John Horgan on the special hurling memories a Glen Rovers and Barrs county final evokes

There will be a significant cohort of supporters from both clubs who will not have attended a Glen Rovers-St Finbarr's county final, after all it's been 38 years since a showdown on the big stage before the famous rivals.

Given their place in the roll of honour, 53 titles between them that may surprise many. As they say, everything comes to those who wait and on Sunday, two of the country's most decorated clubs will battle it out on final day again.

Since 1988, their paths have crossed at different stages of the championship but not when the stakes were so high as they are going to be at SuperValu Pairc Ui Chaoimh this time.

Everything changes in life. Great sporting rivalries might not be as intense as they once used to be and attendance levels when fierce rivals collide are nowhere near where they were in the '60s and '70s and long before that. The rivalry between the big three city clubs continues to endure, not maybe to the same extent when it was almost a matter of life and death and you had some combination of Rockies, Barrs and Glen in the county finals each year.

They arrived in their droves from Blackpool, Togher, up the road from Church Road. Winning meant everything, losing and the pain was colossal.

It used to be said that when city hurling was strong, Cork were winning All-Ireland titles.

That's a matter of opinion but there is no doubt that some of the greatest hurlers of all time were domiciled in those three city hurling institutions.

In the great industrial locations of Fords and Dunlops down the Centre Park Road, hurling was the spoken word and if your team didn't win on county final Sunday there could be a heavy absentee list on Monday morning.

Halcyon days

Yes, there is no future spouting on about the past but that's the way it was back then, for much of the older generation, those were the days of their lives. 

I know because I was one of them coming up from East Cork crammed into that ramshackle of a place called the Cork Athletic Grounds.

For all that might have been wrong about the place it was our Cork hurling shrine, a ground of a thousand memories.

Apart from the glittering stars that lined out for both the Glen and the Barrs you had terrific club players who gave sterling service to the famed jerseys they wore, it was the same in Blackrock, too many to mention here.

That was then and this is now, we have a Barrs-Glen final, the first since 1988 when the Barrs reigned supreme on a scoreline of 3-18 to 2-14.

A great and stylish Cork hurler, Con Roche, was the Barrs manager, Ger Cunningham was the captain and his brother Brian the Man of the Match.

Hurling has evolved and continues to do so, it's a much-changed game from what it once was but it continues to enthrall us from one year to the next and next Sunday's county final has the potential to be a cracker. We hope so anyway.

And to add further sheen to the proceedings, the curtain-raiser, the PIHC decider between Ballincollig and Dungourney has similar potential.

The message is... be in early.

No sporting journey is easy, it can be all about timing, slowly but surely travelling that journey to its final destination.

And that has been the case with the Barrs and the Glen, from a losing start for both at the group stage to be where you want to be on the season's defining day.

Would one have fancied the Barrs to be in the final after a lack-lustre display in losing to Midleton, the answer would probably have been an emphatic no.

The Glen, it could be said, didn't fire on all cylinders early on either, losing to the Rockies, being taken the full distance by Kanturk before doing good business against Fr O'Neill's and Charleville.

Midleton, potentially, posed a huge problem for them in the semi-final but on the day there were no dissenting voices. The best team had got the job done and were in the final.

Both, it could be said, have timed their season perfectly and now we have what we hope will be an old-fashioned county final between great rivals from opposite sides of the river.

This is a traditional county final, a sort of restoration of the old order, the best of East Cork banished for the present anyway.

This is a final between two teams that have shaped Cork hurling through the ages.

The story of the Cork SHC is similar to the race for the Carthy Cup, both dominated by three clubs and counties, Rockies, Barrs and Glen, Kilkenny, Tipp and Cork in the latter.

Yes, things have changed quite a lot in recent times in both instances but those three clubs and three counties are miles ahead of the rest in the roll of honour list.

A stellar performance from a player in a county final can catapult him into the front line of consideration for the Cork equation.

A player trying to break into the inter-county set-up has to perform at the highest level on the biggest day of the domestic season, perform with the type of intensity and mindset needed in the county jersey.

It's perhaps a lot more difficult with the present format of the championship to win a county. Three group games followed by, in most instances, three more at the knockout stage, the best team at the group stage avoiding a quarter-final, thus needing a game less.

Epic

The Cork County SHC has had many features through the corridors of time: fierce rivalries, last-minute heroics, longed-for breakthrough titles and more.

The latter we have had quite a few during this column's coverage of finals, Sars after a wait of 51 years in 2008, Midleton in 1983, the first since 1916, Newtownshandrum's first ever in 2000, Erin's Own's first in 2006, Na Piarsaigh in 1990, Carrigtwohill in 2011, days we remember all our lives, days dripping with emotion.

With 53 titles between them, winning next Sunday will be nothing new to the Barrs and the Glen but they too have spent many years in the wilderness without a title.

But it's all about the here and now for both and as the week moves on the question will become more frequent: Who will win on Sunday?

Both bring their own credentials and, on paper anyway, it's very difficult to separate them.

Firstly, we want a cracking game, in the melting pot until the last whistle, a throwback to other times when no quarter was asked or given when they met, when 35,000 souls were present when they collided.

The Cork final still generates the highest attendance of any county final elsewhere and you would be hopeful that there will be 20,000 present.

In Friday's column, we'll try to break it down, where it might be won and lost and that is not going to be an easy task.

It's the Barrs and the Glen, you could ask for no more on the last Sunday of the season.