Cork football in danger of sliding to irrelevance

IS it time to start to think the impossible? Time to start to think that the Cork footballers could soon find themselves in the third tier of inter-county football? Fair enough the odds are against it, then again the odds were against them losing out to Clare last weekend and that, too, came to pass.

On a grimy grey Sunday afternoon in Cusack Park the Rebels sank without a trace when the pressure came on. In the first half Cork looked to hold the whip hand. Once Clare rallied, however, the Rebels were found wanting.

By all accounts it was tame stuff from Peadar Healy’s side when the second half onslaught came from the home side. In the starkest of terms it seemed to confirm the slide in standards from 2010 to the present day.

Back then – and in the years that followed – there was a comforting professionalism to Cork. Whatever you want to say about Conor Counihan’s sides they knew what they were about, knew how to grind it out. Can the same be said of the Cork sides that came under his predecessors?

In hindsight it was so much folly the amount of criticism Counihan shipped. He was seen as too rigid in his approach. His team and tactics seen as too functional and mechanical for a fluid game. What Cork wouldn’t give now for the type of results Counihan achieved with his functional football (and that was a caricature in itself at best).

So where did it all go wrong? With Counihan’s retirement? That’s probably a little too pat an explanation. There was as drop in standards even before he departed, largely down to player retirements, but also surely a certain amount of fatigue with a manager who had been in situ for five or six seasons had set in by then.

Fresh blood was needed and once it arrived it seemed to have the desired effect. Remember Brian Cuthbert’s first year in charge, 2014. The Rebels cut a swathe across the landscape in spring, powering to a league semi-final where they came across All Ireland champions Dublin.

In the first half of that semi-final Cork did more than hold their own. For a spell they looked the real deal. Eight points up at half-time it was possible to imagine them back in the big time, challenging for All Ireland titles the way we all imagined they would do after their victory over Down on the third Sunday of September all those years ago.

The second half quickly disabused us of any such notions. Dublin came and came and came again. Each time Cuthbert’s men had no answer. A soft underbelly exposed and brutally exploited by the best in the business.

Part of the reason for that failure was tactical, but much of it had to be mental. As good as Dublin are – and were at the time – it shouldn’t have been as easy as it was for them to rattle Cork the way they did. Cork should have had more resolve, shouldn’t have been as fragile as they were.

And that’s a pattern we’ve seen repeated all too often since then. Cork don’t respond well to set-backs. They lose out to Kerry in a Munster final they should have won and a week later they’re crashing out of the All Ireland championship at the hands of Kildare.

If that makes you nervous for how they might respond to this latest set-back then you’re not alone. At present they sit just outside the dropzone and do so only on scoring difference.

With three games remaining that’s far from an ideal place to be, especially when you consider none of their three remaining league games are exactly what you’d call gimmies. In their next game they’re at home to Meath. After that Cork are away to a Derry side scrapping themselves for survival.

Even their final game, which a few weeks ago would have been pencilled in as two handy points at home to Down, looks challenging. Down hit rock bottom and have bounced back strongly, have Cork yet to hit rock bottom?

For their sake, for all our sakes you’d have to hope so. They’re better than what they showed at the weekend, even one must admit that as of now they stand – based on form and results – as only the fourth best team in Munster. Clare beat them by eight points last weekend and a played in an All Ireland quarter-final last August. Tipperary beat them last summer and went on to play in an All Ireland semi-final.

There’s been plenty of talk over the past couple of months about whether or not the new Pairc Uí Chaoimh would be ready in time for the Munster final with Kerry in July. The closer to the date we get the question has changed to one of whether or not Cork will be able to qualify for it. The way things are going right now you’d have your doubts. Cork need to arrest their slide and fast.