The two words no Cork manager wants to read: Looking Good
All things considered, though, yesterday’s demolition of Mayo ticked about as many positives as there is in the springtime. And demolition it was. With 15 minutes left, Cork led at Páirc Uí Rinn 1-18 to 0-7. Stephen Rochford’s debut as Mayo manager was entering the realm of embarrassment, and the last five points of the game didn’t spare them from such a conclusion, if truth be told.
Where Mayo struggled to glean any positive from their weekend in Cork, progressive shoots abounded for Healy. Ian Maguire back in midfield, Ruairi Deane also, as a substitute. Kieran Histon growing into the game after an iffy start. Paul Kerrigan delivering a captain’s performance, befitting the new armband bestowed on him for the season. Luke Connolly showing an appetite for work in keeping with his undoubted talent — now he has to prove that’s not an aberration. And Tomás Clancy and Brian O’Driscoll showing great poise going backwards and forwards. The half-backs grabbed three points between them.
Of course, we’ve been here before. Even Stephen Rochford — meaning it as a positive — remarked that Cork “are a great league team”. Implicit in that, of course, is that Cork have been here before. Regularly and frustratingly.
Rochford also said, interestingly, that Cork are one big championship win away from perhaps regaining the mojo they lost half a dozen years ago, and are yet to rediscover. Donegal next Sunday is a greater litmus test of where they are. Mayo essentially rolled over and looked every bit the team who only returned training on December 29; Donegal will hit Cork as early and hard as the biting Atlantic wind greeting their arrival in the north-west.
Cork could do with Eoin Cadogan for such a gut-check, but they’re unlikely to have him. Lee Keegan and himself met in a shuddering second-half collision that the old comic book strips would have depicted with floating stars and tweety birds. Cadogan was helped off, and though Keegan was initially — and as it transpired — unwisely permitted to continue, he stumbled to the sideline a few minutes later, barely able to stand. Concussion protocol would indicate both will sit out next weekend’s Round 2.
Mayo keeper Rob Hennelly said a mouthful when pointing out that their aim was “not to be the best team in the country on the first day of the season” but rather the last. But football in the county is seldom more than 70 minutes away from dark whispers of crisis. They were short a group of frontliners here, but eight of the side beaten by Dublin last autumn started. They are a month behind Cork in pre-season work and they looked it. Once Daniel Goulding and Brian Hurley found their range for the hosts, they helped themselves to seven of Cork’s dozen first half points.
“We didn’t track runners and there were two and three Cork fellas running at us,” pointed out Hennelly, who saved a Goulding penalty and parried two other goal-bound efforts to prevent a proper rodding. “I wouldn’t expect to be making that many saves again for the year. If we go like that again next week (against Dublin), we are going to get steamrolled again.”
Conor O’Shea showed well early on and Jason Doherty looked lively for Mayo, but Kieran Histon warmed to his task as the game wore on. Another plus for Healy, who pledged to throw more freshmen into the fray next weekend in Ballyshannon.
Andrew O’Sullivan still has a way to go to prove he’s ready for summer ball, but along with Ian Maguire, who played 56 minutes, they forged a purposeful, sleeves-up midfield that had plenty of options either side of them from deep. Though Kerrigan received the tv man of the match, Fermoy’s Tomás Clancy didn’t put a foot wrong all day, and Brian O’Driscoll wasn’t far behind.
Luke Connolly is the intriguing one, the bane of every football coach’s life — the one that can make a football talk but thinks graft and grunt is for someone else. In today’s terms, a half-forward can’t do that, and yet with his range of passing, it’s where he needs to be. Projects like that are the difference between successful management and nearly men.
Healy has a reputation for detail, and spurning late goal chances left him unimpressed with some decision-making. “In a tight game...” He trailed off before tut-tutting the fact they finished with 13 men, Andrew O’Sullivan receiving a second yellow in injury time.
In all, Cork used 21 players, with Colm O’Neill and the likes of Donncha O’Connor, Paddy Kelly, and Michael Shields yet to return. The squad has a bountiful look but Cork has become a byword for fragility in football’s unforgiving crucible —and it’s hardly the first time they’ve wiped the floor with a proven heavyweight early doors. Spring is still about pledges and promise. Don’t be seduced just yet.
We’ve been here before.
