O’Callaghan: Provincial title a burden not a bonus

CORK senior football selector Timmy O’Callaghan, while stressing Kerry were clearly the superior side, claimed that winning the provincial championship was now more of a hindrance than a help.

O’Callaghan was reacting to Cork’s crushing defeat against the Kingdom in the first of the All-Ireland SFC semi-finals on Sunday.

“I firmly believe the inter-provincial system is under serious threat now. If you look at the Munster championships, Clare and Kerry are now through to the All-Ireland finals without winning the Munster titles,” he said.

“They are in there following a couple of extra quality matches, they got through the backdoor system, and I feel it is detrimental to teams now to win the provincial titles.

“In the case of football, if you look back on Kerry’s path to the final, the new system stood them in good stead and brought them a long way from the defeat in the Munster semi-final.

“Unless there is a greater reward for the winners of the provincial championships, I feel they are going to be a useless exercise in the future. Winning them is not conducive to winning the All-Irelands, that’s for certain.

“I know you can advance the counter-argument, but to me it is clear that playing two games in the Munster championship, and winning them, is no help, when defeated teams can get anything up to five more highly competitive games, which can bring them on a tonne.

“Last year, the team that won the All-Ireland football title came through the backdoor system and there is every chance it will be repeated this year.”

Former Cork captain Denis Allen said it was by far the best exhibition of Gaelic football he had seen by a team.

“It would be so easy to be critical of Cork, but that was the perfect performance by Kerry,” Allen said.

“Every team manager strives to get his team to reach that level,” he said.

“At the end of the day, Kerry played the fastest and most precise game of football I’ve very seen, and there wouldn’t be a team in Ireland live with them on that form.

“Even when the match was going on, I said to myself ‘I’ve never seen such precision passing in a Gaelic football match’.

“Kerry did the same last Sunday and while it would be very easy, as I said, to look for excuses for Cork’s abysmal display, you have to give Kerry all the credit for a wonderful exhibition.

“I felt that Cork would never again be beaten by such a score after the great Kerry team of the 1970s broke up...I sincerely hope this is not the beginning of another great run by Kerry.”

Nowhere is a defeat by Kerry in the senior championship more keenly felt that along the north-west border.

Millstreet’s John Coleman, who won his All-Ireland medal in 1973, argued that Cork didn’t have that ruthless streak necessary at this level to win matches.

“I honestly thought that the sight of a Kerry jersey in Croke Park in an All-Ireland semi-final would rise our lads to what was required, and the blame for that must lie somewhere,” Coleman said.

“It was as obvious as the nose on your face that after all the times Colin Corkery had roasted Seamus Moynihan, Kerry would have some plan to prevent it happening again. And they certainly had,” he said.

“I thought Corkery got a particularly raw deal from the referee. You saw the way he was reacting, and clearly something unsavoury was going on. That’s not his form to be arguing with the referee throughout the match.

“Throughout the season, I felt a number of players were just hanging in there, and on Sunday, they were finally exposed in the wide, open spaces.

“We still have the nucleus of a good team but are short a couple of players with the necessary steel to win the 40/60 ball, to stand their ground when the going gets tough, and to throw their weight around when the need arises.”