Larry Tompkins connects with much of Cork's achievement at the weekend. He captained the last team from the county to win the All-Ireland 17 years ago and was manager when Cork last reached the final in 1999.

Quite sceptical about the team for much of the year he believes that the players turned a corner on Sunday with a big win blasted out of unpromising circumstances - subdued recent form and the absence through injury of top scorer James Masters.

"They were going into the weekend's match with the jury still out," he says. "The opposition could be said to have brought them down a bit but the year hadn't been going the way that people expected after last season."

The core reservations about the season up until the weekend were that the displays against Louth and Sligo had been unimpressive sequels to a narrow but clear Munster final defeat by All-Ireland champions Kerry.

Conversely Meath had hacked a determined route through the qualifiers series, an arduous path that Tompkins feels maybe militated against Colm Coyle's team.

"To win an All-Ireland it certainly means a lot to keep a team relatively fresh and we saw on Sunday with Meath coming off a series of hard games in fairly quick succession - the two hard matches with Dublin after reaching the Division Two final in the National League and the back-door route.

"What was encouraging for Cork was that players stood up. They have needed more leaders on the field for a while and I think they showed they had them. Graham Canty was very influential at full back. That's expected but Pearse O'Neill has really developed into a leader and Alan Quirke is back in goal after injuries and he brings leadership, Nicholas Murphy is playing out of his skin and there's good balance throughout the team."

In keeping with the depressed expectations going into the semi-final, Cork attracted little support and even more surprisingly Meath followers were sufficiently indifferent for the crowd to come in at a lowly 37,994 - a smaller figure than any of the Cork-Kerry All-Ireland semi-finals and well adrift of the 58,496, who turned up for the successful semi-final against Mayo the season Tompkins took the county to the All-Ireland final.

He doesn't think that there's any reconciling the crowds that respectively follow the hurling and football teams but equally he feels that the current footballers had to do something to earn the loyalty of the county.

"Let's be honest. The hurlers have always been first choice around the city. There's a lot of people around who probably wouldn't have even known that the footballers were in an All-Ireland semi-final.

"There's also the expense for people travelling to Dublin to follow Cork teams. It's not like Dublin where you only have to walk down the road to Croke Park. And you have to build momentum before you get belief into the supporters. Cork people aren't short of confidence but they like to follow a team that has momentum."

Asked why he feels his team of eight years ago largely evaporated in the intervening years - even allowing for natural wastage such as retirement and the departure of Seán Ó hAilpín to concentrate on hurling - Tompkins says the demands of the modern game make it very difficult to rely on the necessary commitment and endurance from every single player.

"It boils down to individuals and how they approach the game. Demands and commitments are huge so the question is, 'how much do players want to win an All-Ireland?'

"People like Anthony Lynch and Nicholas Murphy certainly have what it takes but their life is football - others take a different path. Players need to sacrifice everything to be in with a chance of succeeding."

The one shadow on a vibrant performance by Billy Morgan's team was cast by the possibility that wing back Noel O'Leary may be suspended for the final after having been caught on camera landing a punch on Graham Geraghty.

Tompkins says that the loss of the player would be substantial and unfair. "Noel's a super guy, a super player with loads of things you need. He's a tough man with a tough game. Putting it bluntly, his job is to put the fear of God into forwards and he goes into every tackle at 100 per cent. He was caught on Sunday doing what he did but we've seen other fellas this year get away with worse and I think it would be very unfair if he missed out on an All-Ireland final."

Cork and Mayo have avoided each other in the semi-final draw for the All-Ireland women's football championship.

Women's SFC semi-finals (both live on TG4): August 25th - Cork v Laois, Portlaoise 7.00; 1st September 1st - Mayo v Tyrone 7.00, Kingspan Breffni Park. Intermediate championship semi-finals (both live on TG4): Tipperary v Wexford, Portlaoise, August 25th; Clare v Leitrim, Cavan, September 1st.