Munster SFC Semi-final:   The changing circumstances of Billy Morgan. For the first time in eight years the godfather of Cork football is back preparing a team for senior championship duty against Kerry. Otherwise he and his son Brian are moving their financial-services consultancy into a new office in South Main Street.

Last week, mid-move, the premises were still being organised, bare rooms slowly filling with vast swathes of documentation and office equipment. And the football end of things was in a similar state of flux with injuries and suspensions greatly weakening the hand he has to play tomorrow.

Yet this weekend will appeal to Morgan. Taking the Cork challenge to Kerry is central to his historic mission. In the 10 years of his previous management spell, a time of unprecedented success for the county, Morgan deconstructed the traditional Cork-Kerry relationship to the extent that he only lost one championship match in Killarney.

He stepped down back in 1996, since when they haven't won once in Fitzgerald Stadium.

There is an air of regret about his return. His ambition was to create a new reality for the county footballers, one in which they would share Munster with Kerry as equals, not understudies. To that end he pushed for Larry Tompkins to succeed him. Feeling he had become too familiar with the players, Morgan saw Tompkins's hard-driving, perfectionist nature as the shot of adrenalin the team needed.

It didn't work out that way and, apart from one All-Ireland appearance in 1999, Cork's averages slipped back to historical levels. Morgan had plenty of experience of them as a player and what he saw as the resigned acceptance of the county towards football underachievement frustrated him.

"I always felt that since the early 1960s when Cork started to produce good underage teams - and since 1961 I'm thinking Cork are up there in terms of winning minor and under-21 All-Irelands - that we should be up there at senior. In my own playing days we weren't properly managed with the exception of Donie Donovan (in charge of the county's 1973 All-Ireland win) and people like that.

"There were people coming in as selectors who had no real interest in us winning and didn't really believe in us. If Cork were properly organised, they'd be competing every year for All-Irelands. I like to think we did that in the late 1980s and half way through the 1990s. Cork should be competing. Look at the clubs and the size of the county. It's gone back in recent years.

"I'm not blaming Larry Tompkins because at board level the football isn't taken seriously enough."

But does he not relish the whole notion of having to go back and bail out Cork football nearly a decade after he thought it was set up for life? "It is depressing. My ambition in 1986 was to put Cork competing every year and that we would never go back to the old position where we'd get one Munster championship every now and again and Kerry would win four, five, six, seven or eight in a row. It should be nearly every second year.

"The whole system in Cork has fallen down because at minor and under-21 we've hardly won anything. The last under-21 All-Ireland was 10 years ago and we've won one minor since, in 2000. That's not good enough and it's because we've taken our eye off the ball at board level. We need concentration on development squads at under-14 and to coach them all the way up."

The drying up of the underage tributaries has left a parched landscape for any senior manager. But Morgan was still grinding out All-Ireland performances with the club.

Nemo Rangers is central to Morgan as it is central to Cork's emergence over the decades. A small city club where loyalties run deep and fierce, Nemo has contributed outstanding players to the county and an intensity of commitment. No one walks away from Nemo when finished playing. There will be teams to coach, things to do.

Two tributes to the club come from rivals of one sort or another. Des Cullinane, long-time coach with UCC, once described how the levels of organisation were so structured the club could impose a style of play on all of their teams, allowing a player at one level to slot into a higher team without undue disorientation.

Tony O'Keeffe, former secretary of the Kerry county board and chair of the GAA's Games Administration Committee, credited Morgan and Nemo with creating an urban football tradition in Cork, which had previously been overwhelmingly reliant on west Cork clubs.

Last year Morgan was in command as Nemo ended an historically embarrassing phase of its history by winning the All-Ireland after losing the previous two finals. His appointment to the county team at the end of a disappointing summer should have been a formality.

The history of Morgan and the county board, however, doesn't lend itself to such formalities. Over the years he has suffered greatly from the insolence of office. Originally he wasn't even allowed an input into the selection of teams and had to reach an All-Ireland final before that was remedied.

Having led the county to back-to-back All-Irelands for the first time, he nearly didn't survive the next championship defeat and it took widespread protests before he was allowed continue.

At that level he has found change for the better.

"The best thing that happened to Cork was the players' strike last year," he says about the action taken initially by the county hurlers which wrung from the county board concessions about preparation and resources.

"I couldn't believe coming back what we get compared to what we didn't get when I was last here. There's no problem on spending on things that need to be done.

"One thing that's helped me is that the board appointed a liaison officer who liaises with us and I don't have to go near the board. I've very little contact with the board, which is great. Having said that, I've always had a good relationship with Frank Murphy despite all the things said about him."

Murphy for his part has over the years been supportive of Morgan despite the county's traditional preference for hurling.

The football world that Morgan re-enters is considerably different from the one he was last involved in addressing. Aside from the rise of Kerry there has been the rise of Armagh and Tyrone who - unlike Down, Derry and Donegal, who gave Ulster All-Ireland domination in the early 1990s - have been credited with revolutionising football.

Morgan doesn't engage with the question of whether that's an overstatement but he has sympathy with any manager chasing a first All-Ireland.

"As long as it's within the rules you have to deal with it. I think Tyrone came in for unfair criticism last year. They ran Kerry off the field in the All-Ireland semi-final and then got cautious and decided to defend their lead. The main thing for them was to get to the final."

On a broader scale the game has changed for the better in his view. The calendar-year league gives continuity and momentum to championship preparations whereas the qualifier system is Cork's insurance policy against the sort of player unavailability with which he has to cope this weekend.

He looks well at 58. Silver-haired, fit and tanned, he has lost the slightly haunted look of the past but then again that could be back by tomorrow afternoon. Morgan has delegated more than previously.

"I think this time I've taken some of the pressure off myself," he says. "When I was here last I did everything - the physical training, the coaching. This year I've brought in Teddy Owens as a physical trainer and he's very good, takes the pressure off me. I've Colman Corrigan, who helps with the coaching. As well as that Seán Murphy and Jimmy Nolan, the two selectors, help out in training. Last time it was more of a one-man band.

"Also I find things have changed from the professional point of view. I would always have thought of myself as professional the last time I was here but it's gone beyond that in terms of training methods, nutrition and sports psychology. I've always been interested in those areas."

Unusual for the times, he was always a believer in the importance of sports psychology and established a good relationship with former hockey international George Treacy, who works in the area. Now it's a commonplace back-up.

"If you ask a team how important is mental preparation or that side of the game, the answer is 'all-important' or 'very important'. Okay, but we do an awful lot of physical training and we don't do any mental training. George is a sportsman himself. He played at a high level and understands."

It's safe to say that sports psychology would have been a science in demand at the start of the year. Demoralising defeats by Limerick and Roscommon killed off Cork's season last year, just as a humiliation by Kerry scuffed the gloss of the Munster title the year before.

"Confidence was down," he says evenly. "It was a case of chipping away and if your training methods are working in time it'll come right. I would hope that the confidence and belief is there now."

One aspect of life that has changed for the worst is the death of the dual player in Cork. In his previous teams Morgan was always open to hurlers who wanted to play with the big ball. Now his hurling counterparts have decided that such versatility no longer serves the best interest of hurling.

"Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, John Gardiner and Tom Kenny are fine footballers and would be on our panel if not on our team if they were available. Donie O'Grady and his selectors want it that way. The three lads would like to play football but hurling is their number one game.

"It's becoming harder and harder for dual players but I wouldn't mind having those three." Does he accept that O'Grady and his selectors might have a point?

Pause. "I do, yeah. I do."

Billy Morgan mightn't always have accepted something that conflicted with what he saw as best for his team. But these are changed times and Cork are lucky to have him as a constant.