All-Ireland Club Football Championship final/Crossmolina v Nemo Rangers: Tom Humphries talks to Steven O'Brien of Nemo Rangers, a little club used to punching above their weight and with the medals to show for it.

It's been a long road with plenty of turnings. Steven O'Brien can't remember exactly when they eased him into the senior team in Nemo, but it's 16 or 17 years ago. 1987 he thinks.

It was a fat time in the southern city. By 1989 Nemo were All-Ireland club champions again and O'Brien was cutting it up with the likes of Dinny Allen, Tony Nation, Jimmy Kerrigan and Timmy Dalton. He could see the good times rolling on forever. He won an All-Ireland under-21 and an All-Ireland senior medal in the red of Cork that year. Not a cloud in the sky.

They should have taken notice of those less fortunate. In 1989 Nemo beat Clann Na nGael of Roscommon in the club final and it gives them a shiver now to realise the westerners were just completing the third of four successive defeats that day. Today at Croke Park, Nemo can beat Crossmolina and win the title for the seventh time; or they can lose the final for the third year running.

In the mind's eye Nemo are a great steamroller of a club who roll over anything in their path. That's just what they want you to think, however. Nemo are a little club who act like a big club and it works for them.

Their history has been one of busting the odds, of winning as underdogs, of surviving and then thriving. The club (or half of it) was founded in North Mon early in the last century for boys who wanted to play hurling instead of rugby. The school demurred and they played separately. Teacher Séamus Ó hAodha wanted to come up with a name for the club incorporating the North Mon initials. He chose Nemo, the Latin word for nobody. After the civil war they amalgamated with nearby Rangers. Nobody Rangers. Famously, for a while players practised hurling in a disused quarry.

Once amalgamated, they waited till 1972 for a senior football title. Nothing strange there. If the popular image of Nemo is identical to that of one of Dublin's super-clubs the fact is fact that they have always struggled. Geographically, they hail from Turner's Cross, a sacred site in Cork soccer, and the club is squeezed for members by Blackrock, St Finbarr's and Douglas. Yet they have produced a handful of great players from a membership that doesn't tip over 250, about 80 of whom actually play.

The secret is their closeness and the reinvestment of energies in younger players. "The odd fella goes off and gets a life for himself," says O'Brien of how things have changed, "but mostly they stick around and put it back into the club."

In 1994 they were All-Ireland champions again. O'Brien was captain. The garden was rosy. Then came seven years of famine. When people ask them now if making three club finals in a row is a rough ride, they refer the inquirer back to the roughness of a ride of seven years in the desert.

"We kept coming across good west Cork teams and that put paid to a few of our good teams. Up to 2000 we couldn't make the breakthrough. When you make it back to the top the bad days come to mind more easily and you enjoy the good ones. I was always optimistic. I thought we'd get back but it's kind of gut-wrenching when you're there. When it came our way again in 2000 we decided we weren't going to wait around for things to go bad. We've held onto it since."

They have always treated the All Ireland competition seriously. Many teams winning their first county championship tend to flop into the nearest bar and drink till the following winter. Remarkably, when Nemo won in 1972 they went and won the All-Ireland the following spring, beating a good St Vincent's side in the final. They have become the specialists in the business since then.

"Last year was the best year in our history," says O'Brien. "We won the senior, intermediate, and retained the under-21 title. In the last three or four years we've been in three intermediate county finals, won three county seniors and the last two under-21s. That's as strong as we've ever been."

If they sound like famous last words than O'Brien knows it. As well as achieving success with their player base they are also in the process of moving a quarter of a mile down the road. That move will take three years and a great deal of energy.

The logistics are attractive but the effort required is huge. Nemo bought 10 or 11 acres just up the road about 10 years ago. They have only one pitch and a clubhouse at their existing ground. And dividing their activities has been tough.

So at a recent EGM they voted to move. And pushing out the road a little might lure a couple of new young fellas in, O'Brien reckons. But he worries his beloved Nemo might waste too much playing energy on the input needed for a new centre.

"At the end of the day, we'd rather be hated and poor than to have people admiring us as a lovely club who never wins anything but have a nice bar."

That would be a fate worse than debt for a club that loves struggle. Avoidance will begin this afternoon.