Kieran Shannon: Rugby in Páirc Uí Chaoimh is a celebration of Cork's sporting heritage
CELEBRATION: Thursday night rugby in the Páirc isn’t sacrilege. Instead it’s a celebration of Cork GAA and Cork sport and a proper reflection of the sporting heritage and true generous nature of its people. Pic: Mike English.
Back when Cork were routinely contesting and even winning All-Irelands in what you might term either code, their players and management teams would tap into other codes and the generosity and expertise of fellow high performers from their own county.
Upon Conor Counihan’s invitation, Ronan O’Gara dropped in to observe the county footballers – or more specifically their freetakers – train, and offer tips to the likes of Daniel Goulding, Donncha O’Connor and Colm O’Neill on how to practise for the kind of pressure they’d face and conquer against Dublin and Down in the business end of the championship in 2010.
It wasn’t by chance either that Counihan’s squad was by a distance the best conditioned in the country at the time (after their demolition of Donegal in the 2009 All Ireland quarter-final, the vanquished Neil McGee would remark to Bernard Brogan in a Dublin nightclub that August bank holiday weekend that encountering the likes of Pearse O’Neill, Canty, Miskella et al was like “being trampled by a herd of elephants”). Cork’s strength and conditioning programmes at the time were being drawn up and supervised by Aidan O’Connell, then a senior S&C coach with Munster.
In the summer of 2006, Roy Keane held an audience of Cork hurlers spellbound in a meeting room in Páirc Uí Rinn as he spoke about everything from when he’d get into the zone – “five to three” – to dealing with big-match distractions and how to embrace the challenge of pursuing three titles on the trot.
The respect was mutual. In those days the Cork hurlers didn’t just visit and study Munster and how they were routinely reaching and winning Heineken Cups; Declan Kidney and his staff had the humility and sense to realise at the time how his county’s hurlers were at the cutting edge of high performance preparation and would duly watch and even replicate some of their best practices.
Underpinning it all was a sense of goodwill. When Munster finally got over the line in Cardiff in 2006, one message out of the hundreds waiting for Ronan O’Gara on his phone jumped out, so much that he would keep it and quote it verbatim in his first autobiography.
“Words can’t describe how delighted I am for you. I even cried after the final whistle myself. No better guy deserves it more than yourself, especially after years of perseverance. I remember a coach once said, ‘Tough times don’t last and tough guys do.’ Enjoy a well-deserved celebration. I always admire your guts and determination.”
The well-wisher was Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, someone who O’Gara considered “an amazing guy”.
“Coming from him,” O’Gara wrote, “it meant the world to me.”
That was how the players and coaches viewed each other. Fellow sportspeople. Fellow countymen. There to complement and even help the other.
And that’s how most of the people of Cork would have looked at it too. As O’Gara would say elsewhere in that first book, “We’re mad for a ball. Given the chance, we’ll have a go at most games”, and go to watch most of them as well. Thousands of those who would have been in the Millennium Stadium to finally see O’Gara lift the cup would also have been there to witness and salute Ó hAilpín lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup eight months earlier and complete his journey from Fiji to Corcaigh to Páirc an Chrocaigh.
That spirit of pluralism and inclusion did not extend to the committee room of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, however. In that chamber there could be only one true faith. The same year Ó hAilpín was embarking on retaining the trophy that his teammate Jerry O’Connor had lifted the previous September, the Cork county board executive infamously prevented its own clubs from even debating and voting on Rule 42 ahead of the seminal Congress of 2005. Like Ulster, Cork would be saying no.
It was a stance not just out of step with the prevailing mood of the rest of the country (Rule 42 would be duly amended after president Seán Kelly skilfully and successfully presided over the debate and vote on the motion) but at odds with the sentiment of the Cork public, GAA or otherwise. A poll conducted by the at the time found that of 48 clubs surveyed, 33 were in favour of opening up Croke Park to other sports with only three against. No matter; the Cork delegation to that Congress would not be for changing.
It had always been their way on Rule 42 and such matters. When the issue first raised its head at Congress 2001, one of the most vehement speakers against any amendment was the former president Con Murphy, while his namesake Frank would quickly persuade then president Seán McCague to desist from a recount upon hearing the status quo had only prevailed by a couple of votes.
Four years later the county’s then resident central council delegate Bob Honohan upheld that tradition, posing the question to Congress, “Would it make any sense for me to allow my competitors the use of my showrooms to display their goods?”
Seventeen years on and the one showroom Honohan and his ilk would cherish even greater than Croke Park – Páirc Uí Chaoimh itself – will allow itself to display a game of top-level rugby in the form of South Africa playing Munster, not least because that ‘competitor’ will generously compensate Honohan’s successors financially for the use of that showroom.
You could of course argue the toss all day as to who is doing who the real favour here when the owners of that showroom are a good €20 million in debt for building such a shiny new one.
In truth it is an arrangement born out of cold pragmatism from both parties, but more than anything reflective of the warmth and generosity and heritage of a proud sporting county and people.
Ever before Rule 42 reared its head or O’Gara or Ó hAilpín wore the red of Cork or Munster, the best the city and county ever offered could see what other sports had to offer them. In his intimate portrayal of his clubmate Christy Ring, Val Dorgan would document how Ring became good friends with Noel Murphy, the rugby international and Lions coach.
“He often asked me about the performance of different rugby players,” said Murphy, who would regularly play alongside Ring in crazy-ball charity games for the Cork polio shelter. “He talked with such passion about sport.”
St Finbarr’s recent county championship success under Ger Cunningham’s astute coaching triggered memories of how back in the late 1980s when he was still just a player Cunningham would enlist the services of his friend and Irish international basketball player Tim McCarthy to physically train the team and introduce them to the advanced warm-up and stretching methods that sport then had to offer.
Donal Lenihan in his autobiography spoke about how during his primary school days his dream was to play for and captain an All-Ireland winning team with the Cork footballers; the first time he was ever handed the proverbial armband was in a Sciath na Scol final. Larry Tompkins in his autobiography wrote about how a young Roy Keane after just breaking into the Nottingham Forest team would come by his pub by Kent Station and absorb stories of how Tompkins and legions of other Cork GAA players prepared for and won their All-Irelands.
That cross-pollination of ideas and inspiration has served Keane and many of his countymen well over the years. His idol, one JBM as he announced on Sky Sports, hardly kicks that goal against Galway in ’73 or against Tipp in ’75 if he didn’t play as much ground football as a kid. Now his son Brian has made his livelihood cross-channel, just as John Meyler’s son David has.
Cork helped make them. Playing all sports in Cork helped make them. As Ronan O’Gara, a nifty footballer in his time with Bishopstown, would write in his second book, “I’ll always be thankful to my parents for giving me the opportunity to play soccer, hurling, football, pitch and putt, tennis, you name it, as well as rugby, from a young age.”
Thursday night rugby in the Pairc isn’t sacrilege. Instead it’s a celebration of Cork GAA and Cork sport and a proper reflection of the sporting heritage and true generous nature of its people.
