Time to end latched-door mentality in Rebel County
Eight days out from that year’s Munster final, Cork had held an A versus B game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. I was down there hoping to catch a few words afterwards with the management and as we waited in the tunnel, Steven O’Brien hobbled past, gear bag over his shoulder. Back then, only 24 players could be included on an inter-county panel and O’Brien hadn’t been included for the following week’s showdown with Kerry. Instead he would watch that game from the stands, just as he’d famously watch that year’s All-Ireland final defeat to Meath.
He was in good company. Damien O’Neill began that championship as Cork captain, but soon picked up an injury, forcing him not just to forsake the captaincy but his place on the panel. By September both players would have been fit and offered Cork desperately-needed leadership and no little football, but this was a time when the GPA was literally only a wet week old and the idea of 30-man panels was fantastical. Teams and county boards saw no further than the next game and the 24 picked for it.
When Lynch retired last November, it had been over two years since his last competitive game for Cork. He had been plagued with injuries but with management able to carry 30-plus players and take the longer view, see the bigger picture, Conor Counihan knew that it was better to have Lynch’s recovery monitored within the setup and that having his emotional intelligence around the place was something you couldn’t put a cost on. When Cork trailed at half-time in the 2010 All-Ireland final, Lynch was instrumental in how they regrouped in the dressing room.
His continued presence around the Cork setup wasn’t the only measure of how far Cork GAA had come. Last year Colm O’Neill and Ciarán Sheehan suffered serious injuries. In the old days they’d have been discarded, not to be seen again until they got themselves right.
Instead they were provided with the best support, the best of surgery, all promptly paid for, and made more than welcome to stay within the team setup.
The story of Diarmuid Duggan highlights just how much more the GAA and Cork in particular still have to go.
In our interview, Anthony Lynch explained how the 2008 Munster final was vital in the evolution of this Cork football team.
“If we’d lost badly [to Kerry] that day we could finally have gone over the cliff.”
Duggan was man of the match in that Munster final, yet only a couple of months after that 2010 All-Ireland triumph which he had helped set in motion, he was writing to the Cork county secretary outlining his injury — and consequently, hisfinancial plight.
He pleaded to Frank Murphy’s “good nature, authority, or simply [his] influence in an attempt to recoup some of the costs incurred”.
When he heard nothing and followed up with a series of phone calls he was informed that An Runaí was either in a meeting or up in Dublin.
Duggan and every right-thinking person would have understood how complex it is as to when a county board’s duty of care starts and ends and how conscious the board maybe were of the precedent this might cause.
As Duggan said, even learning that nothing more could be done would have been appreciated.
That such a courtesy wasn’t extended to a human being, let alone one that had served Cork teams for over 13 years, was scandalous.
Thankfully the three strikes are a blur to most of us now, when once there was a time every detail was something we could easily recall and dissect.
Hearing about Duggan’s case yesterday though caused us to experience a flashback of something said at a gathering of all the clubs down in Clonakilty in March 2009.
“If you go down to Páirc Uí Chaoimh,” Clonakilty’s Gerard McCarthy — as opposed to Gerald McCarthy — would say, “you’re met by the opening of a latch and someone peering out at you.
It is indicative of how they conduct their business. There is no transparency.”
As we wrote at the time, if you show up in Healy Park or Nowlan Park, the prevailing attitude is “How can we help? How can you help?” In Páirc Uí Chaoimh it’s “What do you want? What are you doing here?”
A potential asset is probable hassle.
It is to Duggan’s credit that he continues to be an asset to Cork GAA, coaching the Ilen Rovers U21s. The Cork County Board has its own assets.
Ger Lane, whom Duggan profusely praised in these pages yesterday, is one of a number of progressive officers sitting on the executive.
But in the coming years as Páirc Uí Chaoimh is revamped, the latched-door mentality that Duggan encountered has to be demolished for good.
