Rebels mixing it up as the red tide rises

have unveiled one of the most exciting young talents to catch the eye in a long time. The secret was out about the Midleton youngster a long time ago but it is one thing being able to deliver at colleges, minor and U21 level and quite another to take it to the game’s biggest stage.

The timing of his arrival could hardly be better for Cork, given Ben O’connor’s recent departure. He is quite like O’connor in many ways: fleet of foot with boundless energy and an ability to strike under pressure with precision from outrageous angles. But he is also a deadly strike forward who is capable of loading his own bullets. He is quite exceptional and brave in the air.

If there is a word of caution to be sounded about Cork’s win last Sunday it is to be found in the admission made by Alex Ferguson this week, when he suggested that teams tend to raise their game when Manchester United are the opponents.

The same can be said of Kilkenny THE sledging that has become such an ugly feature of our games has got to be tackled. I played in a time when we hit each other hard and often, but generally it never even crossed our minds to try to humiliate or undermine an opponent with the tongue. It is something that I brought into coaching and management as a core rule — that players under my watch would not verbally abuse match officials or opponents — because it quite simply goes and, just as with United, you either find that teams roll over and die in their company or they simply grow. Cork chose to do the latter, but what really impressed me was that they did it in two different ways.

In the first half, they attacked with pace and venom to move the Kilkenny defence around, while in the second half, having stung the beast, they did not shirk from the physical challenge they had against the ‘manliness’ of what our game is supposed to be about. If a player was caught doing that I would simply have shown him the door, but the prevalence of such a culture now suggests that a lot of managers don’t care about how demanded. It was all very impressive and it was not just about Lehane. John Coughlan and Darren Sweetnam are two more rookies with rich futures, Pa Cronin has started to wear the uniform of a leader, while the energy and power shown by Seán Óg Ó hailpín, returned to wing-back, makes a nonsense of the reasons why Denis Walsh cast him aside last season. their players behave — or worse, actively encourage it. If players were getting the right leadership from their manager off the field and captain on it, then trash-talking would long ago have been put in the bin where it belongs.

Better than that, you can see a real squad developing. Last year, when Cork reached into the bench, they found little or nothing. On Sunday, Barry Murphy was able to spring John Gardiner and if he can develop a squad which has the depth to al l ow pl ayers of Gardiner’s calibre become impact substitutes, then you are talking about the emergence of a very serious team.

I hope we are seeing just that. I know the great desire, and understandably so, in the GAA is to see developing counties gate- crash the game at the elite level but that is not to say the old powers still can’t offer the game something new.

Indeed, for all of Dublin’s welcome arrival as a serious player, it has not been accompanied yet by the frenzied support we would like to have seen it develop, but if Cork find their feet again the summer will be awash in red and white.

They are poised for the league play- offs. I expect them to beat Tipperary on Sunday to top Division 1A, leaving the latter to face Kilkenny in the semi-final — and I stand by my prediction that by the end of the spring, they will be league winners.

Loud, red and proud, the soundtrack for the summer may just have hit the recording studio.