MUNSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL: TOM HUMPHRIEStalks to versatile Cork defender Michael Shields who relishes the biggest tests, like facing Kerry again in Killarney

MICHAEL SHIELDS is 24 next week, a significant milestone in a journey . . . eh wait a minute. Rewind that.

Only 24? It feels as if he has been with us much longer, as if he has been part of Cork’s promise for, oh, say, a decade now. The time of his prominence must surely be longer than his age allows. Cork footballers can play a lifetime and merely match Shield’s collection of three Munster senior football medals.

He was so much in the vanguard of the current generation of Cork players he seems like a veteran. Then there is that short intermission in Australia, playing third wheel to the Ó hAilpín boys at Carlton, a six-month gap which provides a “before” and “after” feel to his CV.

This is where he came in oddly enough, stepping on to the carousel for Cork and Kerry in Killarney in July 2006 for a game that virtually established the template for the current rivalry between the sides.

Cork had endured a miserable time in Munster since 2002 but they got a draw that day and a week later back by the Lee they had six points to spare. Kerry beat them by the same margin in the All Ireland semi-final the following month.

He was one of those increasingly rare players whose senior career had begun while he was still serving his time as an underage prospect. Having played minor in 2004, he was a county under-21 the following summer as Cork set about winning the first of three Munsters at the grade.

Shields was established as a senior by the time he helped Cork to that remarkable 2007 All- Ireland under-21 championship.

He left for Australia soon afterwards, his already bulging CV and his 6ft 1in frame singling him out as one of the more grievous losses to the antipodean raiding parties. Like so many more, however, his stay down under would be curtailed.

He returned home six months later, citing homesickness. Carlton’s loss was Cork’s gain. And St Finbarr’s. The famed club had run adrift and onto the reef that is the intermediate grade. They escaped promptly upon Shield’s return, starting a new era.

Shields went back to tilting at the windmill which is a Cork All- Ireland in football. Tomorrow it is Kerry again. Deja vu doesn’t begin to describe the place both sides find themselves in. The faces and places don’t change much. Does the thinking change though?

“No,” he says “I’d say it’d be the same. Championship is championship. It takes on a life of its own. The way we approach it is one game at a time. This game is just the first game of, hopefully, a long summer.”

So Kerry are dead as an issue. The ghosts of last year’s All- Ireland don’t linger? Clean slate?

“Ah, yeah, definitely. What happened with Kerry in the past is in the past. We move on. It’s not relevant any more. What’s relevant is what’s going to happen next Sunday.”

The answer seems slightly glib but the structure of the championships doesn’t lend itself to revolutionary thinking. What would be the point? Whatever happens on the parched earth in Killarney tomorrow will surely have to be reprised later in the year. That’s the point when an ability to think outside the box really counts.

“If you’re looking at the last few years you would be resigned to facing them again,” says Shields “It just wouldn’t be in our hands. At the end of the day, Sunday is what it’s all about for us. If we meet them down the line, so be it. Sunday is all we’re concentrating on at the moment.”

There is a theory abroad in football this year which begs to be scorned so devastating is its simplicity – Cork keep beating Kerry in Munster and then losing to them in Croke Park. Perhaps if they try losing to them in Munster they might beat them in Croke Park? Well it’s a theory. To be framed gingerly. A bit of bait necessary, maybe.

“Is the back door too much of a risk?”

“Definitely. I don’t want to go through the back door.”

Oh. That’s that then.

“I want to go down there to win on Sunday. If you look at last year’s championship, Armagh and Tyrone met in the first round. It’s not a nice situation to be going up to Clones or wherever to play Armagh or Tyrone. . . . We want to go the right way about it and going the front door is the way we want to go.”

So Cork, as is their habit, have sat down and worked out how to deal with Kerry in early summer. What is different? Well the difference is Cork’s panel seems to grow larger in number and girth every summer and this year they are burdened by the weight of heavy favouritism. The difference is Kerry look unusually chipper and pressure-free this fine June. The difference is Killarney. You pays your money and you takes your choices.

Shields has never actually been part of a Cork team to leave Killarney with a win under their belts. By his reckoning, he has been involved three times in draws beneath the reeks, once in under-21, twice in senior and he lost once at minor there.

It’s not a bad record considering it’s Kerry in Killarney but it’s not the stuff of dreams. Still Killarney is the footballer’s perfect sward. Everybody travels in hope.

“I love it,” Shields says of football’s sacred venue, “I love Killarney. I think it’s one of the best venues around. I’d urge anyone who’s not from Cork or Kerry, if they want to get a great day of football to go down to Killarney because I think it’s class. On the Bank Holiday weekend you’ll have a massive crowd and probably a sell-out. Normally the sun is shining. It’s brilliant for footballers. It’s the stuff I dreamed of when I was younger, to play in games like that.

“It’s just a class pitch to play football. You’re probably playing against some of the best players in the country. When you’re training as a young fella, this is the game you want to play in. “

If dreams remain constant and immutable. Shields’s role within the Cork set-up has changed. He made his debut as a wing back but had moved to full back the following day for that replay against Kerry in 2006. It looked for a long time as if Cork’s need would be his fate and he would be shackled there for years to come.

The emergence of more defensive talents, including his old under-21 comrade Eoin Cadogan, took the pressure off Cork at the edge of the square and Shields has been liberated to an area of the field where he looks a natural fit. The half-back line is his home.

“ If anyone asked me when I was growing up, even underage with Cork, minor and under-21, I would always have been half back/centre back, so it’s definitely a position that I would have been more familiar with growing up. In recent years I’ve probably been sent into the full-back line to do a job. A poor enough start to the League campaign got me released! So I’ll take it on board anyway.”

Part of his organic growth as a player however must have been the stint at full back. He looks a tougher, more uncompromising half back having served his time in the number three jersey.

“I enjoyed full back, to be honest. I find that when you’re at full back it’s a one-on-one battle and there’s a bit of a buzz there when you’re marking a key player, an important player. When you come out with a ball it rises the crowd. It’s a position where it’s 50-50. If you don’t get there you could be punished and if you do get there you could possibly save the game for Cork.”

That last sentence reveals a lot. The enjoyment he finds in being out there on the tightrope in front of 50,000 people when the likelihood is he will fall but the slender chance is that he will save the game for Cork, that’s what makes him different. Twenty-three going on 30.