Ricken needs to make quick impact as Rebels hunt revival
THE most interesting thing about the Cork senior football team today is their manager.
That might sound damning for a county that were All-Ireland champions in 2010. And it is in part a reflection on their repeated failures to get near the level reached under Conor Counihan and his dedicated troops in the late 2000s, finally reaching their target against Down on a fraught afternoon in Croke Park.
Cork are well distant of contending now, and the ferocious heat unleashed by Kerry in last year’s Munster final – Cork eventually lost by 21 points – coming a year after the shock defeat to Tipperary at the same stage, did for the ambitions of Ronan McCarthy. The sense McCarthy was restoring some of the old purpose to the Rebels was obliterated in his final two seasons – but this was pandemic football, extraordinary times that threw up some flabbergasting outcomes.
However, the damage done by Kerry was irreparable, and Keith Ricken is the latest man charged with making Cork fit for competing at the elite end.
That he used 41 players in pre-season competition is a fair validation of his repeated claim that this is not a shortterm fix. There are no shortcuts to where Tyrone, Kerry, Mayo and the rest reside. He will be judged in the end on championship, and especially how Cork fare against Kerry.
But McCarthy had hauled Cork into the Super 8s, and it seems reasonable to suppose that, in the long run, returning Cork to regular appearances in Croke Park in high-summer is Ricken’s target.
He’s an interesting figure, a highlyregarded underage manager who spoke with bracing frankness as recently as this week about why he is doing the job, the sacrifices he is making – and his
conviction that he is doing it because he believes he can make a difference.
His first significant test today is a sizeable one. Roscommon in Hyde Park are sticky opposition (thrown-in 2pm), and in fact they are a team who would easily see themselves as Cork’s equals, another county who have bounced between Divisions 1 and 2 and are obliged to pit themselves, every summer, against heavyweight local opposition.
‘I love Cork football and I’m always committed to it, but if I thought the best place for me with Cork football was down in a divisional Under-15 team somewhere and helping that out, I would have gone there,’ Ricken said this week.
‘I felt my skillset was probably needed here. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’m living in a three-bed semi-detached house with a big mortgage, two kids and a lot of other stuff on in my life.’
He doesn’t need this, was the message, but he wants it. Ricken has not set promotion to Division 1 as a target, but Cork need to be competitive, at least, and time is short in this competition — teams need to start fast. No pressure. cork: M Martin; S Powter, S Meehan, T Corkery; C Kiely, J Cooper, M Taylor; J Grimes, C O’Callaghan; D O’Connell, B Murphy, D Buckley; M Cronin, B Hurley, D Dineen. roScoMMoN: C Lavin; F Lennon, B Stack, E McCormack; D Ruane, C Hussey, R Hughes; U Harney, E Nolan; N Kilroy, E Smith, D McGann; C McKeon, D Smith, C Cox.