Cork v Tipperary: Tommy Dunne tells Keith Duggan why tomorrow's Munster final will be his last as a player.

The phase of winding down is the most difficult opponent for all sportsmen, but around December of last year, Tommy Dunne forecast the stunning and merciless Munster hurling fields of summer and told himself he no longer had the craft. Ken Hogan called around and sat on the couch, patient and compassionate, but still convinced that Dunne - the consummate ball player - had a place with Tipperary hurling. Dunne heard the faith in his voice, but believed differently.

He was gripped by the sensation that the game he had interpreted with such lightness and assurance just four years earlier, when he was the runaway hurler of the year, was now taking its leave of him, gently dropping him back into the crowd of ordinary decent players.

"It was probably the toughest admission I ever had to make, to myself as much as to Ken," he said this week. "Like, I didn't question the game. I still loved the game. But I just found it more and more difficult to play at the standard I wanted to, particularly after having reached a kind of a peak a few years earlier. Last season, especially, my form was just nowhere near where I wanted it to be and it is hard to stay comfortable with that. And it is even harder to recapture it."

One of the dangers of excelling at any sport - truly separating yourself from an elite group of highly talented peers with sustained brilliance and composure - is that that legacy comes to assume an identity all of its own.

We outsiders look at Tommy Dunne being something less than special on a hurling field and demand to know why we aren't seeing the Tommy Dunne of 2001. He was captain that year, skinny as a pop star and in full authority of a taut, eye-catching style that gave a very competitive and good Tipperary team its recognisable flourish.

But the truth is that Tommy Dunne has no more in common with that tan and whipcord classicist of four years ago than you or I do. He remembers how that entity was assembled; how all the bit parts fell into place to create an environment that made it possible to feel infallible on a hurling field.

"But in general," he says now, " I don't look back on it at all. It is over. And to be honest, I would prefer to have something a bit more recent to concentrate on. But I know for absolute certain that I could not put into words the work that went into managing to perform at that level which I was fully happy with. It is so difficult. And the work has increased since 2001. But that is what sport is.

"You keep working, trying to reach a certain place. You might never get the rewards. That doesn't mean you don't try. This year, though, I wasn't sure I was going to be playing with Tipperary. I was in no position to challenge for a place. I just felt my game wasn't at it or that I wasn't fit enough or strong enough."

It was the embers of last year's season that burned at the back of the mind all through last winter, when he questioned himself. On the last day out, against Cork in the 2004 qualifiers, Tipperary were competitive and they pushed, but there was always the nagging feeling they could not force themselves into a position to challenge for the rights of the actual game.

Dunne ran through that match silently infuriated with himself and the fact that it was left to Eoin Kelly to produce a supernova performance just so his county could continue to chase Cork. The feeling of not being able to support Kelly more forcefully, of not being able to summon the game everyone had seen him summon in years before, haunted Dunne.

At least Toomevara's club success meant he had to keep hurling. It was a quiet blessing, hurling through autumn in the still beauty of Semple Stadium, parish shouts echoing through the stands and local, almost private passions on parade.

Toomevara, the stellar club in Tipperary, won its first Munster club championship since 1993 last November, when most of the hurling world was in hibernation. And that was no small consolation to the tail-end to a summer plagued with doubt.

On the back of a match programme at one of those Toomevara games, there was a photograph of Dunne paring down a hurley in a rustic building at his parents' place outside the village. Tommy was sitting at a table and on the wall above him were dozens of hurleys. The names of the five Dunne brothers were painted on the wood to denote each dedicated space for their sticks.

"Triona, our sister, put all our names up there," said Dunne, grinning at the mention of a photograph that has come to acquire a degree of fame in Tipperary circles.

"That place was an old shed that they used to wash out the milk buckets back in our grandfather's time. We did it up a small bit and used it to store hurleys and golf clubs and you name it. We had an old bench up there at one stage and we would go up and lift a few weights in the evenings. We called it the Barn. It was nothing much, but we spent a fair bit of time up there.

"I have a friend from Toomevara who is a photographer and he appeared one evening at the doorway. It was just before the All-Ireland (in 2001) and he just came out of nowhere and started clicking. I was there, 'Paddy, for feck sake would you put that away'. But sure it has cropped up far and wide since that day."

It is a great photograph, evocative without being in any way stagy or trying. Dunne is grinning from ear to ear, as if intuitive of the fact he was just a couple of days away from a hurling hour that many exceptional players only ever got to dream about.

He has changed little in appearance since that snapshot, handsome and sunny and fearfully light-framed, but through the journey he has made as a hurler, he has changed inordinately. At that moment, his athletic life had been distilled to a point of glorious simplicity. He was on the eve of an All-Ireland final against Galway and 10 years after Tipperary had last won the McCarthy Cup, he would deliver. Now, he is just delighted to be playing in what will be his last Munster final.

"This will be it," he says softly. "I think I can say that. Not that it makes any difference. It is about Tipperary. And it is nice, you know, just to be a part of it. The fact that it is against Cork too and they All-Ireland champions makes it special.

"It's hard to put your finger on what it is about Munster finals, but even to go along to one as a spectator gives you that buzz. They are just mental days. And when your team is there, yeah, you get that feeling all right."

And that is enough for contentment right now. He maintains he is not entirely happy with his form yet, wincing at the mention of the memorable point he struck in the Munster semi-final against Clare, pure and seemingly effortless. He still feels there were long periods of that game that passed him by.

Perhaps even in the four years since he reigned, the physical strength of opponents he encounters makes it even more difficult for a hurler of his stature to break the tackles and then ease into that liquid striking motion of his. But there is also the matter of a debilitating stomach condition that has been part of his life for five years now. What he initially believed to be just a virus has become something more permanent, bringing about a radical change in his lifestyle.

It was before a Munster hurling game - against Clare in 2000 - that he accepted that things were not right. Although he has no flesh to spare, weight had just dropped off him over the preceding months; he looked gaunt, his sallow skin was dull and no matter how much he slept, he felt exhausted. Before going onto the field against Clare, he passed blood and felt dreadful.

"And that was it. Funny, I actually played well enough in that match, but in general my form was way off and I suppose that forced me to go ahead and get it checked out. I was diagnosed with this condition called ulcerative colitis. It's basically a severe intolerance to certain kinds of foods and it meant no more dairy foods, no wheat, no real spicy foods. Anything that I liked, basically.

"I still got away with pasta, which was great, but it was a big change. It's the kind of thing you are always working to keep under control and learning about and if you have a drink or two the odd time, you can still get a blast of it.

"Like, the stomach pain is fairly severe and it leaves you completely fatigued. I was in big trouble at the time and didn't realise it. In terms of the pain and weight loss, then trying to train and work on top of that, it was not a good combination.

"But I mean, I got help and have met a fair few people with similar conditions and it's just something that becomes part of your life."

He was still learning about it during his summer of splendour in 2001 and coping with it all through that winter of celebration and into the next championship, when Tipperary's All-Ireland defence ended with a semi-final exit against Kilkenny. That game was the curtain fall on the Nicky English era.

And with English departed some inner light. Dressing-rooms felt dead. Michael Doyle came in and took Tipperary to a league final - a 10-goal modern classic - and returned them to an All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny. It was not a bad achievement for a debut senior manager, but inside, things were not happy.

"I think Michael left because he felt the players no longer had confidence in him," Dunne says simply. "He felt he had no choice and he was probably right. As players, we handled it badly. I felt bad about it then and it still bothers me. Like, there were a lot of factors. I think our team had reached the stage where it was about to hit the wall anyway.

"Michael came in and, like a lot of new managers, he tried to push us and we probably reacted badly to that. Then, losing that league final as we did had a drastic effect on our confidence. We didn't even know it leaving the field, but it was apparent the way Clare went through us 10 days later that we had lost something.

"And then, in the second half of that All-Ireland semi-final, to get blown out of the water like we did against Kilkenny was a serious setback. That was as close to a disaster as we have experienced.

"And Michael suffered for it, there's no point saying otherwise. I have spoken with Michael since and I think he knows how I feel. It is a ruthless business, this. For an amateur game, it is ruthless."

That is something that has dawned on Tommy Dunne in the latter part of his hurling life. Gentlemanly by nature, he is sometimes shocked by the extremity of opinion that big-time GAA generates nowadays and just wonders at the way the championship plummets along, heedlessly getting bigger and faster.

He has his worries about hurling, shaking his head when he mentions the trouncing Kilkenny gave Offaly in the Leinster championship.

"No one likes to see a team get a serious hammering. I don't care who you are. But it's up to Offaly to sort it out. And, in fairness, they went out and competed well against Wexford.

Like, the bigger picture needs to be addressed. So what to you do about it? You just try and look after your own corner. Kilkenny are a serious outfit and are capable of doing that to better teams that Offaly. I wouldn't say it was any fun for them either. Henry Shefflin and Brian Cody didn't seem to get any enjoyment out of it.

"And I doubt if there was much satisfaction in it for the Kilkenny supporters. And it was certainly no fun for Offaly. Like, these are guys trying their best and sometimes, it is just hard. I think it's difficult for people on the outside looking in to understand just how demanding it can be sometimes. Those guys out playing in front of 82,000 people in Croke Park. There is no hiding."

And that is what it came down to for Tommy Dunne. After some persuasion and talking things over with Deirdre, his girlfriend, and his brother Benny, the county captain this year, there was no hiding from his own instincts. He may be 32 now and winding down, but pride, curiosity, loyalty, honesty, pure habit and God knows what else meant that one evening, midway through Tipperary's league, he reappeared at training.

He was guaranteed nothing and promised himself less. Just coming back into contention, contributing to a likeable team that seems to have turned a corner, has made it worthwhile. And there is something magnificent about the way a player like Tommy Dunne, a man who took ownership of the game in the rarefied time of September talks about his latest - and last - Munster final like a jittery youngster contemplating his first.

"Whereas you look forward to it, you want to play well when you do get on the field as well. So you would be worrying about that.

"There's a fierce air of anticipation and then on the other hand, you are thinking, Jesus, this is . . . you would want to be ready for this."

He laughs and it is clear the nerves are for real. It is clear Tommy Dunne is tingling. That can only be a good sign for Tipperary hurling.