Into a room filled with sunlight and the sweet scent of vindication walked Jimmy Barry-Murphy. For a favourite son of Cork the rough edge of local tongue-waggery had been a new and dark experience over the last few years. Yesterday his long-shot kids came to Thurles and did the business. JBM carries his legend onwards.

"I'm delighted. The boys repaid our policies there today. There have been lots of doubts in Cork about what we have been trying to do. We stuck with them and our younger players came through today. Ben O'Connor and others finished very strong. We've been working very hard to put Cork hurling back on the map. This is a great day for hurling in Cork."

Michael O Muircheartaigh is sending emissaries down from the crow's nest beseeching JBM to hurry up. County board officials are slapping his back. Players are still honking in delight.

This is the day. Munster final in Thurles. A seven-year drought ended. Just about.

"We had a lot of wides," says JBM, all the negatives which crowd a worried manager's mind still pressing for attention. "Clare would usually punish you for that. I thought we'd let it slip.

"Clare would usually put you away, but they missed a vital free at the right time for us. Overall we were the better team on the day though."

And granting the grin that has illuminated Gaelic games since he emerged as a footballing skinhead back in 1973, JBM gives an insight into the managerial skills of a winner.

"Half-time? I said we had a lead and the first 10 minutes of the second half would be the key thing, I said to go out there and do it during that period. They went out and it was our worst period of the game. I'll have to change something!"

Outside Mark Landers is battling his way through the crowds with the Munster trophy welded into his hand. "I'm truly delighted for the team, we've done an awful lot of training, we took an awful lot of knocks. Clare came back like champions in the second half and the game was in the melting pot again but we hung in. I was disappointed to be taken off, but I could give no more. I'll be fighting for the place the next day. It took great courage to take off the captain, but it was the right decision."

Back in 1992, when Brian Corcoran emerged as the latest genius of hurling, nobody could have predicted that we would arrive at the last season of the century and he would have lost his hair and not won an All-Ireland medal. Here he is though.

"The last 10 minutes of the first half we were all over them and in the first 10 minutes of the second half they were all over us. We came good, though. Jimmy Barry-Murphy is a legend in Cork, this means the world to him. He said to me it means more to him than it did when he was playing."

Mickey O'Connell spent the winter watching Home And Away on television. This summer he has turned himself into a human highlights reel. He left no room for controversy about the Cork goal. "No square ball. Seanie (McGrath) pulled it back. Joe (Deane) being the opportunist he is, he put it in the net. No square ball."

Down in the Clare dressingroom there was a renewed interest in the writing of Nostradamus who had predicted the world would end yesterday but that there would be a back door.

Gloom everywhere. Jamesie O'Connor and Ollie Baker off to the dispensary. Ger Loughnane had said Clare couldn't win an All-Ireland if they didn't win this match. How stood the Nostradamus of Shannon now.

"You can see it will be very difficult. That was a tired display today even if Cork were sharp. Only for we were Munster champions we wouldn't have been as close. We were well beaten all over the field. We only dominated for a while at the start of the second half, you don't win by doing that much."

Clare go into the quarter-final stage then, making their progress through the championship almost as epic as last year's quixotic adventure. There was jadedness and good grace all around. Barry-Murphy came in and told them that he hoped his team could conduct themselves as Clare have done over the past few years. They clapped and let him out. Minds already turned to the rest of the season.

"In three weeks' time we'll be missing two key players. That's a worry for then," said Loughnane. "You can't take anything away from Cork today. Look at all the wides they had. They were the better team on the day. We have no excuses. They are deservedly the Munster champions of 1999.

"We are tired. If you play like we did against Tipp the second day it's hard to repeat that when you play again, you are a sitting duck the next day. The back door business lessens the disappointment of losing certainly. The second the game is over you are planning the next day. Do we keep training, do we take a break? We'll have to see."