Anthony Daly: Cork no longer shrugging their shoulders at thoughts of a League title

Waterford’s Patrick Curran challenges Cork’s Billy Hennessy, left, and Mark Coleman during their Allianz HL clash last year. Picture: Sportsfile

When I was growing up, I was reared on stories of Cork and this almost mythical sense of destiny around them winning All-Irelands. The league never seemed to pique Cork’s interest. For all the talk about Cork not having won a league title in 24 years, they’ve only two leagues in the last 41 years.

It’s still always about the All-Ireland for Cork but their attitude around the league had to change when they’ve now gone nearly two decades without an All-Ireland. Over the last few years, you were still wondering if Cork would show any interest in the competition, but they’ve almost been bullied into embracing it now.

For all his greatness during his 15-year career with Cork, Patrick Horgan still has no national title. A lot of the younger players on the panel have All-Ireland U20 medals but the main cohort in the mid-20 bracket have known nothing only heartbreak in All-Ireland finals at minor, U20 and U21.

After reaching an All-Ireland final last year, Cork don’t need the springboard of a league title to launch their ambitions for 2022, but you can’t underestimate the importance it can make too in terms of confidence.

When we won the league with Dublin in 2011, we hadn’t been anywhere near an All-Ireland final. We got close in 2013, but there’s certainly no doubt that we wouldn’t have won that year’s Leinster title without having won the league two years earlier.

Waterford are in a similar enough boat. They’ve lost a couple of All-Ireland finals in the last five years. They may have won the league in 2015 but most of the players on this squad weren’t around back then.

This is the ideal stepping stone because, while both teams are still building, both sides also have most of the main foundation blocks in place to really go after this championship.

Cork will be very close to the team which will take on Limerick in Cork on April 17th, but I think we could see a very different Waterford team tonight compared to what we might see in Walsh Park against Tipperary in two weeks-time, with anything up to four or five changes in personnel.

Stephen Bennett and Conor Prunty may play this evening but Waterford have still been able to effectively cruise into this final without Bennett, Prunty, Calum Lyons and Jamie Barron. Some of those fellas may play tonight but Austin Gleeson won’t through missing out with suspension.

We all saw how disgusted Liam Cahill was with Aussie’s sending off last Sunday, but it’s been easy enough to interpret how Cahill handled the fallout this week. There was no appeal or even a mention of trying to get Aussie off, especially when we’ve seen cases of players committing a far more serious offence getting a reprieve on a technicality.

I can just imagine how Cahill addressed it with Aussie, and in trying to ensure that something similar doesn’t happen again in the championship, when his loss could be far costlier. ‘Hi, Aussie, you were man-of-the-match and on fire and, irrespective of how petty the flick may have been, if it’s more about you than the bigger picture, then we have a problem.’ I think we’re in for a belter. It’s been a long enough league when you consider how many games these players have played, especially some of the lads involved in the Fitzgibbon Cup.

Waterford are probably marginal favourites on the back of such a comprehensive win against Wexford but I’m not sure that form-line is as accurate as many people think it is. Last Sunday was such a complete no-show from Wexford that it was nothing compared to the test the Cork players got the previous evening from Kilkenny.

If I was Cahill, I’d be much happier having come through a battle, which isn’t something Waterford have managed to do this spring. The first day out was a real war of attrition against Dublin but Waterford still couldn’t win the game having scored two penalties and with a numerical advantage for much of the game. Their last regular game against Kilkenny was immaterial in the greater scheme of events around qualification for the league semi-final but Kilkenny still bossed that game in more than just the scoreboard.

If Cahill is going all out to win this match – which he should be – he knows that he’ll need some of those main guys back off the treatment table. He certainly won’t want to take any chances of them doing more damage ahead of the championship, but Liam will still be balancing that risk with the information he has from the physios with the need to get at least one game into them before the Round Robin kicks off.

The beauty of all of this for Liam though, is that he has the luxury of not having to take a chance on certain fellas with the depth of his panel. You can be guaranteed that some fellas will be uneasy even if they win this evening because they’ll know they’ll still be under pressure to start against Tipperary.

Of course, there will always be a place for Jamie Barron but Liam has shown incredible loyalty too to guys like Darragh Lyons and Jack Prendergast, purely on the basis that they have been so consistent for the team this year.

It’s an interesting dynamic when you look at a guy like Iarlaith Daly, who is one of the best young defenders in the country. Yet where might Daly fit in when Calum Lyons and Prunty return? Stuff like that can lead to more confusion than clarity but the picture becomes clearer again if these guys just keep doing their stuff because they know that Cahill will reward them if they do.

There are huge similarities between both panels in terms of pace and youth and desire and, while Cork may not appear to have as much depth, I’m sure they could argue the toss on that assertion.

Tim O’Mahony’s potential return opens up so many different options around how Cork use Ciaran Joyce and Ger Mellerick around the middle third. Their defensive options are greater again considering Sean O’Donoghue is the vice-captain and a definite starter, but Cork have looked solid enough without him over the last few games.

Shane Kingston and Patrick Horgan were taken off against Kilkenny but I don’t think they’d have any complaints when coming up two of the form defenders in this league, Huw Lawlor and Mikey Butler. Yet being able to haul those two off when the game was in the fire late on underlined the faith management are now willing to invest in Alan Connolly and Shane Barrett.

Cork was excellent while Barrett looks to have nailed down the number 11 jersey when he looked like a career corner-forward throughout his underage career.

With neither team holding anything back, the potential for a cracker is all the greater again when both teams don’t meet in the championship until May 15th. The real business will still have to be decided in Munster by then but any notions of concealing any tricks now for that game won’t have even entered the heads of both managers.

I really like the way Kieran Kingston has handled everything so far this spring, especially when Cork needed to show more steel and clarity of thought after the embarrassment of last August. The display in Wexford was the only blip but I even liked how Cork handled that whole scenario because the performance against Kilkenny underlined how their psychological approach has been right when Cork really needed it to be.

There were a lot of questions asked by Kilkenny, especially early on but Cork came up with all the answers. It’s clear now too how guys like O’Mahony, Mark Coleman, Robbie O’Flynn, Darragh Fitzgibbon and Shane Kingston – who all came off that same U-21 team in 2018 – have matured and have taken real ownership of this side. Kieran knows now that he doesn’t need to lean on Hoggie, Seamie Harnedy and that older brigade anymore.

It’s a hard game to call but I think the Aussie Gleeson factor could be decisive, especially when he was playing with such freedom and abandon to just go and show how great of a player he is.

Jack Prendergast and Shane Bennett got two brilliant goals the last day, but I still felt that Waterford’s main goal threat always appeared more likely to come off Aussie or Dessie Hutchinson.

If Cork can get a handle of Dessie now, that certainly would swing the momentum in Cork’s direction. In any case, I still fancy Cork.

Finally, it’s fantastic that Down are in the curtain raiser this evening in the Division 2 final against Westmeath. Their re-emergence has reignited calls for the Ulster championship to be revived, especially when Antrim have been going so well and Derry have made such huge strides, especially through the excellence of Slaughtneil.

Down have been brilliant to date but the Leinster side will be fancied considering the massive experience they’ve accumulated in recent years in Division 1 and in the Joe MacDonagh Cup.