THE LAWS OF ATTRACTION
For four decades, the rivalry between Brian Cody and JBM has crackled and flamed and fizzed, rearing its head on some of the biggest days in hurling ... this will be special
THE laws of attraction cannot be broken. The pull towards one another is too strong for either warrior to resist and, try as they might, Jimmy Barry Murphy and Brian Cody just can’t help facing off against one another.
For nigh on four decades, theirs has been a rivalry that has crackled and flamed and fizzed — and it has a habit of rearing its head on some of the biggest days of the year. Tomorrow is no different, the Semple Stadium quarter-final showdown marking the latest instalment in their marathon personal battle.
At the root of the competition is deep mutual respect — a graciousness in victory and defeat that stems back to their first encounter as teenagers, and has flowed through their senior playing and managerial careers.
In hurling terms, they compete on a higher plane, elite hurling men from elite hurling counties engaged in an epic, historic battle.
Cody and JBM can’t seem to avoid each other, but then ... opposites always did attract. MARTIN Coleman remembers how Jimmy Barry Murphy ‘ had it all’ when he burst on to the Cork scene in the early 1970s. It was the era of George Best and, although the GAA could never hope to compete with the hype and glamour of English soccer, Barry Murphy became one of their first poster boys and an instant hit with Cork supporters.
As well as possessing an uber-cool image, Barry Murphy played with a swagger that commanded attention and, crucially, had the talent to back it up.
A gifted dual player, JBM announced his arrival on the big stage in stunning fashion as a precocious 19year-old in the 1973 All-Ireland senior football final against Galway. He scored two goals that day, and the second was an absolute gem.
Collecting a raking fist-pass from Ray Cummins, JBM turned ballet-like out of an attempted tackle and went toe-to-hand with the ball before arrowing a low shot past Gay Mitchell at the Hill 16 end.
His celebration made it even better — soaking in the adulation with outstretched hands, as if sending a thank you message to the heavens.
A star was born that September afternoon. An icon had arrived.
‘I certainly felt it in later years but I didn’t feel the pressure then,’ JBM would reflect years later.
‘I was confident, cocky you might call it. I wasn’t worried about losing, or not trying something different. I got on the ball, took a bit out of it, I suppose more than I should have. It worked out fine.’
When Cork won a three-in-a-row of All-Ireland hurling titles from 1976-78, Coleman kept goal and JBM was the star attacker.
‘He had so much talent, he was embarrassed with it,’ Coleman says.
‘He was a better hurler than a footballer, he’d turn on a sixpence. After the matches, you’d have a few fellas looking for autographs but there was always a couple of hundred around Jimmy.
‘We’d take the piss out of him but he’d take it and give it too. His honeymoon was on an All-Star trip with 20- odd other blokes. We riddled him about that but Jimmy took no notice. Stuff like that would roll off him.
‘The media too, they’d be all over Jimmy. You could be the hero of the day and some fella might ask you for a comment but you’d have a TV crew around Jimmy and he might not have hit a ball!
‘But Jimmy was captain in 1982 and 1983 and that put a big dent in his career, failing to captain Cork to an All-Ireland,’ adds Coleman.
Cork won Munster titles in both of those years but Kilkenny beat them in successive All-Ireland finals and, in the first of those victories in 1982, they were captained by a Cat called Cody.
It was a bitter pill for JBM to swallow but that final was one of former GAA president Nickey Brennan’s personal highlights.
‘Yeah, I held JBM scoreless in the 1982 All- Ireland final,’ recalls Brennan, with a smile.
‘Not many people can say they ever did that. I would never put myself up with the hurlers of the current era but I had my good days.
‘To say you held Jimmy Barry Murphy scoreless in an All-Ireland final is nothing to be sneezed at,’ adds Brennan, then describing JBM as ‘ one of the nicest, most courteous and most honourable guys on and off the field’. Tomorrow, JBM will r enew acquaintances with Cody and, while that 1982 All-Ireland final captaincy duel was a standout chapter in this rivalry story, the intriguing symmetry between their careers was established long before.
Cody, 59, and Barry Murphy, 58, have competed against each other consistently at minor, U21 and senior levels, with Cody winning the All-Ireland senior final contest 2- 1. Cody was the tenacious defender, JBM the swashbuckling forward but, while their positioning affected their respective approaches to the game, both players were operating at the top level in terms of skill and application.
Brennan knows the two men well and marked out Cody for great things from a young age after the pair lined out together in a 13-aside All-Ireland Colleges final with St Kieran’s in 1971.
However, in contrast to the adulation JBM received in his county, Brennan does not believe Cody the player got the recognition he deserved in Kilkenny — despite his three All-Ireland senior medals.
‘His hurling career was brought to a premature end with injury,’ Brennan recalls.
‘And there was a part of his career where he didn’t get very well treated at all.
‘ In f act, he was abominably treated. He was given a spell at full forward and I remember he came home after an All-Ireland final and didn’t get treated very respectfully by supporters,’ adds Brennan.
CODY had won his first senior medal at full back in 1975 but, in the 1978 final , he endured a forgettable afternoon at full forward. It was Barry Murphy, the natural attacker, who scored the decisive goal for Cork with 13 minutes remaining to seal Cody’s agony.
‘Brian Cody’s time playing full forward is not one he’ll remember with the greatest relish,’ concedes Brennan.
‘But it would be very unfair for anybody to dwell on that. It should be forgotten about in the overall scheme of things because he was a very competent player and who knows what he might have achieved had injuries not curtailed his involvement?’
If Cody is remembered as a topquality player, although not at the same level of Barry Murphy, his managerial achievements blow JBM, and everyone else, out of the water. Barry Murphy may have won their first major managerial clash, the 1999 All-Ireland final, during his first term in charge of Cork, but Cody took over from that point on. To the tune of nine All-Ireland and six League titles (including last year’s 14- point destruction of JBM’s Rebels).
Brennan believes that Cody’s greatest ability is the way he can coax big performances from players who might sometimes appear to have little left in the tank.
‘What he has brought to the scene is a level of discipline in the players that get involved with Kilkenny,’ says Brennan.
‘Those coming on board know that they’re coming into a regime that is very enjoyable, yes, but also absolutely very strict in terms
of exactly what is expected of you in that regime.
‘You are expected to make a lot of sacrifices to be part of the scene but the opportunity is there for rewards at the end of the day.
‘It wouldn’t have been possible to deliver that level of discipline at the start but, once a couple of All-Irelands were won, the formula and process was delivered,’ adds Brennan.
That formula and process has been punctured this year by Dublin and then rattled again by Tipperary and Waterford.
But Cody’s meticulously assembled foundations are still intact and represent a hugely daunting challenge for Barry Murphy and his young Cork side in Semple Stadium tomorrow.
The wheel has come full circle for these two contrasting but bonded individuals and, based on a multitude of memories from a multitude of meetings, we have every right to expect something special again.
Because we are talking about two icons of the game who have been drawn to each other over four decades and, when Cody and JBM meet, it is always special.