Cork have a puncher’s chance against Mayo

If Cork football was feeling patronised by comments from the Kingdom that would be totally understandable, writes Damian Stack

FOR Cork football people the last couple of weeks can’t have been easy. It’s not so much the defeat to Kerry or the manner of it, as difficult as that was to take, more so it’s the comments from across the border. That has to grate. Worse than nails on a chalkboard.

It’s not even the opprobrium that’s been heaped upon them that will sting most of all– Marc Ó Sé wrote after the Munster final that the Cork team dishonoured the jersey – it’s the pity or concern or whatever way you want to characterise it.

The concern from the Kingdom is genuine enough. They don’t enjoy seeing Cork in the state they’re in at the moment, but it is ultimately a self-serving kind of concern. Kerry football needs Cork football, to some certain extent at least.

The evidence of the past five years seems to suggest otherwise – only in two of those years were Kerry pushed by Cork – but in the Kingdom there’s a recognition that they’re stronger when Cork are stronger. Even the defeats make them stronger. They certainly make the victories all the sweeter.

All the same it must come across as terribly patronising for men and women born and bred in the blood and bandages to be listening to these Kerry men hold court and tell Cork what’s good for them.

Players and management teams will always tell you they pay absolutely no attention to what’s said or written about them in print or online. Just noise, the common refrain. Fair enough, except that quite a lot of the time the first response of a player or a manger after a big victory is to castigate the critics. Leading one to wonder – not unreasonably – what you would know what the critics have been saying about you if it’s just noise?

These Cork players know full well what’s being said and what’s being written about them and as much as the man on the street in Mallow and Kanturk it must boil their blood. The trouble is, as it stands, they don’t have much with which to fire back a volley across the county bounds.

Cork are in a bad place right now. They’re not playing good football. If the Munster is any guide they’re not even playing an especially coherent brand of football. The reason the criticism from Kerry stings is that a lot of it is on the money.

Ó Sé was completely over the top by saying they dishonoured the jersey, but on most everything else he was right. If Cork want to quieten these Kerry men, there’s only one way to do it: by going out and putting some good performances together back-to-back.

And who’s to say that, maybe, these Kerry pundits haven’t done Cork a huge favour? What more motivation could a Cork man want than to stick it to a cocky Kerry man? It’s easier said than done of course.

There’s no switch Cork can flick. To get out of their current rut is going to take a lot longer than a fortnight’s break. Indeed it stuck us as quite worrying that Peadar Healy felt forced to say in the aftermath of the Munster final that it was back to the drawing board for Cork.

We really do hope that it’s just one of those things a manager says as a throwaway comment, because if it’s not... yeesh not good. A team isn’t in a good place went a game-plan that’s been worked on for months and months gets tossed aside two weeks before the make or break game of the season.

It struck us as quite worrying that Peadar Healy felt forced to say it was back to the drawing board for Cork

That’s why it’s so hard to construct an argument for why Cork can triumph this weekend. Mayo, for all their problems, are playing to a definite system. Stephen Rochford’s men have huffed and puffed at times, but they’re been gaining momentum all the while. Their second half performance against Clare in Ennis was genuinely impressive.

Cork, by contrast, are hoping to pull a performance out of the bag and it would be out of the bag. It’s a long time since Cork have put in a solid seventy minutes. If Cork are to win this Saturday afternoon it will be against the form, against the odds.

That’s not to say it can’t or won’t happen.

They’re got a chance, but from this vantage point it’s little more than a puncher’s chance. If a new game-plan is to be trialled it’s a toss of a coin whether it’ll click or not.

Yes Cork have the football to live with Mayo, but championship football is about more than that. Mayo have the confidence and structure to prosper... do Cork? It seems unlikely.

That said it’s a golden chance to finally shut up all those patronising Kerry men. Then again so too was the Munster final at the start of the month...