Why losing to Cork is never an option in the Kingdom
Kerry set sights higher than just beating Cork, who always raise their game for it
NOTHING invites heat on Kerry football like losing to Cork.
The 2006 replay defeat in Páirc Uí Chaoimh will always be remembered for that discomforting sound of a small section of Kerry supporters booing Declan O’Sullivan when he was substituted but the real fun came in the aftermath.
By the time we got back to Killarney that night, a whole spool of halftruths had been weaved into a blanket of lies.
The story was that the Ó Sé’s, backed by a militia of fellow extremists, had stormed out of the Kerry dressing room after an unholy row at a team meeting.
Apparently the post-match truth and reconciliation summit had developed into such a poisonous affair that Darragh had sceilped Jack O’Connor, who refused to board the team bus back to Killarney that night in protest.
The truth was not half as sexy. Jack wanted a meeting in the dressing room afterwards but we had already left to board the team bus because of the discomfort that only 40 grown men who have had to share a toilet cubicle can relate.
The team meeting took place at Hayfield Manor that evening and the healing process – I can still recall Darragh and Séamus Moynihan made two stirring contributions – was so immediate that we ended up having a scatter of pints.
And in the beery confusion of it all, Jack and Declan missed the bus home and eventually arrived into Tatlers where we had decamped for the evening when we hit Killarney.
‘Ye are some haydogs,’ roared Jack, when he arrived into our circle, and then he burst out laughing.
No good, though, the word was that we were a camp in crisis, something that was only put to bed when we were crowned champions a couple of months later.
That’s the thing about losing to Cork − reason and truth are among the first things to get torched.
It could be argued that Cork have not bothered to wait for the result in throwing truth and reason on the bonfire in the build-up to today’s Munster final.
Paul Kerrigan claimed recently that the Kerry media mafia was bad-mouthing Cork at every available opportunity, when the reality is the whole country has been talking ill of them.
But I can see where Kerrigan is coming from. For games like this, players love to develop a sense of grievance to get their teeth into.
You saw that last week with Down players queueing up to reveal how hurt they were by TV talk that Monaghan would put it up to Tyrone in the Ulster final.
The reality is that they were not hurt at all, but they made it hurt. I was the same as a player, throw me an excuse as to why I had to perform in a game and I would bleed it for all that it is worth.
Listening to Kerrigan has convinced me of one thing; Cork will bring war to Kerry today.
Forget Kerry’s 1/7 odds and the six-point handicap, we are going to see a game today that will go down to the wire.
Why? Call it intuition, but I know what makes Cork tick. The last thing that they can afford to do is to come down here and oblige those who see this as a turkey shoot. They will empty themselves here because they know the prize that is on offer.
Everything that they have done – or more to the point not done this year – will be forgotten or forgiven on the basis of how they conduct themselves here over 70 minutes.
In a way that’s their strength and their weakness. If this fixture is big for Kerry, go add a trillion and multiply by ten for Cork.
In fact, let me give you a simpler sum: Cork have won 35 Munster titles and seven All-Irelands; Kerry have won 98 Munster and 36 AllIrelands.
For games like this players like to develop a sense of grievance...
I will spare your calculators; Cork have bled one All-Ireland from every five Munsters while Kerry’s strike rate is basically one All-Ireland for every two provincials.
What that tells you is that Cork traditionally raise their game for Kerry, while we just like to keep it high all the time.
It is an issue which long-term Cork have to address if they are to move beyond the notion that they amount to something more than an SKA (Stop Kerry Association).
Today, though, stopping Kerry will suffice. Will they manage it? No, but they will have a lot of fun and some joy trying.
They will go for Kerry’s jugular – size and strength is their friend around the middle and I expect that they will try and lay down a marker by dominating around the middle.
That has always been the platform for good Cork performances against us − most recently in 2015 when Alan O’Connor dominated − and it will be the starting point today.
Make no mistake, that will be their battleground of choice and they will be fuelled by a rage that will take quelling.
They may edge Kerry in that sense, but at some stage the fires will dull and football questions will have to be answered.
Such as: Can the Cork full-back line cope with the twin-threat of James O’Donoghue and Paul Geaney man-to-man?
And if they can’t cope with an orthodox set-up, can they really play a systems game? Because in my experience that is something they have always struggled with.
That is in part due to the fact that they have not always had the footpassing skill-set to accelerate what is now called the transition.
And even when they work the ball up to the other end of the field, have they the scoring threat and the nerve to bleed scores in the final quarter when this thing comes to a boil?
Sure, they have the likes of Paul Kerrigan, Donncha O’Connor and Colm O’Neill – although he is not the cutting edge force he once was – but it takes a massive leap of faith to believe that the sum of their parts will somehow add up to something bigger than Kerry’s.
And it is not as if we don’t care about this fixture. We might not obsess about it to the same degree, but losing to Cork was never an option.
It never will be.