GAELIC GAMES/Cork v Kerry:Cork football is enigmatic - and not in the euphemistic sense of being lazy and unreliable, though it has had its moments. Any other county with a record of six All-Irelands, lying fifth in the roll of honour and with a string of underage successes, would be football territory and no messing.
Yet in the approach to tomorrow's Bank of Ireland All-Ireland football final (3.30pm), the county isn't teeming with the excitement normally associated with the occasion.
Naturally, no such angst in Kerry, where football keeps everyone going and the rites of September have become as associated with Sam Maguire as with falling leaves.
Here's some of what makes Kerry uneasy: the nearly two decades of champions being unable to retain their title; the law of averages that says they can't indefinitely continue to crush Cork on every Croke Park meeting; the fact they face the best one-to-nine configuration in the game; and to some extent the lonely passion of Billy Morgan.
It's become fashionable to say that all the Cork manager does is razz up Kerry, but over his 41 years as player, captain, coach and manager he has been instrumental in driving the resurgence that broke Kerry's hegemony in the province, reducing their title ratio to 3:2 from the 5:1 that pertained for the rest of the 20th century.
Here's what makes Cork uneasy: the dismal record have suffered in this fixture at Croke Park; the sheer quality of Kerry's attack, which won't need its centrefield to break even in order to do decisive damage; and the knowledge the champions would rather lose to Dublin than to their neighbours.
Cork's team selection has, however, been disrupted, as they waited on Anthony Lynch's doomed attempts to find a way around his heartbreaking injury.
John Miskella's switch won't weaken the defence, as his last-quarter cameo when the teams met in last July's Munster final indicated, but it subtracts some dynamism from the attack.
The call-up for two forwards is unexpected. James Masters is the top scorer and it might have been hard to justify leaving him on the bench if he were fully fit, but the bolder approach would have been to leave Daniel Goulding in the side.
Masters would have been a big card to play once the match loosened out, and it wouldn't necessarily have been Goulding to make way. Bringing the latter in to the match won't be accompanied by the same buzz.
Similarly, Conor McCarthy has done tremendously well coming into matches - in July he was one of the key energies behind Cork's revival. Will he do as well from the start - and where on the bench do Cork now go for that 50th-minute boost?
The central question about this final is what can Cork do up front.
They have a centrefield that will be expected to have the edge on Séamus Scanlon and Darragh Ó Sé, whose mobility after injury has to be a concern; and that's before the six-and-a-half-foot presence of central forwards Pearse O'Neill and Michael Cussen - though Cork must sense the aerial possibilities against Tom O'Sullivan on the edge of the Kerry square - starts mobilising around the middle.
That advantage notwithstanding, can Cork stop Kerry cleaning up on more limited possession? Yes.
Graham Canty will probably mark the effervescent Colm Cooper, as he has a decent record of doing even though the full back is also seen as an ideal counter to Kieran Donaghy.
But Donaghy is surely going to be needed out the field, as he was against Dublin, meaning Canty can delegate that duty to Michael Shields, who will be happier farther from goal.
The pressure point in Cork's midfield diamond is likely to be Ger Spillane at centre back; he's not going as smoothly this year and will have to cope with Kerry's in-form captain, Declan O'Sullivan, who is now scoring in the sort of figures he managed as an underage star, though Cork's defence will deny the space Kerry had in the semi-final.
Kerry's defence has had to assimilate two newcomers this season but hasn't done badly. The spectacular form of Marc Ó Sé and the revival of his brother Tomás mean there'll be no cantering through for fisted points, as Cork did half a dozen times in their semi-final defeat of Meath.
The crucial difference this year for Cork at Croke Park is that they have momentum, having finally broken the semi-final barrier. They may have played only Division Two teams, but so have Kerry.
Three teams from the second division of next year's NFL were in last month's All-Ireland semi-finals, whereas Division One sides - apart from Kerry - have had mostly awful championships. Some All-Irelands are there for the underdogs; tomorrow is one of them.
KERRY: D Murphy; M Ó Sé, T O'Sullivan, P Reidy; T Ó Sé, A O'Mahony, K Young; D Ó Sé, S Scanlon; P Galvin, D O'Sullivan, E Brosnan; C Cooper, K Donaghy, B Sheehan.
CORK: A Quirke; M Shields, G Canty, K O'Connor; N O'Leary, G Spillane, J Miskella; D Kavanagh, N Murphy; C McCarthy, P O'Neill, K McMahon; J Masters, M Cussen, D O'Connor.
