Anthony Daly: There would be no downside for Cork in winning the league

Cork manager Kieran Kingston speaks to his team during a water break in a National League game with Waterford last year. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

When Ger Loughnane and the league are ever mentioned in the same sentence, everyone turns it into a maths sum and comes up with the exact same answer: Loughnane and league hurling = apathy = sabotage = zero interest in winning the competition.

Everyone tends to forget that Clare got to a league final and two more semi-finals during Ger’s six-year term, but our poor return at the business end of those campaigns added to the myth of Loughnane’s supposed philosophy of making sure that we never won the competition.

The two league medals Ger won in the late 1970s, and how precious those national titles were to Clare at the time, certainly never inspired Ger to repeat that feat as a manager. On the other hand, Ger’s attitude towards the league was probably framed by those experiences from the 1970s; in the same years Clare won those league titles in 1977 and 1978, they lost successive Munster finals. So, as his players, we always knew that league and championship were worlds apart in Ger’s eyes.

The myth around Loughnane’s suspected disdain for the competition really grew when Cork hammered us in the 1998 league semi-final and the story went that Loughnane told Mike Mac to flog us around Templemore an hour before the game.

Of course that never happened, but you just knew that Ger had no real interest in the competition. He would give it no real attention in the lead-up to a big league game. He wouldn’t really be driving guys. He’d say very little, which kind of fed the apathy and attitude towards the competition, which subsequently led to so many flat performances.

You absorb so many lessons from those that went before you that I remember doing the same myself as Clare manager before the 2006 league semi-final. Limerick beat us after extra-time, but I was in no way bothered. I was nearly convincing myself on the way home that it was the way to go in the lead-in to the first round of the championship against Cork. Five weeks later, the Rebels coldly reminded me that I certainly hadn’t acquired a Masters in cute-hoorism.

I was talking to a great GAA man, Jack Horgan, from Cree about this in the pub during the week. “Jeez, Dalo, whatever or whoever is winning is nearly always right,” said Jack. I couldn’t disagree.

When Loughnane won those two All-Irelands, he was like the Bull McCabe, driving all before him out of his way, showing disdain for anything — including the league — that got in his way. At the moment, John Kiely is like Einstein, finding incredible solutions and delivering fantastic results to whatever questions are posed to him and his players.

After winning the 2020 All-Ireland, Dessie Farrell is suddenly like Ralf Rangnick, with a hundred thousand questions around his ability to get the best out of his players. Jack O’Connor is well used to getting it in the neck in Kerry, but they’ve been lining up in their droves to hammer him since only securing a draw — a draw — in an away Division 1 game last Sunday.

There is that bit more pressure in the football league compared to the hurling, but we’re back to this perennial argument again at the start of every season; apart from Kilkenny, does any team have any real interest in winning the league? There was no league final last year but can anyone even remember what two teams topped their respective groups? That will make for a good quiz question in the coming years.

If Loughnane was around now, he certainly wouldn’t be standing out from the crowd because he’d be in the same pack as nearly every other manager apart from Brian Cody.

Cody’s consistent attitude towards the competition is framed by his successful strike-rate in league and championship in the same season when Kilkenny were at their peak. When the Dublin footballers were gobbling up All-Irelands, Jim Gavin’s attitude was just like Cody’s — every game is there to be won, every game is another opportunity for someone to put their hand up and edge their way into the bigger picture.

Whatever about teams’ or managers’ ambitions to win the league, they certainly can’t afford to be too blasé about the competition this season with the league running right into the championship. With such a condensed format, managers have to be settling on their team at the earliest opportunity. There isn’t much point in giving game-time to a load of peripheral players in March when the championship is kicking off in mid-April.

In some ways, that might lead to a better league than many us of perceive it will be. Of course, the brakes will be applied by some managers, a la Loughnane, when the team is taking shape and the prospect of having a four-week run in to the championship is more appealing than a league final appearance, which would reduce that timeframe to just 13 or 14 days.

Context always frames everything, and the league will mean something different to every county in that particular moment. After the capitulation of last August, Cork could do with winning the league to lift morale and to get the supporters believing again. The counter-argument is that the only way to heal that hurt is to win the All-Ireland, and that a league title has no place in that discussion.

I don’t really see it that way. To me, there would be absolutely no downside to winning the league for Kieran Kingston and his players. Their attitude should be, ‘Let’s win the league, get into the top three in Munster, and then let’s see if can we close that gap on Limerick’.

A league title for Clare is probably not possible without Tony Kelly, Aidan McCarthy, Shane O’Donnell and probably Peter Duggan for the first half of the campaign.

Very sad too to see Colm Galvin gone at 28. A litany of injuries have taken their toll, but he was probably the best midfielder in the country between 2013 and ’17 — a box-to-box type akin to Jamie Barron and could also fulfil the seventh defender role superbly. He’ll be missed.

On top of all those longer-term losses, Clare’s injury list has been at near crisis point recently. So what’s the point in Clare bursting themselves in the short term? Why would you risk TK in the league when he only needs to be ready for the championship?

Every manager has different priorities. Colm Bonnar’s recent admission that Tipp will be in transition this spring was reinforced by Paudie Maher’s retirement this week. I only saw the highlights of the Walsh Cup final last weekend, but I’d say Darragh Egan’s priority over the next two months will be in trying to get his players to adjust to not having a sweeper, which will be a fair ordeal after the system was embedded in that team for the last five years.

The Dubs are going well, and a league title is not beyond their reach in Year 4 of Mattie Kenny’s tenure. The pressure will be on Henry Shefflin to at least make an All-Ireland semi-final with Galway in Year 1 so a league title would remove some of that heat.

For Henry’s clubmate, Mick Fennelly, it’s a tough ask in a division with Clare, Galway, Cork, Wexford and Limerick, but at least he’ll find out where his Offaly team are at heading into the Joe McDonagh Cup.

At the moment though, nobody really knows anything beyond the obvious. Trying to pick a fantasy hurling team during the week was some struggle. I finally pieced together a first 15 late last night. I might as well have been sticking a pin in a list of names with a blindfold on.

For now, you might as well be doing the same when trying to get a handle on how teams are going, or what their approach is likely to be for this league campaign.

Between injuries, the Fitzgibbon Cup, managing training loads with the league final coming just two weeks before the start of the championship, trying to establish who needs — or even wants — to win a league title has never been trickier.

Loughnane would be in his element.