Confident Cork have new mentality

As I parked my car in Dr Morris Park before yesterday’s game, the Moycarkey Pipe band were just tuning up before the U25 game. 

The melodic sounds from the bag-pipes rhymed with the mood of the day, of a real Munster championship day; searing heat, huge tension, massive colour, massive expectation. It was the kind of day our fathers and grandfathers had told us about the Munster Championship.

I was lucky enough to experience a fair share of those afternoons but the buzz transported me back a couple of decades, of almost wanting to reverse the wheel of life and to walk behind the Moycarkey Pipe Band again. I took so much pride in leading the Clare boys around Thurles for eight years that some of the lads in Clarecastle used always say to me, ‘God, Dalo, you love the parade.’ I always had the same stock reply. ‘Nobody can score 1-4 off you in the parade.’ When the parade was over, then the real danger began.