Cork: Taking the long view
ecent heavy defeats inflicted on the Cork football and hurling teams have plunged supporters in red and white deeper and deeper into angst: The worst ever. The new low. Never as bad.
Well, we might as well start at the obvious place.
Practically every complaint about Cork’s decline features one man in a starring role.
Having been in situ as county board secretary for more than 40 years, Frank Murphy is blamed on a regular basis for the county’s lack of success and if the credit goes to the Cork County Board when the county wins, then the criticism also has to accepted.
Being aloof and uncommunicative creates a vacuum, filled swiftly in the 21st century with speculation — about the state of play with the new stadium, for instance — when it’s not loaded with hostility.
Over the years, the right people have not been involved with Cork teams, the investment in coaches has not been made, and there have been numerous player strikes. The charge sheet goes on.
But it is also true that by now, blaming Frank Murphy has become part of the process many are hiding behind. Rather than engage with substantive issues which could improve matters for the GAA in Cork, people can opt out of engagement by throwing out a name.
It’s win-win: a distant figure most critics don’t know can be blamed for what’s going wrong and can also be used as an excuse for not getting involved in finding solutions.
Regarding the teams’ general failure in competitiveness, a timeframe wouldn’t just help; it’s crucial.
Cork’s recent lack of All-Irelands — 11 years since a hurling title, six since a football win — isn’t new. The Leesiders went without a hurling All-Ireland between 1954 and 1966, and didn’t see Sam Maguire from 1945 to 1973.
All counties, powerful or not, suffer famines. Kerry from 1986 to 1997, Tipperary 1971-1987 and Dublin (one All-Ireland between 1983 and 2011) are obvious examples. Counties which count themselves among the GAA’s elite have spent decades waiting for an All-Ireland, if that’s your metric for success.
What’s interesting in Cork’s case is not to blame and harrumph but to take time to drill down past the statistics. How exactly did they end that mid-century drought?
In the mid- to late 50s, underage hurling and football was reorganised and modernised in Cork, harnessing a large available population and giving them games on a more regular basis.
The result was a golden era for Cork, with plentiful minor and U21 titles feeding through to success in both senior codes, as well as dominance of the then-new All-Ireland club series. Players such as Brian Murphy and Martin O’Doherty collected staggering numbers of All-Ireland medals at all levels in both hurling and football.
However, those minor and U21 teams — such as the breakthrough minor footballers of 1960-1 and U21 hurlers of 1966 — took time to come through to the senior teams of the late 60s and 70s.
That advantage didn’t last. Other counties caught up with and passed Cork out, and close observers of the scene on Leeside pushed for reform of what had become a stagnant under-age system.
Thus the relatively recent large-scale reorganisation of underage activity on Cork, Rebel Óg. This offers hope for Cork supporters for the future, particularly given the displays last summer when underage squads from the county managed a clean sweep of the titles available to them over one weekend.
Unfortunately for those supporters, based on previous experience, those players will take a decade to graduate to the senior ranks.
Random factors have not aided Cork, either. The change in championship structures could also be said to militate against the men in red, ruling out as they do the possibility of dual players. This means some of the potent weapons that might otherwise be available to Cork teams are not to hand.
Other problems? In hurling, the loss or decline of certain schools which catered for specific hurling populations, such as Farranferris (west and south-west Cork) and the North Monastery (the city’s northside), as well as the dilution of competition and standards with the splitting of the intermediate hurling grade, haven’t helped. The tendency of promising underage players to choose hurling over football, though no longer guaranteed, hasn’t benefited the latter code.
The culture of team preparation down the decades in Cork has also bumped up against the modern insistence on systems in both codes. Having gifted individuals — and in Christy Ring, gifted individual — as well as the finishing school of a fearsomely competitive senior championship meant resources were plentiful, but all of those militated against the development of a significant coaching culture on Leeside.
Cork certainly doesn’t compare with the market leaders in hurling and football on that score. Back in the 50s, Kilkenny had Fr Tommy Maher bringing scientific analysis to the coaching of the skills in hurling, while Kerry have had deep thinkers on Gaelic football going back to the publication of Dick Fitzgerald’s coaching primer more than 100 years ago and plenty more since then.
Finally, looming over all considerations of the GAA in Cork — though not physically, just yet — is the renovation of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which has already jumped in cost from €70 million to €78m.
How big a factor in team performance is that financial commitment?
Clearly, if money which could hire a dozen coaches for the city, for instance, goes to rebuilding a stadium, then that commitment becomes a factor, and it’s understood that a representative of one of the Cork senior squads has been approaching area businesses for funding for team preparation, for instance.
However, county board sources reject any suggestion that funding for the teams has been affected, with overseas warm-weather camps available to both footballers and hurlers, and how does one square the focus on the stadium with the success of the underage sides last summer?
Expect this picture to get clearer. It just won’t happen any time soon.
That’s why the timeframe is crucial. It always is.
