Managing Cork and fickle fans can make you cynical creature
Welcoming her class of 12-year-olds for the first time, she asked us who among the 30 of us were regular mass-goers, non mass-goers and those who attended for occasions. Because she had no time for those fair-weather Catholics (lapsed Catholics wasn’t her term).
The mistake she made was giving her opinion before calling for a show of hands. There were but a handful of brave kids who admitted they didn’t go. She thanked them for their honesty. The sheepish pick-and-choosers joined in with those who did go and held their lámha suas. When nobody confessed to being an indifferent attendees, she smiled almost with relief.
“That’s good. Because the only thing that’s worse than not going is going when it suits.”
The memory struck me driving back from Kerry’s Munster final press event in Killarney last Thursday night.
A crowd of 36,000 had been the ambitious target for the town’s jettisoned music festival this past weekend but there is nothing unattainable about the 35,000 figure the Munster Council are budgeting for Fitzgerald Stadium next Sunday.
From Cork, they will come in their droves as much to soak up the occasion and very little else. If it was the football and not Killarney they cared about, Páirc Uí Chaoimh would have been thronged last year when Cork were expected to say goodbye to the old stadium in style. If it was football and not Killarney they cared about, they wouldn’t bother turning their cars west next weekend. Because right now, Cork don’t exactly inspire confidence. That was obvious by the silent majority that agreed with Tomás Ó Sé’s criticism of their management and players.
Kerry aren’t backwards either when it comes to taking their boys down a peg or two but at least they’re open about it.
The night before last year’s Munster final in Cork, this writer was in Killarney and asked several locals were they attending the game the following day. The negativity that hung over the place was thick that day. James O’Donoghue later referred to that funereal pall and how it influenced him.
But Cork’s contingent — we won’t call them a following when they’re not — will be there with a pint in one hand and dismissing their own team out of the other. If Cork win it’s a bonus but the food and beverages won’t taste any better for it nor any worse should they lose.
Rugby is regarded as the biggest bandwagon sport in the country, but a Cork-Kerry Munster football final in Killarney is one of the GAA’s premier afternoon for event junkies.
It ranks high among Cork football’s sacraments that must be attended. An All-Ireland game with Kerry in Croke Park is another. Such affairs had to be built on something more than craic, though. Later this week, you will read in these pages about how much it meant for Cork to beat Kerry in Killarney in 1987, and '89. Those victories, like when they repeated the dose in ‘93 and ‘95, never lost their flavour but enriched a rivalry that now echoes so hollow when it is treated more as a day out than an actual final.
As Conor Counihan would know, managing Cork can make you a cynical creature. His successor Brian Cuthbert may take a moment to look at the large pockets of red on the terraces before Sunday’s throw-in and remember there were just 18 souls that cheered his team off the field in Omagh in March.
We know, we counted them.
He will see through so much of what surrounds him. Last December, then county chairman Bob Ryan called on people to desist from their negativity about the footballers, saying: “I have been following Cork football since my childhood and I can say without fear of contradiction I have never been as disgusted and disappointed at the nasty sniping and veiled efforts at undermining this team, management and players by people who should know better.”
Nobody’s heeded those remarks. But a greater indictment of Cork is that it took a Kerryman in the form of Ó Sé to say what so many of them were thinking.
What Cuthbert and his team will have this weekend isn’t a fan-base but the GAA’s very own prawn sandwich brigade. Something they can do without — a gang there to suit themselves rather than to support their team.
It was just before the national anthem on Sunday that we noticed Paddy O’Rourke was retweeting a slew of abusive comments aimed at him following Meath’s defeat. Though he was rightly sent off, the goalkeeper was hardly at fault for the amazing turnaround, but the fools and the faceless had clearly collared him as an easy scapegoat.
So soon after the final whistle, O’Rourke was either reading these trolling comments either in the dressing room or on the team bus. It might have appeared he was acting in the heat of the moment, but his actions actually helped raise awareness of just how sick and vile these “experts” can be.
As a former students union vice-president with a welfare brief, O’Rourke should have a better appreciation than most of the dangers of social media.
However, it was O’Rourke who on Twitter made an ill-judged comment about Diarmuid Connolly, which caused the the Dublin player to take umbrage, as shown when he snubbed a handshake before last year’s Leinster final.
However, that hardly justifies what was flung at O’Rourke on Sunday. Following what came Damien Cahalane’s way earlier this month, the GAA can’t sit on their hands and expect players to sit there and take it.
Steps in hurling has long been a thorny subject but this past weekend’s football action saw a number of over-carrying situations in the build-up to key scores. From Martin O’Reilly’s crucial goal for Donegal to goals for Armagh and Meath, the maximum of four number of steps appeared to be flouted.
Some grace is usually provided by referees and it would only be human of referees judging play in such close proximity to the posts to be more mindful of any foul committed by the defender than the attacking player.
Then there’s the other point that by taking matters into their own hands match officials are applying rules that are more reflective of what’s going on in front of them. Common sense? Yes, but the good kind.
