Donal O'Grady is a practical man. Confident too. He comes out into the dusky corridor and looks at the milling crowd of quote milkers and hangers-on and says: "Down here. I've got five minutes." And the herd shuffles after him obediently, writes Tom Humphries.

And then, charming, he picks out a blonde journalist of different gender and greater pulchritude to the rest of us and offers her the first crack at interrogating him. If we feel discriminated against we say nothing. Just push a little further in to hear the answers. We won't be writing this one up as a classic so we may as well squeeze them dry of quotes.

"I think we got it right today, thankfully," he says, unable to play down the significance of a 13-point win. It's his nature to make his boys raging underdogs for any game but this has crimped his style. Slightly.

"To be honest, I was afraid we'd left it behind us the last day, because you don't know what to expect from Wexford. But we kept pressing them today for the full 70 minutes. That's something we didn't do the last day - and we got things right throughout the game."

It's equal-opportunity questioning now. Did he see Niall McCarthy drop his hurl for the goal? No. Does he remember what he said to the team before the game? He doesn't. It must have worked anyway. Dubious look. What about at half-time?

"There were still only a few points in it at that stage, and I expected Wexford to come out all guns blazing in the second half. The first score was going to be crucial, and thankfully it was Ben O'Connor who got a great point for us. That settled us down, and we were able to go on from there."

Thirteen points. A margin like that is too much silver lining and not enough cloud. He fears perhaps it might make them something less than 25 to 1 outsiders for the final. Uniquely for a Corkman, he finds himself talking Cork down before he comes to his senses.

"We gave away two goals again, and that's not great from a coaching point of view. One of them might have been a bit lucky - it went in off Donal Óg Cusack's hurl - but it put us in a spot early on in the game. But we showed great character and came back to get a couple of good goals of our own, and were able to take it on from there. We'll go home now and start to think about the final."

And with the inevitable parting question comes the inevitable parting shot. Any preferences for the final, other than that they be gentle.

"Ah, whoever wins there are bound to be red-hot favourites! That goes without saying," he laughs and heads back into the dressing-room. Five minutes and 12 seconds of tape.

Down the corridor John Conran is doing his duties. He's been into the Cork dressing-room, the RTÉ room, talked to the radio folk. He lets us break and crash over him sensitive as a tidal wave. He begins with a little moan of regret about the McCarthy goal: "I'd like to point out that he dropped his hurl and that's not allowed in this day and age."

Thirteen points though. It takes the indignation out of a man.

"Having said that, there's no point in going on about it," he says. "Cork were by far the better team today and had improved by a lot more than we did. We just never got out of the traps at all today, and then squandered a lot of chances when we did start to create them."

He reflects quietly on the season, his first in charge of Wexford: "I think we're a little punch drunk from all the matches we have played. We've had six championship games. That's a lot. We've had our highs and lows this year. This was a low, but we're still very proud of the team."

And the future? He thinks in the short term. Cork can go on to contest for the All-Ireland in a meaningful way, maybe win it, and Wexford have the players coming through who could make them competitive for a long time to come.

It's been a hard season with a tough ending but the good points were so good and so surprising you can see their nourishment value in his face as he turns to leave. He'll be back.