Christy O'Connor: Can Cork use pain of the past as rocket fuel in that manic pursuit of senior glory?
Cork's Eoghan sits alone and dejected after their Bord Gais 2018 All-Ireland U21 Championship final defeat to Tipperary at the Gaelic Grounds. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
At the final whistle of the 2018 Cork-Tipperary All-Ireland U21 final, the Gaelic Grounds exploded with the kind of raw and unbridled emotion that comes from deep within a county’s soul.
The Tipp manager Liam Cahill ripped off his woolly hat and jumped into the embrace of the throng invading the field, he and every Tipp supporter in the ground desperate to bask in the warm afterglow of such a treasured final win against their great rivals.
Everyone expected a much improved Tipperary performance from the Munster final collapse, when Cork hammered them by 13 points, but nobody anticipated anything other than a Cork victory. Tipperary just never followed that script.
When Cork blitzed them in the second quarter, with an unanswered 1-6 in nine minutes, there was almost an acceptance within the ground that Cork would drive on and win pulling up. They had all the momentum. Cork had the strong breeze to come in the second half. Tipperary’s early storm of rage and defiance looked to have blown itself out but they whipped it up again in the second half. And Cork could not withstand the onslaught.
Tipperary made the game the kind of dogfight they needed it to be. The match was largely played on their terms because a wide-open and free-flowing shootout was always going to suit Cork more.
Cork couldn’t deal with it. Most of their big names didn’t perform, but the nature of such a devastating loss went far deeper than the result. After the late All-Ireland senior semi-final collapse against Limerick four weeks earlier, it was another example of a Cork team being ruthlessly punished for failing to show the absolute killer instinct required.
It was harder again to take considering the huge wealth of experience Cork had on the pitch, especially compared to Tipperary. Six of their players featured in that senior All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick – Mark Coleman, Darragh Fitzgibbon, Shane Kingston, Robbie O’Flynn, Tim O’Mahony and Jack O’Connor. On that Tipp side, Jake Morris was the only one to have played senior championship.
Cork’s modern history has been defined by some devastating results but that defeat ranks as the most debilitating amongst that group. “Of all the games we lost,” one of the players who played that day privately admitted last year, “that was the absolute worst. By a mile.” It was another glaring example of how Cork hurling no longer carried the fireproof confidence and latent swagger of old. A year later, another cohort of young Cork hurlers had to suck up a different level of hurt and pain when Tipp walloped them in the All-Ireland U20 final.
Just two months earlier, both teams had served up a classic Munster final in what was one of the best underage games of the last decade. Of the 5-32 recorded on the night, all but six points came from play.
Tipp won the match with a late Jake Morris goal. The tight margin confirmed how little there had always been between those groups which had been apparent since the 2015 U-16 Arrabawn semi-final in Holycross when Cork won with a late goal. Yet that equality was shredded in that 2019 U20 final. Because, for the first time, Tipperary looked on a different level to Cork.
It was also a reminder of how so many of those Tipp players had a successful track record in All-Ireland finals compared to Cork. A significant number of those Tipp U21 and U-20 teams had also won All-Ireland minor medals in 2016. Six days before that 2019 U20 final, Jake Morris, Jerome Cahill and Paddy Cadell all won All-Ireland senior medals.
As a comparison, Ger Collins, Ger Millerick and Brian Turnbull experienced their third successive All-Ireland final defeat in that U20 final, having also played in the 2017 minor final loss to Galway, as well as the 2018 U21 decider.
Collins and Millerick didn’t play in last year’s All-Ireland senior final but both were part of a squad that suffered another crushing All-Ireland final defeat.
Limerick inflicted that pain but Sunday’s clash with Tipp is loaded with an even greater sense of mission and quest for atonement for so many of these Cork players, especially the 2018 U21 team. The majority of them lost to Tipp in the senior championship in 2019 and 2020 but they were Liam Sheedy’s teams. Most of those players remain but Sunday is largely a face-off between the sides which contested that 2018 U-21 final.
The parallels between the numbers are striking. Twelve of that Cork U-21 team have now played senior championship, nine of whom have played in this year’s campaign; Coleman, Fitzgibbon, Kingston, O’Flynn, O’Mahony, O’Connor, Millerick, Niall O’Leary and Conor Cahalane, while Ger Collins is the sub ‘keeper.
Twelve of that 2018 Tipp U-21 team have also played senior championship, ten of whom have featured in this round robin; Barry Hogan, Brian McGrath, Robert Byrne, Dillon Quirke, Ger Browne, Jake Morris, Mark Kehoe, Conor Stakelum, Craig Morgan and Paddy Caddell.
The Cork numbers increase even more when the 2019 U20 team are included; Robert Downey is an established player but Tommy O’Connell and Brian Roche made their debuts in this campaign while Seán O’Leary-Hayes and Daire Connery made their senior championship debuts in 2020.
From that Tipp U20 side, Conor Bowe made his championship debut against Waterford while Bryan O’Mara almost certainly would have played championship if he hadn’t opted out of the squad this year.
Cork will frame much of their future around the last two All-Ireland U20 winning squads. There are 17 All-Ireland U20 winners on the current extended squad, with eight of those players having played in the league for the first time, three of whom have now made their championship debuts - Ciarán Joyce, O’Connell and Roche.
That generation know what it takes to win All-Irelands but Cork can still use the pain of the past as rocket fuel in that manic pursuit of senior glory. For Cork’s mid-tier group now, the worst of the hardship was endured at the hands of Tipperary in those All-Ireland U-21 and U-20 finals, especially the 2018 group.
And now, with most of those Tipp players lining up against them in the other corner for the first time since that 2018 final, in the first knockout senior Munster championship match between the counties in 30 years, Cork have the ideal opportunity to inflict the ultimate payback.
