Keith Duggan finds a Cork camp working overtime to calm the renewed fever of optimism among fans.

They are buzzing in Cork, and for the county hurlers that brings its own worries. Just like that, last year's secessionists have been welcomed back into the arms of the Union. Seventy minutes of hurling and it's as if all the disharmony and strife of the last 12 months were nothing more than a bad dream.

With their faces still flushed from the heat and excitement of beating Clare in Thurles three weeks ago, a number of Cork players remarked on a phenomenon that was new to them: the sound of the fans singing The Banks of My Own Lovely Lee with minutes left in the game. Such an outpouring of joy was unprecedented from Cork's loyal but knowledgeable grassroots, even to the players that had won an All-Ireland as children back in 1999. The magnificence of its hurling past has made Cork fans a hard sell. Win two or even three in a row and maybe then they will clear their throats for a chorus.

Harmonious as the sound was on that afternoon, it must have been like nails screeching on a blackboard to Donal O'Grady. The North Mon teacher is as taciturn and cautious as hurling men come and to hear the music of contentment and anticipation from the red terraces in June would be against all his better instincts. Somehow a Munster semi-final, a mere formality for a county with 47 provincial titles in its history, had turned into some sort of annunciation. The Rebels Are Back.

"It was like we went from zero to hero overnight," marvels Cork captain Alan Browne. "And down in Cork, people are already talking in terms of the All-Ireland championship now, that we would be up there with Kilkenny and that.

"It's hard to believe. Like, before the game, we were a team with a new half-back line and two untried corner-forwards. So I don't know how all of a sudden we have gone from a team building to kind of being second favourites or whatever."

In retrospect, a game with less zing might have suited Cork. Beating Clare was important and if they were to achieve that, perhaps there could be no other mental approach than 100 m.p.h. intent and enthusiasm. That declaration was memorably voiced in the early skirmishing through Setanta Ó hAilpín, whose gangly grace is as eye-catching as his name is destined to become household. The middle scion of Cork's new dynasty bounced off the most venerable back-line in the country, all youthful braggadocio in the early haze, and later when the moment came, he delivered. Back-to-back points moments after sparring with Frank Lohan and then a showy and delightful no-look palmed pass for the motoring Mickey O'Connell to tap over the bar.

"Like, his attitude is great," remarks Joe Deane. "I think the key for Setanta was going to Waterford I.T. and playing Fitzgibbon hurling. It helped his game come on and he is able to take the punishment he gets. To think that was his first day in the championship - I remember my first day in senior championship and it just passed me by. That's what happens - you may as well just forget about it. And Setanta contributed what? - three or four points on his first day."

But the point is that it was as if it were Cork's first day, ever, such was the freshness and joy. Although the blood-red jerseys were familiar and many of the names have been penned on the summer calendar for the best part of five years, the team played as if liberated. Not only from their recent history and the embalmed achievements of their forefathers but even from the isolated All-Ireland of 1999, which in the worst periods of last year seemed a wilful betrayal of their estate.

From the "dirty protest" staged during the pre-match parade at the 2002 league final to the machinations of deepest winter when Cork's example of player power shook the GAA's inner sanctum, their desperation for change was obvious. Tales of the meanness and the offhand way the players were treated were aired publicly and a settlement was reached.

"I would think the county board are probably happy as well," reckons Browne. "Everything was done openly and they are probably happy with the way things transpired, even though they probably wouldn't admit it."

The appointment of Mick Dowling as liaison officer has ensured the smooth running of O'Grady's maiden season. His constant presence at training sessions has been a reassurance to the players, who can ask him for whatever they need and, as Brown testifies, find him "fierce easy to get along with". Although the revolution is categorised as having taken place in those taut few weeks of mass resignation and all-party talks, its heart probably lies in those feckless 70 minutes against Galway. Cork were a hollow shell of a team when they left Thurles that day. It is the players, not the county board, that have had to labour over the memory of that experience; their names were spread across the centrefold of the match programme. And when they did meet up again early this year, it was with a common sense of purpose that carried much more depth than standard January resolutions.

Browne remembers a particularly foul night, with rain lashing down and the entire group peering up through the tunnel. It was not a night to send dogs out, but the attitude was unanimous: everyone wanted to play.

"People are saying, 'oh, ye're doing well again, you must be getting extra stuff,' or whatever. We are not. It is just small things are right. Training gear and stuff. Gym membership was a help for early training. But there is nothing extra special, no cheques coming in the door or anything. It is just the minimum requirements, all we ever asked for. And the atmosphere is so different."

The happiness has been contagious. Respectable and positive as Cork's league form was, it gave them plenty to consider. Kilkenny's polished excavation of full points in a league game nicely illustrated the bigger picture.

"It all hinged on cuteness," was Donal O'Grady's succinct explanation of that 4-17 to 3-9 lecture.

The acquisition of cuteness takes time. On the eve of the Munster final, there is the intuition that Cork, through no fault of their own, go into this Munster final wide-eyed. Waterford, the Munster champions, have been permitted to wander into town virtually unnoticed. Their anonymity, a cloak they could see as woven by old prejudices towards status in the province, must delight Justin McCarthy.

The gods have been with them. A last-minute television blackout meant their epic draw against Limerick was the best game never seen. And the ponderous nature of the replay allowed them to advance without showing much of a hand.

Cork, in contrast, laid themselves bare in 70 minutes of glorious adrenaline. In a season noted for the fickle hearts of the pundits, Cork's shimmering performance was enough to convince. Joe Deane's goal was emblematic of Cork's rediscovered strengths: vigour and speed and imagination. With 12:52 gone in the game, the ball was in the hands of Cork goalkeeper Donal Óg Cusack. By the time the clock read 13:18, Davy Fitzgerald was picking it from the back of his own house.

Improvised and almost too fast for the untutored eye to follow, Deane's first-time strike on Ben O'Connor's flat and weightless hand-pass will go down as one of the moments of the summer. Seen in replay, Deane's swift dagger-thrust seems the most natural option, but later he said he was about to catch the sliotar.

"I was - I thought about it for a minisecond. Ben did so well to get the pass across because he was actually falling and I was about to catch it but just the way it sat up, I closed the eyes and hoped for the best. I had no idea it went in - I fell to the ground and thought Davy might have saved it because when I looked up, the ball had come out and so I thought it was game on. Then Alan did an awful lot of shouting and they awarded the goal."

It was a thrilling sequence, a wonder-stroke that lit the game and prompted Cyril Farrell, high above the dust in his RTÉ perch, to declare, "it's electric stuff down there." Everything went right. Young John Gardiner and the returned exile Mickey O'Connell excelled in the company of Lynch and Baker. Five of the six forwards shared the scoring. They hurled neatly and sharply, a reflection of O'Grady's fussy insistence on the repetition of the game's primary skills during training.

"Striking, blocking, hooking - we practised it each night," explains Browne. "Like, you might get bored with it or whatever but you can see the difference it made to Waterford when Justin McCarthy concentrated on the same. It's the basics. Why complicate things?"

Afterwards, Cork surveyed the wreckage of Clare's championship and trooped off, young and happy and winning again. In the dressing-room, they discovered O'Grady all but filling pails of cold water. Since then, he has doused his players in sober reality. Clare's experience has been drummed in as a salutary lesson of what may be around the corner. The team has gone to ground. What public statements have been made have been heavy with a genuine respect for Waterford. The thing is, across the county, Corkonian emotions are ablaze. O'Grady cannot dampen the ardour of an entire county; all he can do is try to shield his players from it.

"And while the players don't believe it, it can seep into your head," admitted Browne. "You can begin to think, oh maybe this is true. A case in point was the semi-final against Offaly in 2000. We beat a fairly fancied Tipperary team and suddenly you couldn't put a bet on us around the country. If you get at all complacent, allow any crack at all , you are in trouble. I think Donal has done a good job in making us realise that we just played well against a Clare team that was missing a number of influential players and that we won't have it our own way against Waterford."

A Munster title for Cork would do much to exorcise the ghosts of 1999, when Cork was young and JBM its gilded leader and all was right with the world. The funny thing is that although that team is often referred to as the lost generation, nine of those who finished against Kilkenny on that wet September day starred in the recent sacking of Clare. The popular view of this Munster final is of a gnarled Waterford coming back to defend its honour against Cork's impetuous new wave. Yet if Seánie McGrath's ethereal touch is required tomorrow, there will be ten All-Ireland medal-holders on the field, all of them wearing red. In that sense, Munster's beau monde has remained unaffected by the turmoil of the past few years.

"Any game I've played against Waterford, there has only been a point or two in it. It's a serious rivalry. I remember hearing last year, 'ah, ye let Waterford beat ye,'" remembers Brown. "Like, Waterford beat Cork in the championship! Why shouldn't they? They trained just as hard as us and they beat Tipp in the final then. Traditionally, Waterford was regarded as a weaker county in Munster. Things change."

Indeed. A Munster final to which Waterford ferry the silverware. Cork in a state of tremulous expectation. Another day of high intrigue awaits the gallery.