‘WE HAVE LOST OUR CORKNESS’
CUTHBERT DISCUSSES 5 YEAR PLAN
BRIAN Cuthbert, along with Conor Counihan and Graham Canty, have become the faces of an attempt to save Cork football from what up to last week looked like an inexorable slide down the pecking order of Gaelic football in Ireland.
Long seen as one of the major powers in the national game, Cork has been suffering over the last seven years to make any ground on the powerhouses that are Dublin, Mayo, Tyrone and Kerry with all four moving clear of the Rebel county in most aspects of the game.
Few could disagree that Cork have never managed to claim as many All-Ireland crowns as a county of their size and tradition should have, but the tally of seven that currently sit in the locker still makes Cork fourth on the all time winning list – albeit 30 titles behind their neighbours Kerry.
So what does Cuthbert think is the first step to bringing Cork back to the party and competing for serious honours? Well, Corkness of course.
The former Cork team manager believes that the county needs to get back its Corkness, that intangible that makes the county’s people different from all others.
“We have lost our ‘Corkness’. We are proud people and enjoy a tradition that people in other parts of the country would love to have. So it doesn’t bother anyone whether it’s Cork hurling or football, camogie, ladies football or handball. It doesn’t matter. It’s Cork.”
Cuthbert feels that Cork GAA and football in particular needs to get out there and raise its profile, raise the profile of the players and create a buzz around the place once more.
“It is about us, the players and management engaging with our people as we call it. If you imagine that you have an eight or ten-year old boy or girl at home, because Cork are not successful at the moment those kids don’t know the players. They know the Premiership [soccer] players, the Munster rugby players and even the Dublin players but
Cork is slightly different. We need the Cork players to make themselves known because up to now you could say that players just want to play, if you have a media day they might try to avoid it, their focus is on playing. But now there is an onus on our players which will be led by the Board and the project co-ordinator on returning [the players] to the people.
“That might mean after games
three or four of them might be outside with the kids, talking to club people. It might mean more open days, more bringing Cork teams to club grounds for open training sessions, presenting Sciath na Scoil cups, going to schools – whatever it is, there is certainly an onus on our side giving back to the public rather than the other way round.
“Success on the pitch would be brilliant from all of this but there are a lot of foundation stones that need to be put in first and I think one of those is to be more open to prompting the players and the teams.”
Is there a need to play more games outside the city?
“Well perhaps there is but that isn’t the only priority right now. There has been calls for Cork football games to be played in places like Clonakilty and getting the teams out of the city for all kinds of matches but what people forget sometimes forget is that we won the All-Ireland in 2010 and our first game out the following year was against Fermanagh and only 568 people were there. So what I am saying is that that is what we have to turn around.
“People don’t just follow success, they follow something that is tangible and something that represents them and right now that is a long way from where we are but that is the challenge. That is where we must get to and I think this plan can help us get there.”