Explaining Cork’s Kingdom dilemma
“You’ll be shouting for the neighbours, I suppose?”
Suppose to the contrary: that was the general tone of my reply.
In fairness, he may have been looking for a rise — happy to oblige — but it did set me thinking.
Why don’t Cork people shout for Kerry when the Kingdom have gone further than them in the Championship? No, wait. Come back.
It’s not that outlandish a question. I’m sure when Waterford were in the All-Ireland hurling final a few years ago, most people in the southern counties were keen they’d win. Rooting for another county isn’t a regular thing for most people, but it’s not like it never happens.
I think there are varying reasons why people imagine Corkonians bristle at the prospect of cheering on the green and gold.
It might surprise you, but I think Kerry’s tradition of winning against Cork isn’t a huge consideration in that context. The effortless air of superiority you generally hear when Gaelic football opinions are expressed in a Kerry accent tends to grate with Cork people, but again, that’s an irritation as opposed to a fundamental problem.
A symptom, not the disease.
Personally, I think the main issue Cork people have is the sheer number of Kerry people inhabiting the Rebel County.
The movie Punchline isn’t one of Tom Hanks’s best efforts, but there’s one unforgettable scene when his character, a comedian, talks to the audience in a Manhattan nightclub.
“Hi there, and you are... a doctor? Are you Jewish? A Jewish doctor in New York, ladies and gentlemen, how unusual is that?”
On occasion, it can feel like that in Cork, too.
Sometimes it’s like everywhere you turn, there’s a couple of them.
Granted, most Kerry people have legitimate reasons for being on the premises, but there can be a gnawing sense that they’re gathering information and sending it back over the county bounds, probably in a diplomatic pouch, informing the intelligence services at home about football matters on Leeside.
That’s compounded by a slight sense among some of them of being... slightly put-upon at having to live in the second-biggest city in the country.
Some years ago, I was in company with a lady from the Kingdom who told me that, over the years she had spent in Cork, she and her family had “never lost the faith”.
On the contrary, they had “always flown the flag” despite living — and working — in the Rebel County, lo these many years.
I was going to ask how they had managed to avoid the crowds of torch-wielding mobs determined to burn them out, but it didn’t seem the right note to strike.
Expect a good deal of silence on Leeside on Sunday around half-past three.
I note that Kerry and Donegal won’t be the only two teams meeting up next weekend in Croke Park.
The Gaelic Players Association is hosting a lunch in the stadium next Saturday for retired intercounty players – the Former Players Event, which is hosted by the GPA’s Former Players Group in Croke Park on the eve of the All-Ireland football final.
I understand the GPA hopes to have up to 400 former county footballers and hurlers present in Croke Park, with two special GPA Lifetime Achievement Awards to be given out on the day to honour two famous players from the past.
It’s an interesting initiative, and one which goes beyond the lunch and hooking up with old team-mates and adversaries: the GPA is actively looking to build a strong, active network of former players, such as exists in other sports, on a national basis.
Everyone knows of former intercounty team-mates – or opponents – who are particularly close because of geography, or work, but there isn’t a formal grouping that cuts across county barriers and operates as a mutually sustaining structure.
This lunch is another step in a process that aims to move beyond ad hoc planning and occasional encounters, but it has another, specific brief. It’s a fundraising event designed to help fund services and programmes for former players, particularly the benevolent fund for players who have fallen on hard times or need support for medical treatment.
This is the second year event has been held and former players still interested in attending can contact Sean Potts in the GPA office for further information on 01 8575686 or press@gaelicplayers.com
Anyone, or any two, who read this column on a regular basis will be familiar with our fondness for Joyce’s “retrospective arrangement”, a less high-faluting version of which is generally known as: “Ah, I knew that was going to happen.”
One of the more recent cases relates to last Sunday week’s All-Ireland senior hurling final. After the game ended in a draw, the Tipperary players chatted to reporters before heading to the reception; the Kilkenny players stayed in their dressing room a long time before coming out and boarding the bus without a word to the press.
How do you read that? Tipp bouncing and energetic, Kilkenny muted and withdrawn? Tipperary overconfident and set for a fall, or Kilkenny purposeful and focused? We’ll come back to this around 7pm on Saturday week, when the result will tell us how to read those expressions in the rear-view mirror.
Last week our man in America, John Riordan, outlined the latest problems of the NFL, including a hard-to-refute charge of insensitivity, at best, when it comes to domestic abuse, as a result of the much-publicised Ray Rice case.
Rice, in case you missed it, is the Baltimore Ravens player who was initially suspended for two games because he’d knocked his then-girlfriend, now-wife Janay unconscious in a hotel lift.
This was later turned into an indefinite suspension, and the Ravens decided to terminate the player’s contract.
These stronger sanctions were linked by many to the surfacing of a security video from inside the lift, which shows Rice punching his girlfriend, who then falls to the ground, hitting her head on a metal handrail in the lift on the way.
There are any number of interesting angles to this story, both specific and general: the baffling apologists who point out that Janay married Rice afterwards, which by their logic somehow makes what happened less serious; the Baltimore Ravens tweeting that Janay regretted her part in the incident, a message they subsequently deleted; and the NFL’s ongoing issue with the amount of domestic violence incidents perpetrated by its stars.
Amy Davidson of the New Yorker magazine, however, articulated many people’s thoughts on the harsher punishment for Rice which followed the release of the new video.
“The video from inside the elevator was not what some purportedly well-informed observers expected,” she wrote during the week. “The NFL had investigated the incident, after all, and only suspended Rice for two games; that didn’t fit with the pictures on the screen.
“But what did people think it looked like when a football player knocked out a much smaller woman? Like a fair fight?”
