Talking points: Reunited in summer and for once the heat is on Kerry

There is always pressure in a Cork-Kerry game. Cork need to show that they can deliver against Kerry in the summer.

RUNNING GAME: Sean Powter of Cork in action against Diarmuid O'Connor of Kerry. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

When the All-Ireland football qualifiers were introduced for the first time in 2001, Cork football carried such a status that the new system didn’t provide the kind of emancipation that it did for other counties imprisoned in their own province for so long that they’d never known anything else only perennial frustration and disappointment.

Cork had been in the All-Ireland final in 1999. They’d won more Munster titles (five) than any other county in the 1990s. Cork had beaten Kerry in eight of their previous 13 championship meetings between 1987-2000.