Tompkins: Unfit Cork just not good enough
Tompkins calls out current footballers for failure to battle
LARRY TOMPKINS has delivered a scathing assessment of the Cork senior football team hammered 3-20 to 0-13 by Tyrone in the qualifiers. The former Cork manager and double All-Ireland winner said that serious questions have to be asked of the players, the management, and the team’s preparations after the nature of that defeat, and the worst Munster Championship beating by Kerry in 80 years. ‘Just basic things like the level of fitness wasn’t there, and you just can’t have guys who aren’t able to move. You’re on a downward slide straight away. It’s worrying, and a lot of the players; are they up to that level? ‘You look at players and you need something that bit different to make it at intercounty level. You’d just be worried that a lot of the players aren’t at that level that I’m talking about. ‘You need them to commit to what’s required and you just wonder if that’s there, and that’s sad to see because when you do have the opportunity to wear the county jersey it should be the prominent thing in your life. Unfortunately what we’ve seen in the last few Championship games, that doesn’t seem to be there.’
LARRY TOMPKINS is up in Dublin, ostensibly to lend his support to AIB’s new series The Toughest Rivalry, which features his club Castlehaven, his old county warrior Niall Cahalane and one Premier League manager in Harry Redknapp.
But the conversation quickly turns to the question being asked most frequently in Cork since the weekend: What the hell happened to the Cork senior football team?
Tompkins has his own views, and they are brutally uncompromising, questioning the players’ fitness and the squad selected by Ronan McCarthy, to the extent that he worries about Cork being under Kerry’s thumb for the next decade after a humiliating Munster final defeat was followed by a bottoming out against Tyrone in the qualifiers last Saturday.
‘Well you have to look at it cold-faced, they didn’t have a good League. Playing in the division they were, you would have expected it to be a bit better. Then you look at their panel of players itself and you’d have a lot of questions, leading into the Championship.
‘So yeah, you would have been hoping that they would done better against Kerry, but for me it was never going to be a success there, but it was just the manner of the defeat, after getting a great start.
‘But the next thing you’d say, is there a kick in them after being beaten by so much? You’d look at yourself and have to say, “Just give me another chance”.
‘We never got that chance when we were playing. If you got beaten you were gone, there were no back doors.
‘But yeah, it’s worrying when there’s no kind of a backlash and let’s be honest the last day was worse than the Munster final, and that was hard to comprehend or explain. But it was worse.
‘I played and I managed teams, and we suffered defeats but there was always battle. I remember one day in Killarney we were 12 points down against Kerry and we came back to within two points of them in the end, we showed character.
‘You would have to say that over the last two games, and probably through the League campaign, it has been very disappointing. Ronan, the manager, is a hell of a nice guy and I had him as a player, and he’s a very committed guy. But for some reason I think he probably took an awful lot on board himself.
‘But first priority anyway is that you have to get players that you feel are good enough, and second of all you get them fit. They’re the principal things.’
Given that Cork beat Dublin en route to winning the 2010 All-Ireland, it’s startling to see how the counties have gone in totally different directions since, with Cork stuck in Division 2 while Dublin have won five All-Irelands.
Yet Tompkins doesn’t give a free pass either to the last Cork team to taste success.
‘The 2010 team, they never beat Kerry when it counted either! That’s no disrespect to them, but I just always feel you have to gain respect by beating your neighbours and Kerry are a real prominent, dominant team, so I’d always judge my team on how can you cope with them.’
He’s not fully sure about Tomás Ó Sé’s claim that Cork isn’t a football county, believing that the footballers have to earn respect and a proper following.
‘There is this concept that “the hurlers are there, and sure the footballers will always let you down”, you know. That’s kind of there, there’s no point in saying otherwise. I think you need to gain the respect by going down and beating your neighbours and being able to beat them when it matters, like.’
He fancies Kerry to go all the way and spoil Dublin’s four-in-a-row dream and worries about a decade of dominance when it comes to Munster.
‘It will be a big ask of them [Dublin] to go and win four in a row. I just like Kerry this year. I happened to run in to them in April. They had met that morning in Killarney at nine o’clock. Didn’t know where they were going.
‘Got on a bus. Went to Cork. Had a fella from the army that had been training the army guys in physical fitness. Put them through a four-hour stint of running.
‘I tell you lads, they weren’t fit to talk. I said to myself, “yep, they mean business”.’