It's three and a half decades since Larry Tompkins capped Cork's summer of summers by lifting the Sam Maguire and completing the double.
On Friday night, the events of that year were recalled as Tompkins was inducted into the Gaelic Writers' Association Football Hall of Fame, proudly supported by Dalata Hotel Group. Fellow inductee Ger Canning - who received the lifetime achievement award - cited 1990 as the highlight of his long commentary career.
It was an uplifting night after what has been a tough year for the Cork great. It's almost 12 months since Tompkins was diagnosed with an incredibly rare form of cancer - "one in five million, believe it or not" - for which he has undergone 25 rounds of radian treatment.
The rarity of the cancer was such that it took all of two years to get the diagnosis.
The problem first surfaced when he began experiencing rib pain three years ago. They initially feared an asbestos related disease but this was discounted after tests. He was given an all-clear but the niggling pain continued.
He was hospitalised last November in an attempt to get to the bottom of it and it was discovered that he had a tumour on the wall of his lung.
"I was a bit annoyed that it wasn't caught a bit sooner," Tompkins says.
"I had to get another consultant then, I changed over to a thoracic person that he looked after me, a Limerick man, a good GAA man.
"So he had the bad news to tell me then that in January that I had this. I had previously been told that I was clear and then maybe a month later then to be told that I had cancer on the wall of the lung and it was a very rare cancer.
"Believe it or not, one in five million, I could be the only one in Ireland that might have it."
The tumour was deemed inoperable by specialists in London but, much to their amazement, it hasn't grown in the mean-time.
"I thought I'd have to go there for an operation, but they advised for no operation, because it would have been touch and go where the tumour was and the way the lung was.
"So I went on radian treatment during the summer. I got 25 goes of radian treatment. I'm on immunotherapy tablet now every day and some more tablets for pain relief. I take about eight or nine tablets a day.
"It's contained, also the positive sign is that the tumour hasn't spread and it's over three years now.
"The top people in London, I was talking to over on Zoom and they couldn't believe like that my tumour hadn't spread.
"Hopefully, we can keep it contained. I'll have to live with it and hopefully I can get another 20 years anyway, please God."
There were dark days in the first three months of treatment, when he was hospitalised. However, since then, things have improved. He's able to walk and exercise, though hilly treks are a bit much. Last week, for the first time since his illness, he was able to cut the lawn.
"I'm able to do a little bit around the house here. Up to last week I wasn't able to cut the lawn, but I was able to cut the lawn last week when the weather was fine. So that was my first time to cut it since I got sick."
It's 38 years since Tompkins made an abrupt decision that would do much to alter the Gaelic football landscape in the late 1980s and 1990s.
The chief marksman on a struggling Kildare side throughout the 80s, Tompkins, like many others, was living in New York where he was working as a carpenter.
The Kildare county board's decision to cease paying his travel expenses precipitated a major falling-out and meant he could no longer fly back and forth.
That looked to be it for Tompkins and inter-county football. Playing with the Donegal club in New York, he lined out alongside the Collins' brothers, Vincent and Anthony, from the Castlehaven club in west Cork.
"I turned one corner and the next minute, my life is somewhere else," Tompkins says, with some amazement.
"I was very happy in New York, I was playing with Donegal.
"I had great friends. I was a carpenter by trade, I had the world at my feet, being a tradesman over there. I was earning good money.
"There's no reason why I should be coming back to Ireland. The Collins' just have a way of twisting your arm.
"I just decided out of the blue that I hadn't been home for nearly three years at this stage. So they asked me would I go back with them in the summer of '87 and play with Castlehaven and see would they win a county.
"My whole life was in Kildare. It was all up in the air. I left on bad terms with them.
"So, it just kind of fitted the glove nicely to say, look, Jesus, I'll go home for a few months and play with Castlehaven, I'll see my family and then go back out to America.
"There was never a mention of Cork or playing with Cork or being involved with Cork."
Word had gotten around that Tompkins was set to play in that year's Cork championship. Before he'd even played with Castlehaven, he was a Cork county player.
The timing was extremely fortuitous, with the Kerry golden years team reaching their end. The balance of power in Munster football was about to shift violently.
"I had known Billy Morgan in America and I played against him. He used to play with Leitrim and I played with Donegal, and I would have known him from going down to where he used to work there.
"Himself (Morgan) and Brian Mullins, Lord have Mercy on him, I remember working one summer behind the bar in Rose O'Grady's down in Manhattan. I got to know him that way.
"But as I said, when I came home, it was just to play with Castlehaven.
"Then the whole thing just turned around fairly rapid. So from just being asked up to a training session with Cork, then to be asked onto the panel and then to be playing with Cork.
"Believe it or not, I played with Cork before I played with Castlehaven. It's hard to believe.
"When you come to Cork, like, you're surrounded with incredible sportspeople from different sports. You had the great Sonia O'Sullivan, like. I used to go down to the Mardyke of a Sunday and I'd see her running and often I jogged around with her on the track.
"She was like 13 or 14 at that stage, whatever, but little did I think I was running against a world champion and an Olympic medallist. And, then the likes of Roy Keane and Denis Irwin, these guys and all the rugby players that have made it.
"I remember the likes of Ray Cummins and Jimmy Barry Murphy and Denis Coughlan and all these fellas that played in 1973. They were legends like and I felt really honoured to wear a jersey that they wore. I tried to do my best when I went out there and give it it all, so there were great moments, great memories, and I'll certainly never forget them."
