TOMÁS ÓSÉ:
Why performance of Cork ’s hurlers highlights what’s lacking in their footballers
DR CON MURPHY once told me a story about Larry Tompkins. It was the day after the 1990 All-Ireland final, Cork celebrating their retention of the Sam Maguire.
The players were supping a few pints in bar of The Burlington when Tompkins told Con he reckoned there was “something wrong” with his knee. He’d collided with Martin O’Connell maybe ten minutes from the end and pretty much limped his way to the finish.
Anyway, Con ran his finger along Larry’s knee and, even through the suit pants, could tell something was now seriously wrong. “I think your cruciate might be gone!” he says. And, incredibly, it was.
I say ‘incredibly’ because anyone will tell you that the first 60 seconds or so of a ruptured cruciate brings shocking pain. It settles down after that but, for those 60 seconds, the victim is usually inconsolable.
Con says he remembered Tompkins wincing briefly after that collision with O’Connell, but nothing more. He played on. He won. He climbed the steps to get the Cup.
WRECKED
Tompkins wrecked his hamstring in the drawn 1988 final against Meath. Spent the next three weeks over and back to Old Trafford, getting emergency treatment. Anyway, the hamstring goes again in the replay and he’s beckoned to the line by Billy Morgan. “Out to midfield!” says Billy. And that’s where Tompkins finishes out the game, kicking two crucial frees at the end. The following day, Dr Con checks in on the patient and, all the way down from his backside to his ankle, Larry’s leg is jet-black. It’s inexplicable that he managed to play on.
When we were children in Ventry in the late ’80s, there’d be four of us out the back, endlessly imitating the big dogs of the game. Those dogs were Meath and Cork. They collided in three out of four All-Ireland finals between ’87 and ’90 and, at the time, nothing felt bigger. We’d be glued to the television whenever they crossed swords.
My uncle Páidí was a great man for swapping jerseys and he used have this huge trunk of them in the house in Ard an Bothair. And, whenever he wasn’t around, we’d be like locusts in an orchard, pulling shirts of every colour out so we might re-enact whatever game we’d seen on television.
Páidí would be vexed with our thieving and I often think that that trunk would be a real treasure trove today, if only he’d put a padlock on it.
The jerseys might have shrunk a little from the washing machine, but they’d still be flowing on us like evening gowns as we bate balls off the gable wall, playing out our own All-Ireland finals. And strange as it might seem given our history of family and place, I used to love wearing that blood red of Cork.
Why? Because they were a team of men. From Kerins to Cahalane to O’Brien to Counihan to Teddy Mac to Fahy to Barry to Allen and, of course, Tompkins, they had a ruthlessness about them. And with Billy Morgan on the line? Jesus, that team was one tough nut to crack.
So even though, in my adult life, beating Cork became such a fundamental obligation, I grew up with a massive respect for what they represented.
Some of the hardest opponents I ever faced in football were Corkmen. Graham Canty, Noel O’Leary, Nicholas Murphy, Alan O’Connor, Pearse O’Neill… big men, great footballers.
But it struck me over the years that they came to exist in a strange kind of emotional vacuum too. And that was reiterated to me watching Cork’s hurlers in Thurles last Sunday.
Just think of the support they had in Semple Stadium and the energy you could feel it instil in them. I felt that that young Cork team became empowered by it, throwing off the shackles and going after Tipperary.
They looked ravenous. What they had came across as an almost insane hunger that Tipp just couldn’t contain. They bullied the All-Ireland champions.
Now maybe they won’t follow it up; maybe that was their All-Ireland final. But it just struck me as a massive statement of identity. A team saying “We are Cork!”
The county’s footballers need that energy, but where will they get it? They should have beaten Kerry in Killarney two summers ago, but what have they done since?
I’ll never forget how meekly they subsequently fell out of that Championship against a Kildare team that would then ship seven goals against Kerry. Cork looked like they were feeling sorry for themselves. They still do.
I’m not trying to take another swing at them here; I recognise that I’m probably seen as having done that often enough.
But it’s not pretty being a Cork footballer. The lack of support they get is a disgrace. The women’s team probably draws as big a crowd most of the time and that’s an issue, because this is a group that needs both to be inspired and to inspire. Neither is happening.
I’ve been playing club football in Cork for the last three years and, believe me, the talent is off the charts.
But it seems to me that everything down here is a battle. They county team had to build its own gym out in Fermoy. They nearly have to haggle just to get a training ground. They seem to be expending so much energy fighting their own, there’s not much left for the games.
The scene is crying out for someone to inspire, to smash through all the petty squabbles holding this group back. Because they seem to have hit some kind of psychological wall here. I mean, nobody is expecting anything from them in this Championship. Think about that.
There’s a bunch of older, solid, more experienced lads there like Kerrigan, Driscoll, Collins, Cadogan, O’Neill, O’Connor, Shields and Walsh that it strikes me are better than what they’ve been giving.
And the question needs to be asked, why is that the case? Is it down to management? Is it down to needless interference from the county board? Is it just a simple case of the wrong people being in positions of influence in Cork?”
I don’t know Peadar Healy, but he’s said to be a very solid guy. A good man. I don’t doubt he’s putting his heart and soul into the job, but it’s 2013 since Cork last recorded a Championship win over any team above Division 3 status. Crazy.
Bear in mind that Cork have won ten Munster U-21 Championships in the last 14 seasons. The talent coming through is enormous. I see it myself. Sean Wilson, Sean Powter, Michael Hurley, Sean White, Kevin Crowley, John Mullins, Stephen Cronin, serious young talents.
But look at Cork’s League campaign. Lost to Clare. Lost to Kildare. Drew with Down, Galway and Meath. A lot of games in the balance, but where were the leaders? They were out the gap against Meath, should have jumped on their throats. Hammered them.
But the group looks fragile. I’d go so far as to say they don’t look narrow-minded enough to be ruthless.
They’re on a hiding to nothing against Waterford this evening, of course. Cork will win. Then they’ll have Tipp next, a game they should be desperate to get a cut off after last year. But will they?
Look, it’s not that they’re swanning around, full of airs and graces. That’s not the issue with this Cork team. I don’t see arrogance in them. But they’re somehow stuck in neutral.
I remember Jim McGuinness saying that if there was another county team he’d like to manage, it would be Cork. He could see the raw material.
But they need to find some anger. And, through that anger, maybe to build confidence.
Because they look a little beaten down to me. Somebody, somewhere needs to change the energy around them. That’s management’s job but, maybe, the players need to do it themselves.
Or maybe it’s a challenge for the county board even. Make no mistake, the young players coming through in Cork right now are better than I was at that age. Maybe they need to look at what young Spillane and Coleman and Kingston and Meade did with the hurlers last Sunday.
I’m all for smart tactics in a game, but don’t get bogged down in them. Get your energy right first and foremost. Play with some kind of freedom. Show the world a killer instinct. Is it in them?
TRACTION
The GAA is full of sports psychologist but, sometimes, old school psychology should carry more traction than anything in the text books. It shouldn’t be complicated for Cork. In fact, they can’t afford it to be.
Maybe it needs to be as simple as setting the right temperature to how you prepare. Like that story told last week of Roy Keane bollocking Denis Irwin out of it over a simple mis-placed pass in training. And the psychologist who witnessed it turning to Alex Ferguson as if to say “Jesus, that was over the top!”
But Ferguson just smiling in response. Telling him, “That’s why we win games on Saturdays!”
Look, every Cork team that under-achieves in any sport probably gets Keane’s ruthlessness tossed in their faces. I’m sure they’re sick of that. Fair enough. But is that kind of dog in this group?
Is there a Niall Cahalane, a pincushion for needles, but nearly always playing through the pain barrier? Or a Tompkins, roaring on the physio’s table?
I’m not comparing like with like here. The game is different now, life is different. I get that. But it doesn’t mean that all the old stuff is obsolete. And I’m just asking that question. Do Cork footballers have an inner dog?
Because nobody’s expecting anything from them this year and that’s not good enough. They need to find something different. It won’t happen this evening, but then it doesn’t have to.
But it needs to happen soon.