Cork can answer critics, insists Dave Barry

Former Cork footballer Dave Barry has challenged Brian Cuthbert’s side to make their critics eat their words after the torrent of negativity that has followed Sunday’s defeat to Dublin.

On RTÉ’s League Sunday, Joe Brolly claimed their season was over following the 11-point Division 1 final reverse, stating they were “dead now for the rest of the championship”.

Barry maintains the league was a success for Cork coming from where they were last July, when Kerry disposed of them with ease. He hopes they can now make Brolly eat his words, like Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s side last season.

“Joe was left with egg on his face after (Kieran) Donaghy’s comment last year,” said Barry. “As I know myself, you have to build confidence and experience. You have to play the game and you have to take hidings. I was on the receiving end from a great Kerry team for many years. It’s very easy to have a go at a team when they take a hammering and Brolly did it last year with Kerry when he said the conveyor belt had gone. They came back and showed a bit of grit and determination.

“That’s sport, you have to answer your critics. It’s the (25-year) anniversary of the double this year and if we didn’t beat Meath that day I’m sure a lot of people would have been pointing fingers at us back then as well. It was fantastic but I was in my late 20s and lads like Jimmy Kerrigan and Barry Coffey were around the same age and had gone through a lot of disappointments, heartache and defeats to Kerry.

“We’ve all been through this kind of thing but it’s how you respond and I think it helped us through, especially with 14 men against Meath. If that was earlier in our careers we would have been destroyed because Meath would have blown us off the park.

“If you look at Cork at the moment there aren’t a lot of household names. When people mention Cork they expect them to be at the top of the tree but now they have to dig in, take the defeat on the chin and move on.”

If Barry had one main criticism of Cork on Sunday it was their overreliance on the hand-pass. The statistics backing up his point were as evident in the semi-final win over Donegal as they were in the decider defeat.

But his concerns about the way football is being played go beyond the county borders. “There’s a lot of hand-passing going on and I don’t think players are taking enough responsibility on the park when they have the ball.

“Lads have had space in front of them but stopped instead and hand-passed the ball two yards back.

“Underage football is teaching this idea of recycling the ball. There’s this thing call ‘box ball’ where you have 20 kids in a small area and you try and keep the ball as long as you can and it’s all tiny passes. I think it’s detrimental to the game. If you have open space you have to get the ball into the forwards as quickly as possible because if you don’t teams close up too quickly.

“I’d be heavily involved in soccer and it’s coming to the Mourinho way in Gaelic football - you defend and you hit the team on the break and you win 1-0. As a spectacle, it’s disastrous.

“We’re teaching adults now how to play that way but now kids of six, seven and eight are being taught. If this continues, in 10 years’ time you’re going to see a basketball game on the pitch.”

Barry appreciates Cork will be remembered for their last outing but stresses the positives of a league campaign where they topped the table for the second year running but on this occasion adopting a new system of play.

“To get to a National League final from where they were last year down in the Páirc (Uí Chaoimh) against Kerry was an achievement...

They’re going in the right direction but they met a good Dublin team that just destroyed them.”

Barry’s former Cork team-mate Dinny Allen said Sunday’s performance was a mental failure on the players’ part. “They’re all great athletes and they’re all great footballers,” he told Red FM, “but obviously the bit wasn’t between their teeth. I’d be more worried about that than bringing in fellas like Alan O’Connor or whoever else. The panel they had, I thought, was good enough. It’s all down to attitude at this stage and the steel has to come back into it at this stage. Whether Alan O’Connor can do that, I don’t know. It’s what there (now) that I would be more worried about than what’s coming in.”

Meanwhile it was last night confirmed John O’Rourke suffered a dislocated shoulder in the early moments of the second half in Sunday’s Division 1 final. A full assessment of his injury hasn’t yet be made but it is expected he will be at least ruled out for a few weeks.