O’Connor keeps the faith as Cork come calling

result, has the importance of the Cork / Kerry rivalry. Clashes that once defined a sporting summer don’t seem nearly as important as they once used to.

Indeed last year the Munster old firm went into abeyance following Tipperary’s somewhat surprise victory over the Rebels in Semple Stadium. Is it any wonder the old derby doesn’t feel as vital as once it did?

“It’s still a fierce rivalry,” Murphy insists.

“Possibly the thing with the Kerry / Cork rivalry is that the players have changed a lot on both panels in the last three or four years, whereas when they were playing in the noughties, you have very similar panels of players going toe-to-toe.

“You could be playing them in the league, championship and even All Ireland. Familiarity breeds contempt and it fed into the rivalry a bit and like you said we haven’t played Cork since ‘16, but I don’t think the rivalry diminished any bit.

“They’re great occasions to play in. A Munster final, particularly in Killarney, they seem to get bigger crowds, a lot of the time brilliant weather. They’re great occasions to be involved in. I wouldn’t say we’re in a no win situation. There’s a huge carrot there for us. You have a load of different factors

“With regards to the rivalry at home [in Rathmore on the Cork / Kerry border] it’s a fairly intense rivalry to be involved in, but at the same time people aren’t falling out over it.

“People are very into their football out there, but after the game they’ll probably shake hands with their neighbours and they’ll move on. [There are] families where you might have one supporting Kerry and some people supporting Cork out there. It’s fairly intense.”

Whether it will be intense or not on the pitch this weekend is open to question, as bizarre a thing to say as that might seem. The evidence of their opening two games in the Munster championship, however, suggests Cork simply aren’t at Kerry’s level.

They beat Waterford by just a single point and the first half performance Peadar Healy’s men gave against Tipperary was one of the worst ever given by a Cork side in championship football.

Fair enough they turned in around – and did so reasonably impressively – in the second half of that Munster championship semi-final. Still, it’s hard to imagine they’ll have what it takes to challenge Kerry and, maybe, that is the opening they need. Cork have nothing to lose and Kerry everything.

“I wouldn’t say we’re in a no win [situation],” Murphy explains.

“There’s a huge carrot there for us. You’ve a load of different motivating factors. It’s a Munster final so you’ve a Munster championship. You have keeping our winning run going in Killarney.

“You’re avoiding a back-door, which this year more than any other years in the past there’s a lot of danger in the back-door this year. I would agree with you in the sense that Cork are coming in with the pressure off.

“They’re coming into it in a nice position. As you said they’re probably being written off a bit, so they can cut loose basically. The pressure is off them to a certain degree. We’re in our own patch so we’re happy enough with that.

“It will be [a physical contest] and it will be keenly fought, but I think they always have been like that. Maybe it’s just that we haven’t played them in the last twelve months.

“New personal rivalries could develop, but I don’t think the rivalry’s diminished I just think we haven’t faced them in the last twelve months. I’m sure when the ball is thrown-in the next day it’ll be like nothing has changed.”

We can but hope. The standards that drove Murphy’s anguish earlier in the season will ensure the Kingdom are fully tuned in for this one. The only real question is will Cork be ready for it?

You get the feeling that Murphy – and the rest of the Kerry set-up – is just as invested in the idea of a good old-fashioned, blood and thunder Munster final as the rest of us.

As a Rathmore man he wouldn’t want it any other way. HAVING made his championship debut in 2008, Alan O’Connor won three National League medals, three Munster championship medals and an All-Ireland medal with Cork before announcing his retirement for inter-county football in 2014.

He was just 29 at the time, so his decision to call it a day, along with several others who had been involved in a lucrative era for Cork football under Conor Counihan, seemed a tad premature.

It wasn’t a loss of appetite for the game that prompted his decision to leave the Cork squad, however, and he hadn’t ruled out the possibility of returning if his services were required at some stage in the future.

“I had been with Cork since my minor days, which meant I had been ten years making a two-hour journey up and down to the city for training, so I just thought I needed a break from it.

“There were other reasons why I felt I had to take a step back, because I had a young family and I had started my own business, and it was basically lack of time to give the required commitment that led to my decision,” O’Connor revealed at the Cork press day last week.

Approached by Brian Cuthbert with a view to resurrecting his career two years ago, the St Colum’s clubman didn’t hesitate to answer the call, but it seemed as if his second coming would be short-lived after he sustained a serious leg injury during Cork’s loss to Kildare in an All-Ireland qualifier.

“I suppose I could have walked away after that, but the way I looked at it was I’d be gone from inter-county football long enough, so I was determined to get back in the mix.”

Although Cork have fallen on lean times since O’Connor was previously involved, he says he was never going to allow that to influence his decision one way or another.

“It’s like anything you enjoy, you want to keep doing it for as long as you can, so I was delighted to get the opportunity to come back, and I felt if I worked hard enough I’d be an asset to the panel.

“I’m obviously hoping there might be a return to the good times for Cork, because you don’t go into these things without having belief in the players and the people around you.

“I know we’ve left ourselves down at times over the past few years, but you have to keep believing, and we showed against Donegal in Croke Park last year we have potential

“We are basically a team in transition, and things having clicked rightly for us yet, but we’ve seen glimpses of what we can do, and we know there’s plenty scope for improvement.”

O’Connor accepts, however, that Cork and Kerry have moved in opposite directions since 2015, when two games were needed to resolve the issue in the Munster final at Killarney, hesitating when asked if there are any concrete reasons to feel the Rebels are in with a chance next Sunday, given the gulf that appears to have developed between the teams in the meantime.

“I suppose being relegated to Division 2 in the league last year didn’t help us, because you need to be playing top-flight football and Kerry have been involved in games of a higher tempo this season.

“They are definitely rated above us, but if you think back to 2015, we went in with a similarly low profile and we certainly did ourselves justice, particularly in the drawn match.

“Maybe there was a lot of weight on Kerry’s shoulders, because they were expected to win handy, whereas we were under no pressure, and we just went out and performed.

“We’ll try to do that again on We got a lot of criticism for our first half performance, but to be honest I don’t think it was that bad

Sunday, and, while Kerry have come a long way in the space of two years, if we play as well as we can, we won’t be without a chance.”

Cork’s progress to the Munster final has been far from convincing, but O’Connor contends that coming through a couple of tight games against Waterford and Tipperary has helped to jell the team, and he suggests there were aspects of both performances that were encouraging.

“They were two intense games, and it took us a while to break Waterford down as they packed their defence with 15 fellas behind the ball more often than not. We showed great fitness and resolve to get through it, and again in the semi final against Tipperary, who, in fairness, got to an All-Ireland semi final last year and are not a bad outfit.

“We got a lot of criticism for our first half performance against Tipp, but, to be honest, I didn’t think it was that bad, because we missed two goal chances and kicked a lot of wides that we’d normally put over.

“The bottom line is we aimed to get a Munster final this year, we’re there now, and it’s a two-horse race at the end of the day. That’s the way we are approaching it, and, hopefully, we’ll reinvent ourselves to get over the line.”