Nemo carrying the fight to salvage Rebels’ provincial pride against fiercest rivals
KERRY’S emphatic win over Cork in this year’s Munster Under 21 football final was not without significance. In equalling Cork’s 26 titles in the final year of the grade, it means that the Rebels’ claim of supremacy over their neighbours in Munster is now reduced to a single strand – the senior club championship.
And for that relief they are indebted to their most potent force, Nemo Rangers, who have won 15 of the 26 championships that have come Cork’s way.
Once again Nemo are carrying the fight for Cork’s footballing pride at Páirc Uí Rinn today when they seek to strip Dr Crokes of their provincial and All-Ireland crowns and they do so against a foreboding backdrop of Kerry dominance.
Nothing new in that, then, but this time it is extending into parts never reached before.
In the history of the senior club championship, Cork have dominated every decade in terms of Munster titles wins but should Crokes win today, it will be their fifth and Kerry’s sixth in total this decade.
Cork is already buried on that front – Nemo’s 2010 success over Crokes is the county’s only success – as they have already gone past the point of catch-up.
It also underlines Kerry’s wider dominance at county, underage, club and colleges level.
Here are a few stats to water Cork eyes. Both the Kerry senior and minor teams completed Munster five-in-arows this year with the juniors winning it for the fourth consecutive year.
Today, if An Ghaeltacht defeat Limerick’s St Finnan’s it will be the 10th time in 11 years that the Munster intermediate club title will head for Kerry, while Dromid Pearses will seek to become the ninth successive Kerry winners in the junior club grade next Sunday.
Cork’s only comfort this decade is a cold one; their U21s have dominated – five titles to Kerry’s one – but it has served no greater good.
If anything, it has mocked them. When Cork inflicted a 22point hammering on Kerry – the latter’s biggest championship defeat in any grade – in the 2011 U21 final, it was seen as a potential tipping point.
Three years later, when the seniors humbled Cork by double scores in the Munster final, five of that Kerry U21 team were on the pitch to remind that those who laugh last, laugh longest.
Derek Kavanagh’s parting gift to Nemo and Cork football was as the starting full-back in that 2010 win over Crokes, but much as his heart would like to enthuse about the future of Cork football, his head tells him otherwise.
‘I don’t believe that this period of Kerry dominance is cyclical, this is something which they have planned and delivered on.
‘The difference is that in Cork we are still leaning on the cyclical to move things on,’ argues Kavanagh.
From a Cork perspective, the worst may be yet to come.
While there has been no visible pay-off yet from the Kingdom’s four-in-a-row AllIreland winning minor teams, it would defy GAA economics if it does not pay some dividend.
And that is unlikely to be the end of it. Kerry schools have won 10 out of the last 11 Munster Colleges titles as well as the last four Hogan Cups.
‘I think the moment the whole thing changed was when Jack O’Connor became minor manager, because he had a system in place where he had five schools with five coaches who were all singing the one tune in developing players form 15 years up.
‘That probably covered 90 per cent of the county minor panel and as a result what Kerry have now is a machine and they could go on and win six or seven of the next 10 All-Ireland minors, and when you have that kind of success you are going to be getting some serious players coming through,’ suggests Kavangh.
But, surely, Cork should fightback by imitating the Kingdom’s blueprint.
More than any other club, Nemo can vow for the value of a prolific school nursery in Coláiste Chriost Rí which has sustained the club over the past half century.
And if it works for Nemo and Kerry, why not all of Cork?
‘There are a couple of reasons, because Cork is bigger it is not as easy to identify schools and get everyone singing off the one hymn sheet with a view to developing players that can step up into county underage panel
‘But even if that was possible, there is the reality that in some schools there are teachers who just have no interest in promoting football,’ argues Kavanagh.
But schools represent only half the issue; the failure of Cork clubs to compete at all levels suggests a malaise that goes much deeper within Leeside football.
While Kerry is ruthless in delivering on its tradition, Cork clings to structures that are no longer fit for purpose.
Despite trophy-laden evidence of a thriving club game, Kerry reduced the number of clubs in their senior championship from 11 to eight in 2016 to prevent erosion of standards, while the two weakest of the nine divisional sides played off for entry into the county championship
Meanwhile in Cork, senior status is worn as a badge of pride and is protected by a confused relegation process.
As a result, 20 clubs and six divisions played in this year’s county championship, its size diluting its quality.
Nemo went to the county quarter-final before UCC provided them with a match, having beaten clubs such as Skibbereen and Kiskeam along the way who would most likely struggle for air playing at intermediate level in Kerry.
‘We need structural change badly in Cork but there is no appetite for that,’ admits Kavanagh. ‘We would have a far better championship if we cut our senior clubs to eight, but there would be huge resistance to that because some people equate dropping down a grade as some kind of death knell,’ he argues.
Hampered by a lack of vision and suffocating structures, Cork look to Nemo once more to put the county’s best foot forward today.
Though the suspicion is that group would pale when compared to some of the great sides that conquered Munster from Capwell in the past, they stay true to the faith.
‘We always loved representing Cork, getting out on the field and playing the best that is out there.
‘We have always had that belief in ourselves and I know that it is still there because this is what our club lives for,’ adds Kavanagh.
But it is asking far too much of them to plough a lone furrow.