Forecast is looking gloomy for Rebels
‘Transition’ is no excuse for Cork’s sorry decline
THE last thing Cork football folk want to hear is a Kerryman reading out a bad weather forecast, but the clouds grow ever darker. They are probably of the opinion right now that when it’s not raining, it’s pouring but there is a depression that may just descend this evening which will leave them submerged in absolute misery.
My gut is telling me that Offaly will beat the Rebels in Tullamore today, sending them back to Division 3 where they came from but this time with the kind of consequences that will reverberate through the game, as it will almost certainly see them falling out of the Sam Maguire and into the Tailteann Cup.
And when the tier two championship was constructed, ironically passed at a Congress held in Cork, it was not envisaged that it would be used as an emergency shelter for the Rebels.
But if they lose today, with Kerry lying in wait in the Munster semi-final, then that will almost certainly be their fate.
I know you probably think I am penning this while taking a break from dancing on Cork’s grave but, honestly, that is not the case.
That is not necessarily because our two tribes get on well on the pitch, but it is in selfish recognition that Kerry’s best interests are always served when Cork are in a position to challenge us.
I know that back in Páidí’s playing days, Mick O’Dwyer’s annual complementing of Cork being the second best team in the land was received as a sneering missile fired in from across the county bounds.
One day an irate Cork holiday-maker, finding little comfort from the pint he was supping at the bar, beckoned Páidí over: ‘Tell Dwyer the next time I hear him saying that about us I will stuff Pat Spillane down his throat.’
But O’Dwyer was not lying; he had a genuine fear of Cork, one obviously accentuated by the reality back then when it was a knock-out Championship.
Our team would have viewed Cork with the same respect. They always pushed us hard, particularly in Munster, because they had attitude and talent. At one stage, they had an inside line of Donncha O’Connor, Daniel Goulding and Colm O’Neill, all free-takers which was a measure of how deadly accurate they were.
But that feels like such a long time ago and while Cork did sink Kerry as recently as two years ago, it felt more like a lightning strike than a declaration that battle lines had been redrawn.
It took them nine and a half weeks to win their first game of this season against Down last weekend and even then it was nothing to write home about.
Cork scored 1-16 from 22 attempts, which translates at a 70 per cent execution rate, Down managed just 1-12 from 30 shots, which was a 43 per cent success rate.
In an age where there is a premium on looking after the ball and shot selection is not left to the whim of players but dictated by getting into the scoring zone, teams generally don’t operate off 43 per cent execution rates.
Had Cork met a competent team last Sunday, they would still be waiting for their first win and they would be even further down the road to appearing in the Tailteann Cup.
How have they become this bad? That is a hard question to answer, but I do think they made some poor managerial shouts. I genuinely felt that they were on the brink of building something under Brian Cuthbert and his decision to quit in the aftermath of a heavy All-Ireland SFC qualifier defeat to Kildare in 2015 hurt.
A couple of weeks earlier, he was set to celebrate a Munster win until Fionn Fitzgerald bombed a longrange equaliser, and he did not have enough time to pick them up after losing the replay, but the public mood had soured at that stage. In hindsight, had he been given time I don’t think they would have fallen of a cliff that has seen them outside Division 1 for six seasons and reach the last eight of the Championship only once since 2014.
Larry Tompkins insists claiming Cork are in transition has been used for so long, it has worn thin. He isn’t wrong; I read recently that they have used over 90 players in League and Championship since 2017, which is staggering.
It is not all bad. Conor Counihan’s appointment, effectively as director of football, has reenergised their underage structure. They did the double over Kerry at minor and Under 20 last year and, from my time in the Kerry academy, I know they have an exceptional strong minor team coming again this year.
Let there be no doubt that Cork will come again, but falling back down to the third tier will only delay their arrival.
They remind me of Kerry in the late 1980s and early ’90’s when, as a child, I did not really have home grown role models I could aspire to and it was the Cork players back then that inspired me.
However, it is different in Cork because you have hurling, soccer and rugby to ensure that there are other credible pathways to go down rather than look admiringly across the county bounds.
This month Billy Hennessy – who joined the Cork football panel having been involved with the hurlers last year – opted out while full-back Declan O’Mahony declined to join at the start of the season.
Kevin Crowley, a true talent, is no longer involved while the experience that someone like Mark Collins would bring to their forward line is being missed.
And you need hard-nosed experienced players when you are in a scrap as ugly as this.
They have got to hope today that Offaly are as poor as Down were when it came to capitalising on the chances that came their way, but there are only so many times you can get lucky.
Time for Cork to make the sun shine or else they will be heading for the kind of storm from which there is no shelter.