Fogarty Forum: Expectation once again raises its head for Cork
Cork manager Ben O'Connor: "We like to play nice hurling but people have us down as a soft touch – we’re no soft touch.” Pic: ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy
“The softest team in Ireland” was how Kieran Kingston sarcastically described his Cork team six years ago.
The former manager had taken exception to the perception that his team were not able to mix it. After losing a league game to Limerick, Kingston said: “I think there was over 40 frees awarded today. I think we conceded 20-something of them and we’re ‘the softest team in Ireland’, as everybody knows.”
The physically soft portrayal of Cork had been a bugbear for Kingston as well as his selector and coach Diarmuid O’Sullivan, although O’Sullivan four years earlier had taken to getting involved in training to teach players the dark arts as they had “kind of got lost on a few of them”.
As we wrote 12 months ago, nobody is saying Cork lack in the size stakes now. “Physically, they’re monsters,” gushed John Mullane last year. Cork, against Limerick at least (Clare is another story), don’t do the reacting either and that goes back as far as 2018 when Aaron Gillane was sent off for lashing out at Seán O’Donoghue.
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But are they as formidable mentally? That was the slight Ben O’Connor took following Sunday’s win over Limerick. “There are questions asked of our fellas mentally, that they’re mentally weak,” he claimed.
“Them fellas aren’t mentally weak at all. Delighted with them two weeks in a row that when the pressure really came on, they were able to get into the battle. Anyone that we play, we’ll outbattle them if it comes to it. We like to play nice hurling but people have us down as a soft touch – we’re no soft touch.”
O’Connor praised performance coaches Eric Baxter and Gerry Hussey who have been working with the group this season following Gary Keegan’s involvement in recent seasons. To do so was not to defeat his argument but to point out that they had some work to do after what happened last July. To have not addressed that elephant would be a dereliction of duty.
In his column after last year’s Munster final win over Limerick following penalties, O’Connor’s old team-mate Seánie McGrath touched on attitudes towards Cork as a delicate crew. So much mud had been flung at them since 2005 that eventually some of it was going to stick.
“For so long and for too long, there has been a tag fastened onto Cork hurling and Cork senior teams by those outside the county. The tag was that we were frail.
“There was justification in the tag given we haven’t won an All-Ireland in 20 years and, prior to Saturday, hadn’t won a Munster in seven. That tag is now gone. It has to be gone. Pat Ryan’s crew possess a mental strength that suggests bigger things and days are still to come.”
Another win over Limerick brings expectation, of course. Something that for a county like Cork, that isn’t short of self-belief, has found challenging.
In successive All-Ireland finals, Cork have been favourites and ultimately failed to justify it. Appearing in the last five finals available to them, the only time they have won as the tipped team was last year’s Division 1A final against Tipperary.
Last Thursday, news of Aaron Gillane’s quad injury moved the needle towards a Cork win but not enough to convince enough people that Limerick wouldn’t come out on top.
Similarly, news that Ciarán Joyce’s season is over and Rob Downey might not be back until a Munster final at the earliest hasn’t altered the latest opinion that Cork are outright favourites for the All-Ireland.
Expectation, Cork’s final frontier, once again raises its head just as a cocktail of it and dread undoubtedly did for the team of 1984 as it avoided becoming the first team to lose three straight All-Ireland finals.
“We went to Thurles in the Centenary Year in ’84 under enormous pressure going into an All-Ireland final,” Tomás Mulcahy told earlier this year. “It was a big relief (to beat Offaly). If Cork were to get to an All-Ireland final this year, it will bring its own bit of edge where people will be talking ‘are ye going to be the team that loses three All-Ireland finals in a row?’”
That is down the line but the commissioning of Baxter and Hussey would have been made with the prospect of another All-Ireland final in mind and the baggage it could carry.
Cork’s innate poise serves them well. It’s that DNA which gives them an advantage over so many others. A Limerick friend mentioned yesterday that he has to attend a family event in Cork this weekend. One he was dreading. “You could beat them nine times but lose the 10th and they will say, ‘Told ya.’” That’s the shot. Keep turning up and nobody will be saying Cork are soft physically or mentally.
john.fogarty@examiner.ie
If you know Tony McEntee, you would appreciate he comes from the Paddy Tally school of thinking. “I think this is one of the things in coaching: we can't be restricted by where we're from or what we've learnt,” said Tally last week.
“If we want to get any better, you've got to go out there and learn, take ideas from wherever you can get them. If you think this is going to help you become a better coach or help your team to become better, don't be apologetic to anybody for it.” Tally has worked with five counties other than his own Tyrone – Derry, Down, Galway, Kerry and Mayo. As Kerry coach, he oversaw an All-Ireland quarter-final win over Tyrone in 2023.
Down is McEntee’s third county involvement after Mayo and Sligo but this Sunday's Ulster SFC semi-final is obviously sensitive as he faces his own Armagh and opposes fellow Crossmaglen Rangers clubmen like Oisín O’Neill and Cian McConville.
Armagh and Down have swapped assets in the past – Paddy O’Rourke managing Armagh, Jim McCorry over Down to name but two. In a 2011 Ulster quarter-final, O’Rourke oversaw a win over the county he led to All-Ireland glory in 1991 and made no big thing of it. McCorry spent one season with Down before joining Kieran McGeeney’s management team.
McEntee is very much his own man and the remarks that might come his way in Clones on Sunday will wash over him but ahead of one of Gaelic football's most claustrophobic derbies the one-week build-up is probably a blessing.
Now you can understand why Jim McGuinness was so keen for Donegal’s Ulster SFC quarter-final against Down to be played in Ballybofey’s MacCumhaill Park.
Weeks before Donegal confirmed in March that Letterkenny’s O’Donnell Park would host the game, the Ulster Council had stated it would host the game.
In February, McGuinness had been holding out that Ballybofey would be ready in time. “We are definitely not closing the door on MacCumhaill Park yet. I think that potentially could be an option for us for the championship as well.” In a later interview, he said: “If it’s Letterkenny, we’ll play the game in Letterkenny.” Not a ringing endorsement, you might say, and Sunday was Donegal’s first championship game there in 75 years when they drew with Antrim.
In the National League, the Letterkenny venue had not been a happy stomping ground for McGuinness’ Donegal – they lost to Tyrone there last year, Kildare in 2011 and Laois in ’12.
Whereas, McGuinness’ senior championship record in Ballybofey had been unblemished up until last year when Tyrone made the most of their neighbours’ Ulster final hangover.
On the back of Donegal winning another title, it was Down’s turn to take advantage and boy did they do take their diligence to extremes, meeting 10 days in a row to be ready for the game.
Outside of their comfort zone against a team whose Sam Maguire Cup qualification was on the line and remains so, Donegal were sized up.
