Long term is now more important for Rebels

IN Cork it is, as it has always been, the people’s game. That’s why it hurts so much when things don’t go their way. It’s more keenly felt there than almost anywhere else.

Were Kilkenny to go through a similar famine to the one the Cork hurlers are currently enduring you can be sure there’d be plenty belly-aching on the banks of the Nore as there currently is on Leeside.

Even so the longest Kilkenny have ever had to wait from one title to the next is ten years – between 1922 and 32 – and this year is the eleventh since Liam McCarthy last resided in the Rebel county.

That’s amongst the longest waits ever experienced by Cork. They’re all but certain now to match the fallow years between 1954 and 1966 and, that way things are going, it won’t be far off the all time record of sixteen years between titles – 1903 to 1919 – by the time they get their act together again.

It’s not even the fact of the famine that’s getting Cork folk down. It’s the seeming lack of a light at the end of the tunnel. Cork haven’t won an underage provincial title since the minors triumphed in 2008. The Under 21s’ wait for silverware is a year longer again.

With nothing to sustain the glorious enterprise it’s hardly surprising that the momentum of the mid noughties has been surrendered. It was hardly encouraging then as, last week, results came through which suggested the conveyor belt of talent hadn’t yet cranked up again.

The Under 21s’ defeat to a Cian Lynch-inspired Limerick wasn’t hugely unexpected and neither was the minors’ defeat at the hands of Tipperary. Still there was a certain hope expressed that either or both of these teams could go close or, in the minors’ case especially, even win.

On Tuesday night the Under 21s went down by seven points. On Thursday the minors fared a little bit better, going down by just five points having been well in the game until the closing stages. There over two late June evenings, and in the starkest of terms, Cork’s place in the pecking order was affirmed again.

The word is that at Under 17 level, Under 16 level and below Cork are producing some talented hurlers and squads that, in time, will win those long awaited Munster and All Ireland underage titles, but even talk of minor titles in a couple of years time (next year or the next at the earliest) tells us there’s no quick fix for what ails Cork at senior level.

Jimmy Barry Murphy’s most recent tenure papered over the cracks to a certain extent. That JBM overachieved is self evident. He got players to go beyond, for a short time at least, their limitations.

His four years in the job were the very definition of muddling through. He found players – notably Seamus Harnedy – who hadn’t played at minor or Under 21 level for Cork, leaving us to believe, briefly, that maybe this underage success thing wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Harnedy, however, is the exception rather than the rule. The gloriously gifted hurler who bloomed late. The guy who slipped through the net of the talent trawlers from development squads and almost fired Cork to an All Ireland title. Clearly there aren’t too many Harnedys out there. Against all this backdrop it was actually quite encouraging to see how many people turned out for the Rebels’ hurling qualifier in Pairc Uí Rinn on Saturday evening. As we’ve already said it always will be the people’s game down that neck of the woods. It’s encouraging as long as they don’t get their hopes up too high on the back on one victory over what must be considered a disappointing Dublin side. To give Cork their dues they were quite good in the game after a slow enough start. They showed against Dublin – fourteen man Dublin for the most part – that they’ve got some of the best forwards in the game when they’re on song. Harnedy we’ve already mentioned. Patrick Horgan, meanwhile, was back to his best or at the very least near his best. Alan Cadogan bagged 1-5 from play and looked every inch an All Star inside forward. He has the potential to blossom into the best forward in the game. If, that is, he performs like this on a consistent basis. It helps to be part of a settled team, playing a settled brand of hurling at a consistently high level for that to happen. To get at least another championship fixture out of 2016 is invaluable to a guy like Cadogan and to a guy like Mallow’s Cormac Murphy too for that matter. The win gets Cork back to Thurles for another big game – this time against Wexford with a place in the All Ireland quarter-finals on the line. Cork will probably be favourites, but you couldn’t back them with any degree of certainty. Wexford, granted, had a mediocre league campaign, but with Lee Chin back to something like his best the yellow bellies won’t be bossed around the middle of the park, an area where Cork have struggled to impose themselves consistently of late. Win or lose Cork’s long term struggles aren’t going anywhere. What’s needed now is the methodical long term thinking of people like Cork’s impressive coaching officer Kevin O’Donovan. Strange though it may seem, for now, how the senior hurlers perform is not the be all and end all.