“Fair play to Eddie Brennan,” said O’Connor, “he is still playing away. I know he said in an interview that he’d retired but he got called back in. If you had the likes of him why wouldn’t you use him?”

Why not? Cork’s All-Ireland-winning captain in 2004 is conscio

us of the size of today’s challenge in Thurles: “I wouldn’t be too bogged down in the opposition, because generally I’d focus on our own boys and making sure they’re right and focused on playing to our own strengths.

“But when the opposition have Kilkenny county players scattered all over the field, it’s a tall order, obviously.

“It’s the last four of the championship so you’re going to have good teams involved.”

And good players. O’Connor himself is happy to have a full selection to pick from for the first time this year.

Darren Casey is back, he hurt his shoulder after the first round and wasn’t back until the replay of the county final. Danny O’Flynn got hurt again in the county final and missed the first Munster game against Lixnaw and he didn’t start against Feakle, but now we’re at full strength.

That Feakle game is the one which caught people’s attention more than Charleville’s Cork title win.

Ten points down to the Clare side at the break, Charleville won that Munster final with a 63rd-minute goal.

“Feakle only went out of senior in Clare the year before, and I think it was a shock that they were relegated, so they’d have fancied their chances.

“At half-time that day you’d have said they were superior to us in every way, but there was a very strong breeze the same day.

“And we hadn’t hurled the way we could. We were down by 10 points but we’d had four or five scandalous wides altogether — another day you’d have been tapping them over and saying to yourself, ‘we’re only four or five down’ at half-time. The lads showed a lot of bottle in the second half, all we said to them was to do what they do, to get moving around and move the ball quickly — not to shoot on impulse but to get into the right positions.

“And they did, in fairness, every one of them. Andrew Cagney got three or four points, Darragh got eight or nine points, Danny O’Flynn went in and improved things, Darren Casey got a goal and a point, that all worked in our favour. We hurled well in the second half but the breeze was a big help, it was blowing a gale the same day.”

Darragh is Cork midfielder Darragh Fitzgibbon, a man operating at the very top level.

O’Connor points out that they don’t have him every day they take the field, though.

“We only had Darragh for championship games this year — while he was involved with Cork we didn’t ask him to play in any league games.

“We said there was no point in doing that, we’d only be tiring him out and we wouldn’t get the best out of him when we needed him.

“Now there was a price we paid — we won the intermediate but we weren’t allowed up to play senior league on points difference.

“We were two points off on our league results, and we’d surely have picked those up if he’d played in the league. That said, we’ve put up big scores all year without Darragh, so every player knows if they can keep doing what they do and he comes back and chips in with what he can, we won’t have to depend on him.

Most of the team have played with him all the way up, they know he’ll step up when the need is there but they don’t expect him to do it every day.

In his pomp with Newtownshandrum and Cork O’Connor himself dealt with a similar situation.

“Absolutely, when myself and Jerry (twin brother) and Pat (Mulcahy) were away with Cork we wouldn’t be seen in Newtown for months. Then, come the championship, three lads who have trained and played away for months would be dropped. That’s just the nature of the beast and the lads in Charleville know that if Darragh doesn’t play in a game all year and comes back for the championship, he’ll be playing.

“You’ll be looking for that bit of magic and he’s been playing well for us all year. He came through against Feakle and against Courceys — he hadn’t been hitting frees all year but he went on the frees when our regular freetaker went off, and he hit four massive frees that were the difference.

“That’s the quality you’re talking about, and it’s nice to have a player that can come up with something like that.”

O’Connor mightn’t have huge managerial experience but he knows potential when he sees it: “This is my first time getting involved and I’m enjoying it, if I weren’t then I wouldn’t have come back for the second year. It was disappointing last year but we had a lot of injuries and things didn’t run for us. They did this year.

“The team’s young, they’re mad for road and eager to learn. And I think they’re listening to me anyway!

“The part that’s enjoyable is when you work on something in training and then you see them do it in a game, that it comes off in a match. Charleville is only five minutes in the road (from Newtownshandrum) and they’re great to deal with. There’s more left in them, a lot of them are 21 or so and even the older lads are mostly 27, 28, 29. They know each other inside out, the younger lads, while the experienced lads like Alan Dennehy and Danny O’Flynn blend in well too. There’s a good bit left in these boys yet.”