”

The 27-point beating Kilkenny handed Cork in the league in Nowlan Park when the Cork players returned from strike illuminated the chasm that had opened between the teams.

“I understand I might be getting these fellas wrong. I don’t really know them,” Donal Og said in October. Then he got to the heart of the matter. “But look, they have wiped us out, like. They have won four in a row.”

And that is what it boils down to, while Cork hurling was beset with internal anarchy and rows, Kilkenny went from strength to strength and have created an aura that intimidates all opponents.

Kilkenny have always drawn from within to recreate their intensity week in and week out, but Cork have always been about causes, about setting goals and proving the world wrong.

When Denis Walsh spoke after the Munster final drawn match and the quarter-final win over Antrim, he identified Cork’s lack of intensity as their most glaring problem.

But Dinny Cahill was pleased with how his Antrim team played that afternoon and predicts

Cork won’t have any trouble summoning the old fire tomorrow.

“I think there is a sting left in this Cork team that people aren’t expecting. They have come through a good run of games in the past month or so.

The two games against Waterford were very tough and it is easily forgotten that they almost had it won the first day and they might have won the replay had they managed to stick that ball in the net. Kilkenny have been lying idle since the Leinster final.

“So you only have to look at what happened last weekend in the football to see the benefits of teams coming with games. Against Cork, we worked hard on our shooting and got some good points, but I was disappointed the goal didn’t come for us. And maybe that was down to the fact that the Cork defence is not easily prised open. It is extraordinarily difficult against Kilkenny because if you close Henry Shefflin down, then Noel Larkin steps up or Power or Cha; they always have an answer.

“But I think that if Cork can guard their goal and keep some pressure on Kilkenny taking points, then it could be a lot closer than people are predicting. This is still Cork-Kilkenny; it is a huge game in hurling.”

But evocative as the colours and the history may be the solace of great days against the Stripey Men offers little in how Cork could win tomorrow.

Figuring out this Kilkenny team is almost as troubling a task as playing them. When Galway played Kilkenny in the Leinster final, the management decided they wanted to at least try and draw JJ Delaney and Tommy Walsh away from the wing-back positions. John McIntyre felt because they had the safety net of another match it was worth doing something different just to see what happened. He acknowledges it didn’t pay off but at least something was learned.

“I do feel that if we had managed to get another crack at Kilkenny it would have been a tighter match. But the Kilkenny defence is incredibly hard to break down. No matter what opposition teams try to do against them, they stand their ground.

“I think Tommy Walsh has been the outstanding hurler in the country this year in the consistency of his performances. But they don’t have a weak link and they hold their positions.

“I think Cork’s best bet would be to try and match them man for man and up front, they need someone like Aisake to maybe get an early goal and get things going for them.”

But the static play of the Cork forward line has been another problem that has travelled with them from match to match. Cork scored more freely against Antrim but as Cahill noted, frees accounted for eight of their points. Against that, Cork created plenty against Waterford and but for abysmal finishing, they might well be Munster champions now.

Denis Walsh received better news this week from the treatment room and was able to select from a full squad on Thursday evening. Jerry O’Connor is fit to play but is named on the bench.

The Newtownshandrum man will add a lively dash of opportunism and craft to proceedings when he makes his entry but for now, Cork persist with Michael Cussen and Aisake Ó hAilpín in the same team, a policy which has generated mixed views.

“It worked against Tipperary,” points out Cahill. “Kilkenny’s defence has been founded on their ability to take high ball down and send it back down on top of defences before they know what to do with it and having two big men like those in there could counteract that. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cork change things around during the game and maybe bring those two out to wing forward just to try and break things up.”

It also partly worked against Waterford, with Cussen able to win possession around half forward despite the supernova displays of Michael Walsh in both matches. And at least Cussen and Aisake present Kilkenny with something different. For four years, they have soaked up the best conventional attacks in the country can throw at them with varying degrees of ease.

The deconstruction of the Limerick and Waterford teams in the All-Irelands finals of 2007 and 2008 were the most disquieting examples. There is a chance, surely, that at some point the giant figures of Cussen and Aisake could apply a new type of pressure to the Kilkenny defence.

“No two games are the same,” McIntyre says. “People often say things don’t work and then express bafflement when it turns out they do work the next day. Both Aisake and Cussen have shown the potential to cause problems for teams. But they will need to really do that if they are on the field together tomorrow.

“This is a kind of last stand scenario for Cork. Some of the players aren’t all that old but as a team, this match requires them to roll back the years and pull off the kind of performance that no-one is really expecting from them.”

Even then, it will be tight. Even if, against the prevailing wisdom, Cork have managed to spirit the rivalry back to the middle part of the last decade when they were vying for supremacy, the smart money stays with the Stripey Men.

The strongest part of their game is the one they seldom show. But when it was required against Tipperary last September and against Galway in Nowlan Park early last summer, they demonstrated they save their most exalted hurling for when the pressure comes on them.

“Kilkenny don’t blink,” McIntyre says. “There is no point in searching for weaknesses. We are all sick of Kilkenny winning but they are not tired of it. And in tight games, they have the composure to get through the crisis period and dig out a result.

“So there is no point in ever assuming that Kilkenny are going to play below par. It is going to take a monumental performance from some team if they are to be beaten.”

And that is what lies ahead for Cork tomorrow afternoon.