‘PEOPLE WILL LAUGH, BUT MAKING THE SUPER 8s IS POSSIBLE’ THE ONLY WAY IS UP
Cork football has fallen so low...
THE speed of Cork football’s descent is such that it has caught out even those who erected the safety net to catch it. Back in January, Graham Canty, launching a five-year football plan for the county he had co-authored with Conor Counihan and Brian Cuthbert, attempted to pin-point how far the county had fallen.
Setting his tape at their Division 2 Allianz League status, the 2010 All-Ireland winning captain suggested Cork were ‘in or around 12th in the country’.
The irony is that, as his plan was on the brink of delivering on one of its headline promises, the land shifted once more beneath their feet.
The closing date for applications for the post of a full-time project manager to oversee the development of Cork football just happened to be on the same week they sank into the League’s third division.
That now represents base camp and, had the GAA chosen to introduce a second-tier Championship on the strength of their final League position, it would have seen the number one team in the land at the start of this decade become the number one contender to win a reconstructed Tommy Murphy Cup by the end of it.
Cork football is no stranger to hard times but frustration and envy at the superiority of their neighbours is no longer the dominant emotion – living in Kerry’s shadow is the least of their problems these days.
It is hard to paint Cork’s shortterm future in anything other than shades of grey.
When the ball is throw in on their first summer clash against Tipperary until June 1, the only price on their heads will come in the shape of a lottery ticket with the market damning them as 250/1 no-hopers.
And yet it may not be as bleak as that number suggests.
‘I would probably say right now that they are a Division 2 team that will be operating out of Division 3 next year,’ suggests Billy Morgan, the man who, more than any other, is the embodiment of the game in Cork.
‘They are a better team than the results in the League suggested. Making the Super 8s should be their goal. I know people will laugh at that but that should be their objective,’ he insists.
Anyone else talking up Cork football right now runs the danger of being dismissed as a deluded optimist.
But it is not just Morgan’s storied past that lends his judgement weight, he also provided Cork football with a rare good news story as he managed UCC to Sigerson Cup success earlier this year.
Of course that was a team headlined by Kerry talent – most notably Sean O’Shea – but it also included the likes of Mark White, Kevin Flahive and Cian Kiely, who will all feature for manager Ronan McCarthy this summer.
More than anything, it was the upturn in Cork’s performances and results at the tail end of the spring that is fuelling what little optimism is going around.
Sandwiched between wins over Tipperary and Armagh, they menaced a Donegal team that would be viewed as an upwardly mobile top-six team.
They led them by five points at half-time and while they eventually got burned off in the final quarter, it was not the performance of third tier fodder.
While McCarthy, in his second season, remains a manager under pressure, there can be no denying his efforts to staunch the bleeding. He has invested his faith in youth and enthusiastically embraced the League to blood new players. In total, 33 players saw game-time with young talent such as Flahive, Conor Dennehy and Mattie Taylor starting in all seven games, while the likes of Eoghan McSweeney and Damien Gore got run-outs in attack. There have been accusations that his management team is weak – prompting the county board, midLeague to instruct McCarthy to replace Ciaran O’Sullivan and Eamonn Ryan who had stepped down as selectors prior to the start of the season and he responded by promoting two of his backroom team, Eddie Kirwan and Gary O’Halloran.
The board’s intervention hinted at a fracture in the relationship with their manager, with concerns heightened in the aftermath of a nine-point trimming from Clare – their fourth defeat on the bounce to the Banner men.
McCarthy stood accused of overseeing an ultra-defensive gameplan but then he had good reason to be cautious.
Conceding 6-38 while taking a 33-point aggregate thumping in back-to-back games – as happened against Kerry and Tyrone last summer – can do that to you.
The price for going ultra-defensive was inevitably paid at the other end as they managed just 1-15 in their first two League games against Fermanagh and Kildare – and the loss to Clare sparked a subtle change.
The collective defensive ethos remains, but there is slightly more ambition with Cork usually keeping three up front to maintain some kind of offensive shape in the latter rounds of the League.
That may have had contributed to the improvement in their performance levels, but they remain a blunt instrument – an average of just over 13 points a game this spring won’t buy much championship credit.
But that may be a quality rather than a tactical issue – Luke Connolly has still not developed the consistency to match his ability, while Sean Powter and Brian Hurley are hindered by fragile hamstrings, although if there has been a bright note it has been the form of the latter’s younger brother, Michael.
Still, there is hardly enough there to make it to the Super 8s, but then Cork’s decline needs to be set against the backdrop of a lop-sided provincial structure and a qualifier pool where there are more jelly fish swimming than sharks.
If they beat Tipperary – a team they hammered last summer – they will get a free shot at Kerry in the Munster final and, most likely, a 50/50 one at another Super 8s wannabe in the qualifiers.
‘It would be absolutely huge for their development if they got to the Super 8s,’ suggests Morgan.
‘The talent is there. Prior to the last two years, Cork had won 10 of the previous 12 Munster Under 21 titles and a lot of those guys are still the right side of 30.
‘Also, Kerry minors may have won five All-Irelands in a row but in two of those Cork ran them so close, so I have no doubt the talent is there,’ insists Morgan. And, for the first time, they may just have a plan in place to harness it.
Apart from delivering on a project manager – in essence a director of football – who should be unveiled in the coming weeks, the promise to lower the number of senior clubs from 19 to 12 next year should help raise standards.
Newly appointed county secretary Kevin O’Donovan, who drew up 25 proposals as a template for how Cork could rise again three years ago, has added to that sense of impetus.
‘It is early days yet but there have been changes with the new county secretary and he brought out a plan a couple of years which was very positive and if he implements that you’d have to believe we will be in a better place,’ says Morgan.
It may take time to get there, but at least they have crashed landed onto that safety net.
The bounce they get will dictate how high Cork go this summer.