Cork must play with courage and conviction but champions will prevail

MUNSTER SFC FINAL Kerry v Cork Sunday,July2 Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney Throw-in at 2pm Ref: Paddy Neilan (Roscommon)

WITH Kerry bidding for a fifth Munster title in a row it seems obvious to say it has been quite a while since Cork put a Championship win over on their neighbours. It’s only when you consider that the last time Cork beat Kerry in senior championship football, Graham Canty, Nicholas Murphy and Noel O’Leary were on the winning side, and Seamus Scanlon, Eoin Brosnan and Tomás Ó Sé were on the losing team, that the chasm of time is fully appreciated.

It might also be worth noting that Cork’s last Championship victory over Kerry precipitated RTE analyst Martin Carney to declare that June 10, 2012 was the day the music died as far as that Kerry team was concerned.

Carney may have felt vindicated when Donegal tipped Kerry out of the All-Ireland series at the quarter-final stage eight weeks later but it’s safe to say the Kingdom were merely writing new material that summer, and the four successive provincial titles since would suggest the music is as sweet as ever from the Kingdom.

And Cork? That 0-17 to 0-12 win in Pairc Ui Chaoimh stands as their high-point of the last five years, which is quite something to say. With a little over a year their All-Ireland winning manager, Conor Counihan, was gone, and they’ve since seen Brian Cuthbert come and go as team boss. It’s also a reasonable assumption to say the incumbent, Peadar Healy, won’t be involved beyond this season, no matter what Cork achieve.

All the while Kerry have been steered steadily forward by Eamonn Fitzmaurice since 2013, picking up an All-Ireland title in 2014 and probably more but for the best ever team to come out of Dublin.

Relegation from Division One of the League last year, failure to get promotion this spring, and two limp performances against Waterford and Tipperary this summer all add up to tally a woeful couple of years for the Cork senior footballers. Then most damning thing that can be said about them right now is that they have slipped so far down that they have become irrelevant, not just as All-Ireland contenders, but even in Munster. The best than can be said for them is that the only way is up. If one wanted to get cute with some wordplay you could say the only thing Cork is doing now is staying afloat.

It’s 22 years since a Cork team recorded a senior Championship win in Killarney. Never in all the intervening years has a Cork team looked to ill-equipped to buck that trend. Better Kerry teams that next Sunday’s have stood in the way, but has a worse Cork team rocked up to Fitzgerald Stadium since 1995? At least a Cork team so poor of form and low on confidence and bereft of belligerence. At least when Billy Morgan brought a team to Kerry you knew they’d fight on their backs for the jersey. Counihan’s teams had a quiet steel about them in the image of their manager. The malaise, to this observer, started with Cuthbert. A likeable, obliging character, who obviously knows his football, but there was a defeatist attitude about him, never more apparent than after the 2015 Munster Final draw at Sunday’s venue. Sure, Fionn Fitzgerald’s equaliser was a sucker-punch for a Cork team that should have - but didn’t - close out the win, but Cuthbert’s post-match demeanour that day screamed defeat. Rather than extol his team’s gutsy performance and talk about finishing the job in the replay, the Cork manager couldn’t but hide his acute disappointment. It seems obvious now, given what came next, that that negativity transferred to his players.

Cuthbert’s successor, Peadar Healy, doesn’t scream positivity or ruthlessness either. Again, from his brief media engagements, Healy seems an agreeable sort, a stand-up individual, but there’s been nothing in his proclamations or body language to suggest the type of leadership required at this level of management. Morgan, especially, and Counihan could be as cranky as they needed to be. On this side of the border Jack O’Connor or Pat O’Shea weren’t backward about coming forward to rail and rage if and when they felt the occasion justified it. Fitzmaurice, too, is no shrinking violet, and is known for a ruthlessness in managing and selecting his players. The common denominator with the last five named mentioned? They’ve all won All-Irelands as managers.

Football teams are built and perform in their manager’s image. Jim McGuinness was a ruthless manager. Jim Gavin too. Some might prowl the tram-line like a panther in the cage, others might sit back and sip their bottle of water, but the successful one all have it. Of course, while much of how this present day Cork team carry themselves is down to their manager, there comes a point when the players have to take ownership too. It looks now as if the confidence and spontaneity and courage and belligerence has been coached out of this group of Cork players, but there’s nothing from stopping them still playing with a little joie de vivre even while trying to stay loyal to whatever gameplan and tactics they’ve worked on.

You can be sure that while Fitzmaurice and his team will have covered every base in terms of planning for every eventuality, every Kerry player can play it off the cuff if and when that’s needed too. Case in point: it’s doubtful Fionn Fitzgerald practised kicking too many 50-metre points ahead of that 2015 but cometh the hour cometh the Kerry creativity. And courage.

Cork’s goal, moments after Tipperary’s, had a touch of that too (some might say desperation) but it was a rare display of off-the-cuff football that they’d probably do well to embrace more often than they have been of late. There’s a fine line between going out and playing superior opposition with reckless abandon (see Westmeath v Dublin), and throwing off the inhibitions and playing with the courage of one’s conviction, but right now this Cork team seems a long way off either of those. Exactly how they approach Sunday’s final from a mental point of view, every bit as much as physically and tactically, will go quite some way to determining the outcome.

For Kerry, it’s also as much about the mental as the other things. Of course Fitzmaurice will have his players tuned in and alive to any creep of complacency. Facing Cork in a Munster Final, the Kerry players won’t need much motivation anyway. Not when that unbeaten stretch in Killarney is there to be protected. The longer it goes on the more you don’t want to be a player on the team that eventually loses to Cork at home. And lose to Cork in Killarney a Kerry team eventually will. Will it be Sunday? We just can’t see it.

It’s foolhardy to second guess what 15 Kerry will start on Sunday; much less to ponder what formation they will play. Who had Kevin McCarthy at no.11 and Jack Barry on the bench on their team to start against Clare? If Killian Young or Ronan Shanahan is to start in defence who makes way? Fionn Fitzgerald to the bench or Paul Murphy to the attack? Is Barry John Keane simply meant to be kept in reserve and sprung from the bench? And Donaghy: start him in the hope of killing off an early Rebel uprising or delay his introduction for some late fire-fighting?

Can Cork win? Of course they can. Look north to Down’s Ulster victory over Monaghan last Saturday. In the Championship almost anything is possible. With no Pairc Ui Chaoimh to christen and no expectation on them in Killarney, Cork are practically on a free-roll. The expectation and pressure, as always, is on Kerry. They players always tell us these are the days they train for and yearn for. On Sunday’s there’s no reason why Kerry can’t or won’t rise to the occasion.

VERDICT: Kerry