Cork have known longer famines but never have they shown greater hunger. They reclaimed the Munster football championship at Pairc Ui Chaoimh yesterday with a display which hinged on bravery and appetite as much as it did on planning and execution.

This was an extraordinary game of football. Never did it elevate itself to a plane where it could be deemed a classic, but from the throw-in the ferocity of the play spoke volumes about what was at stake. For both Larry Tompkins and Paidi O Se yesterday's game loomed as one of those fixtures upon which their tenure would be judged. Tompkins, in particular, needed a win so that his three-year reign might not be decorated solely with the empty bauble that is the league crown.

He put out a side yesterday which could scarcely be said to have been created in his image. Cork built on the platform of an astonishing defensive performance which saw them concede only six scores over 70 minutes and which yielded Kerry such a paucity of scoreable frees that Maurice Fitzgerald finished the game without brackets after his name.

Kerry can scarcely complain. They plundered two first-half goals through the offices of young Aodhan MacGearailt, who gave Sean Og O hAilpin a tough time before the break. On neither occasion were they allowed to press home the advantage, however.

The first goal came in the 17th minute and seemed to bode badly for Cork. Fitzgerald, in possession in the left corner, smuggled the ball to Dara O Se, who, boxed in near the endline, picked out a deliberate pass across the face of the Cork goal. MacGearailt brushed off the attentions of O hAilpin to take it on his chest and slip it low to the net for a classic full forward's goal.

Within five minutes two scores from Philip Clifford brought Cork back to level terms and it was left to MacGearailt to lever the next opening, slotting his next goal after good work from Dara O Cinneide. That was in the 33rd minute and, added to a point from John McGlynn, it put Kerry four points ahead. Unbelievably, however, Kerry didn't score again for 25 minutes.

The latter stages of the first half were filled with all sorts of niggle. The game had earlier produced the spectacle, unique in the modern game, of Fitzgerald losing his temper and becoming involved in a fistfight with Ronan McCarthy. As the game teetered on the brink, Tomas O Se was booked after a similar bout of fisticuffs between himself and Podsie O'Mahony appeared to suddenly cause a coronary to the latter.

Finally, and most spectacularly, Eamonn Breen and Brendan Jer O'Mahony set about each other in a fracas which drew the help of about half the players on the field. No yellow cards issued this time. Who knows how these things work any more?

The break provided welcome respite, though Cork scarcely needed it. They bounded back out on to the field after about seven minutes and fidgeted until Kerry reappeared. Kerry's more relaxed interval may have been fatal because Cork dismantled them after the break.

Instrumental in this process was Michael O'Sullivan, whose first-half performance had been good, but who towered in the second half.

Kerry became less and less visible at midfield and what scraps they did pick up were unsatisfactorily processed from the point of view of the forwards.

O'Sullivan scored Cork's first point after the break and when O'Mahony popped another over minutes later there was a sense that there was blood in the water.

Paidi O Se, on the sidelines, swapped half of his forwards, but such was the guile of the Cork defence that he could comfortably have switched them all.

Fitzgerald has seldom looked more miserable in a Munster final. John Crowley and O Cinneide had little flashes of possession, but never picked up enough ball to make a difference.

It took a while for Cork's superiority to reflect itself in the stats but it happened as surely as the tides. First Clifford, who seemed impossibly pumped up, almost broke through not once but twice for a goal. He got nothing more than a 45 for his efforts, but in the 48th minute he popped over a good point, Cork's third without reply to leave his team on level terms.

It took just a couple more minutes for the inevitable to happen. O'Mahony launched a floating free, Fachtna Collins, just in as a substitute, wound up and fisted it home after Declan O'Keeffe failed to hold.

Kerry recovered their footing briefly as Crowley and William Kirby had points, but it was anaemic stuff compared with Cork's red-blooded play. In the 62nd minute, the game effectively ended.

Another Cork substitute, Fionan Murray, gained possession from a Michael O'Sullivan lineball. He looked as if he was stumbling under the attentions of a couple of Kerrymen, but he stabbed a low shot across the greasy turf and it squirted fully 10 yards into the Kerry net. Cork were four points ahead and all the traffic was one way.

In the closing minutes it was the quality of the defending rather than O'Mahony's two frees which best reflected Cork's style. Maurice Fitz drove a free goalwards. Blocked and cleared. Crowley had a goal attempt blocked by Anthony Lynch. O hAilpin bent to block a similar shot. Slowly Cork dug their way out.

So the trend continued and by the end of the day none of last year's provincial football champions were still standing. Not great times for football, but interesting ones.