Rebels ready to reclaim blood and bandages past
IRRESPECTIVE of whoever ends up with the silverware at the end of it, there are three teams who are shaping up like being the big winners of this year’s Allianz League. One of them is rather obvious. Tipperary have started the year like men possessed – but then they have good reason.
Another would qualify as the usual suspects. As long as I have known Galway hurling they were my yardstick when it came to measuring other teams because they have been the one county who have consistently treated the competition seriously.
And the third one – well, you might have to sit down for this… Cork. Yeah, there they sit bottom of the table after two defeats, which might have you thinking that I have parked a life of abstinence and gone straight for the top shelf. I shall explain.
First, the reason why Tipperary are flying right now is that after years when the personnel in the team stagnated under Liam Sheedy’s watch, over the past 18 months under Liam Cahill that has all changed, with several young players being blooded, providing the group with a renewed energy and sharpness.
Of course, we saw glimpses of that last year when they lit up the early summer but their momentum stalled when losing to Waterford in the Munster championship and they never got it back.
It cost them more than a place in the final, they appeared so shell-shocked by that performance and result that they never recovered and never reached the pitch required when losing to Galway.
There was a valuable lesson there, especially for the younger players, which is that form and attitude is not an electric switch that can just be turned on and off and it is one that will serve them well over the months ahead.
In terms of potential – and given their power and physicality – Galway are perhaps the best resourced team to chase down Limerick, but we have been saying that for ages.
The problem is that instead of being emboldened by that knowledge, they appear to have been spooked by it. How else can you explain the fear that Henry Shefflin showed last year when he set up his team to back off Limerick rather than to go after them?
The hope – and the evidence is positive going on last Sunday’s loss to Tipperary – is that they will not repeat that error again. If he chooses to lose the same way again this year, Sheffin will be the one to pay the price.
And Cork? Well, the Rebels need to absorb the sobering lessons that have been visited on both Tipperary and Galway.
All the talk for the past few years has been about a Rebel rising, all sourced in the fact that they have won three of the last four All-Ireland under-20s.
There is a huge difference between the raw potential of good underage players and making the step up to senior level.
I recall from my own time in charge of Limerick, when there were fewer games as a consequence of a knock-out championship, I organised four challenges games one year. And while they were packaged as preparing the whole group for the championship, I had a specific reason for playing that many games.
There was one young player who I thought had the talent to bring something new to us but I wondered if he could make the step up. However, after those four games I need not have wondered anymore because it was just too much for him.
There is a lot more room in the calendar now to trial new talent when you have a spring and a summer league.
But just like Tipperary stagnated under Sheedy, I felt Cork in recent years have not been proactive enough in blooding all that young talent.
That has happened over the past 18 months and it was interesting to see when Cork were deep in the mire in the first half against Kilkenny last Saturday night, it was one of the kids in Tommy O’Connell who provided the leadership.
Cork needs to find a new way and not just in terms of personnel.
Just like Henry Shefflin, Pat Ryan will not be forgiven if the promise so inherent in all that young talent ends up being sacrificed at the altar of a failed gameplan.
My only wonder in the opening half-hour on Saturday night against Kilkenny was that the huge crowd – in excess of 16,000 – did not leave the seats they had paid for and wandered off home in protest. It was that bad. A short puck-out strategy matched by a short-passing lateral game that inevitably saw the Cork players mugged in possession made it an excruciating painful watch.
Contrast that with an electrifying second period and if it felt like you were watching two different games in two different halves, it was only because you were.
CORK decided to hurl on grass in the second half rather than try and play it on a computer screen, and in the end sent their supporters home with real optimism. Yes, they lost but it is how you lose that matters.
Afterwards, their manager Pat Ryan paid tribute to the character his players had shown in staging that fightback which could have easily won them the game. But there was no acknowledgment that the reason they had lost it was for an opening half hour in which the gameplan was focused on not engaging the opposition in a physical battle, which is otherwise known as a game of hurling.
If that penny drops on reflection, then Cork – not least because there is so much natural pace in their team – will send a chill down the spine of everyone they will meet this year.
Okay, with a new look seventeam Division 1 in place next year – and I suspect the welcome focus that most teams have approached the league thus far is down to that – they need to start winning but with Waterford, Wexford and Offaly still to play I expect they will do that. The key, though, is that Cork remember why they were so woeful in that first half and if they heed that lesson, they should dump the laptop strategies and go back to the blood and bandages that defined them once as a true hurling power.