All-Ireland SFC Quarter-final: Cork and Billy Morgan are back in Croke Park and the only thing that feels wrong is the time. Half past one is a damnably indecent time to stage a match of the magnitude of an All-Ireland football quarter-final and maybe the Billy Morgan of yesteryear could not have resisted slinging a provocative word or two in the direction at the powerbrokers above.

But this week from his office in Cork city, he just sighed when it was put to him that asking Cork and Galway to contest a place in the All-Ireland semi-finals during an hour traditionally reserved for minor fare or the apple tart and cream demeaned the occasion.

"Well, it is a bit early," he finally conceded. "It is going to mean a dawn start for some people from west Cork. The two o'clock start was tight enough but I don't know what the reason for this was. A few people were saying it was because Kerry wanted their game pushed forward from four o'clock but I don't know if that is the case or not."

If they must play like schoolchildren filching an extra few minutes during lunch hour, so be it. Morgan has weightier preoccupations. Victory tomorrow afternoon would place Cork in the last four of the All-Ireland championship and perhaps give them another crack at Kerry, the neighbouring giants against whom Morgan has spent a football life fighting fiercely and often brilliantly for parity of esteem.

After reaching the quarter-finals through last week's exuberant victory over Sligo, Morgan soberly declared that Cork had achieved their primary aim for the season. But privately, he should be delighted.

Much like Galway, Cork have made it through to the last eight practically unnoticed, with the latest Dublin revival, uncivil wars in Ulster and the anticipated Kerry awakening all providing the noisiest soundtracks of the summer.

It is ideal for Cork, particularly now they are once more recognisably Cork, playing swift, confident football with that radiant sense of invincibility we have come to expect of Morgan teams - and all happy athletes wearing the famous red jersey.

How good Cork are, and how far they can go this season, remains to be seen. But the chaos of their last summer appearance in Croke Park against Fermanagh illustrates how deftly Morgan has worked over a single season. He is one of those rare football men who have had such a granite influence on their county that, like Kevin Heffernan in Dublin or Brian McEniff in Donegal, he has come to be perceived as a founding father.

It is impossible to know how Cork football would ever have come to fruition without Morgan's restless passion and knowledge of the game. But even he must have felt in a vulnerable, alien place last July when a team that looked familiar to him - they had 15, they wore red - went down against unfancied Fermanagh.

In retrospect, it was not so much that Cork lost to the Northern side: Fermanagh played with such euphoric certainty in the key months of last year that they could conceivably have won the whole thing. The biggest shock is that when the Ulster team leaned on Cork, there was nothing of substance to be found. Cork fled from the day timidly and the disheartened, accepting manner with which they went out of the championship ran against everything Morgan stood for.

To many onlookers it was inexplicable and it suggested that Rebel football was in such a tailspin that not even Morgan's mastery could pilot it back to control.

"In fairness to Billy, I don't think he had enough time to shape that team the way he would have liked," said Fermanagh man Dominic Corrigan.

"It must have been a tough day for him but I think he saw the way the Fermanagh players ran Cork that day and made them look that wee bit immobile and he saw what was necessary. Billy has the reputation for putting formidable Cork teams together and that day was probably the start of the process. This year, you can see his stamp on that Cork team. And the thing is, now that they are back in Croke Park, I believe it is a place that can bring the best out of them."

Corrigan's remarkable managerial run with Sligo was, of course, halted by Cork last week. It was his first time sharing the sideline with the Nemo cult figure and after the disappointment of losing the match subsided, he was able to take some comfort in the fact that Sligo had been halted by an impressive machine.

"God, they have a lot of strong points. A very strong defensive leader there in Graham Canty and obviously, guys like Anthony Lynch and Noel O'Leary hurt us as well. I was fairly impressed by the way their midfield played as well and the younger players are clearly enjoying their football.

"When you have players like James Masters and Brendan Ger (O'Sullivan) you are going to cause problems and then they have Philip Clifford coming back to form again. They just have the look and feel of a team which is going to be difficult to beat."

And that is the remarkable thing about the turnaround. Having bowed out of the county scene back in 1996, Morgan is bringing back to Jones's Road a familiar Cork - bright, dangerous and becoming more cocksure with each passing day.

He admitted this week that watching the disappearance against Fermanagh last July was no fun. It was always going to take time and that loss seems to belong to the tail end of a miserable few seasons when Cork just lost their way. Larry Tompkins, Morgan's protégé and pale lieutenant during Cork's indomitable days of the late 1980s, came close to winning an All-Ireland as a manager in 1999. But Tompkins's unswerving loyalty to the players and his ambition for them all got clouded over in the demoralising results of recent years, from the meltdown against Kerry in 2002 to the alarming loss to Limerick by the Lee a summer later.

When Morgan returned, by popular demand, morale was low. And before last year's Munster final against Kerry, he admitted it was saddening that the manifesto he laid out back in 1986, when he believed Cork ought to be strong enough to win Munster titles regularly, had come to seem like a distant dream.

It could be argued that Morgan's stunning haul of seven Munster championships between 1986 and 1996 had a more profound effect on Kerry football than it did on Cork's own wellbeing.

So almost 10 years later, he found himself starting from scratch: a group of young men, some footballs, Páirc Uí Chaoimh and Kerry perceived as light years away.

"I have enjoyed it from the beginning," he said this week of his latest term. "They are a good bunch of players to work with, very willing to learn and very responsive to what we were trying to do from the start. When I took over, I felt the players there were owed a chance and there were periods in the league when we were going in the right direction but obviously, when it came down to the championship, when Fermanagh came back from three points down, we did not respond."

After that game, Morgan's selector Colman Corrigan said bleakly, "I believe that the statistic of one All-Ireland in 14 years speaks for itself."

The failure to redress Cork's lack of underage success has bothered Morgan for a long time. But he has always believed there was talent there, and at the beginning of this season he set about harnessing it.

"We just tried to get them back into using good habits again and training them properly and to get them playing with camaraderie and a bit of confidence. For instance, at training, all the players would wear the red jersey - they wouldn't be running around in club colours or whatever. At Nemo, we used to say that you never saw a Nemo player standing on his own and I try to put that into practice with Cork as well."

Even in the early stages of the league, the difference in mood was evident. Up in Mullingar, Cork played so well that Páidí Ó Sé conceded afterwards his Westmeath team were blessed to escape with a draw.The Kerryman seemed perturbed that day; he may well have felt in his bones that the days ahead would not break kindly for his defending Leinster champions.

But he might also have recognised the genesis of another Morgan team coming through. Cork were far from unstoppable in the league, losing to the already-relegated Donegal up in Ballyshannon, but they were learning all the time. And when it came to the Munster final against Kerry, Morgan's team were back stalking the champions all the way to the final whistle.

And tomorrow, Cork return to Croke Park with a different half-back line, a different midfield and a new full-forward line from the team that folded against Fermanagh. From the doldrums of last summer, Cork are once more incandescent with possibility, and the return of Clifford, now negotiating his way through the second act of a football life that seemed over at 24, seems symbolic of that.

"This has the potential to be one of the games of the summer, the kind of game that is remembered long after the championship is over," said Corrigan.

"Both teams play open football and you can see them coming alive in Croke Park. The big issue for Cork is how they cope with the range of scoring forwards that Galway possess. Both teams have brought through some fine under-21 players as well and what you have is two exciting young teams trying to establish themselves at All-Ireland level. And it will be close but I just think Cork might edge it."

Morgan admitted he did not get much opportunity to see Galway over the season but pointed out that Cork were one of their victims on their way to under-21 All-Ireland success in the spring and is more than well versed in the reputations of the senior players. Again, he sighed when it was suggested that whether he liked it or not, Cork will be favourites this weekend.

"Well, there is nothing I can do to stop that," he reasoned.

And that much is true. Better to change what he can. From an unpromising situation, Billy Morgan has hauled Cork back to the threshold of respectability and contention once more. The Nemo craftsman is back with Cork and not even a half-past-one throw-in can alter the familiarity of that.