Every match you fear for Seanie McGrath. Not necessarily for his physical safety, although his small, slight frame and reputation as a quick, elusive ball-player wouldn't rule out such apprehension. You fear more for his spirit.

This might seem odd given that his jaunty self-confidence can make James Bond seem shy, but there's always the worry that the increasingly severe world of intercounty intensity will in some way crush his joie de vivre.

Some Cork hurling people frowned when he told the Sunday Times that on joining Glen Rovers he "nearly had an orgasm" when he discovered he was to train with one of his Cork heroes, John Fitzgibbon.

"Stupid talk," they said. An unforgiving constituency within the GAA community will smile grimly if talented ball-players with effervescent personalities fall flat on big occasions.

After a mixed underage career, he first sprang to prominence on the gifted UCC Fitzgibbon Cup teams of 1996-98. He starred in a forward line boasting Cork team-mates Joe Deane, Alan Browne and Kieran Morrison, Waterford's Dave Bennett and Tipperary's John Enright.

John Considine, a selector on the UCC teams, said at the time: "Seanie McGrath is a great asset. He has a certain arrogance. Against UL (1997), he missed two good goal chances, but it took nothing out of him and he got a beauty before the end.

Unlike the enigmatic Fitzgibbon, McGrath's stock-in-trade has been exuberantly-hit points rather than goals. On his 1997 debut for Cork against the Clare side which would win that year's All-Ireland, McGrath scored five points from play. Starting in the corner on Frank Lohan and switching on to Anthony Daly on the wing, McGrath ended the first half having been centrally involved - scoring, being fouled or providing the scoring pass - in seven of his team's eight points.

Smothered like his colleagues by Clare's more emphatic win a year later, McGrath's first real setback was being substituted scoreless against Waterford last June. Characteristically, he was relatively unfazed.

"I spoke to Jimmy (Barry-Murphy) after the game," he says, "and the two of us said I was probably unlucky not to get a couple of scores and a couple had just flashed off wide when another time they might have gone over the bar. One towards the end hit the crossbar and came back out. Obviously there's such competition for places that it's important to look after your own spot but I've confidence in my own ability and I knew it would come right."

And so it did. In a decisive show of virtuosity in the Munster final, he crept in behind Clare's Brian Quinn and with a deft, one-armed tennis stroke knocked back Fergal McCormack's dropping ball for Joe Deane to slide it to the net.

Even the recollection warms McGrath. "At the time I thought it was a peach of a goal, a sneaky goal, and it was completely against the run of play. And it was probably the deciding factor at the end of the day."

Seanie McGrath

Club: Glen Rovers. Age: 23.

Occupation: 96FM executive.

Height/Weight: 5'8"/10st 7lbs.

Honours: 1 Munster SHC (1999); 1 NHL (1998); 1 Munster U-21 HC ('96); 2 Fitzgibbon Cups with UCC ('97, '98).