Healthy Cork can go the distance
DONAL O’GRADY left them wanting more. The Barr's clubman led Cork to All-Ireland success in 2004, but left after his agreed term of two years because of the demands of his nine to five as principal of one of Ireland’s top schools, Gaelcholaiste Mhuire An Mhainistir Thuaidh. Although he has returned to civilian life, O’Grady keeps abreast of events in the trenches. On the Cork hurlers’ decision not to go Singapore yesterday with the Allstars, he expressed great sympathy with the troops.
“Look at the schedule. Some of the Cork players were involved with Munster, so they were in Boston for a week before Christmas. They’ve had the trip to South Africa scheduled since late September; that’s the better part of three weeks. Most of the players have jobs or are students and they feel they can’t just up and go off again.
“There are constraints on them - I presume if there were no constraints they wouldn’t have too much problems travelling.”
“I don’t think there are many people, in the Cork camp or otherwise, who could afford to take a month off work,” he added.
“People who pick up the newspaper and read about the Premiership, Heineken Cup and inter-county GAA need to realise there’s a huge difference between them. The first two are professionals and the last are amateurs. People don’t make that distinction. Journalists need to make it too.”
Journalists, meanwhile, aren’t the only ones looking at Cork’s prospects for three titles in a row. Ever the analyst, O’Grady goes through the opposition and asks who might be in the running?
“Galway would have won every ‘You’re A Star’ in the last ten years, they’ve had so much talent. They were well managed by Cyril Farrell, but since he left there’s been a lot of chopping and changing. This is Conor Hayes’ fourth year, so that’s the greatest level of continuity they’ve had since Cyril. That’s a major positive.
“You’d have questions marks over whether they have the all-round game to win an All-Ireland: they’ve a good defence and good enough midfield, but they may be short one or two forwards. Then again, who isn’t? You’d rate them, but their difficulty is getting through the qualifiers - people forget Limerick only lost to them by a point last year.
“There’ll be a lot of people looking at Tipp this year. Babs (Keating) knows the game, he knows the kinds of players he wants, and he’s a good organiser - he puts the right structures in place for the team.
“It’ll be interesting, because Tipp are only a player or two away. People forget that when we beat them in Killarney, two years ago, the game could have gone either way up to the last ten minutes. They’re short a centre-back and a centre-forward, but it’ll be interesting to see how they develop.
“Waterford went back a bit in 2005; maybe their fitness wasn’t as good. A lot of people were saying Justin was going to leave last year, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can get back up to that level.”
On Kilkenny: “No-one doubts their forwards, but they have problems at midfield and in defence. They’ve been there or thereabouts at minor and U21 level, but the question is whether they can revitalise their defence.
“Limerick are probably short a few forwards,” he adds.
And Cork?:
“All told, Cork have experience, leadership, strength, good athleticism and, above all, an excellent midfield. Cork have a settled team, too, which helps.”
O’Grady acknowledges Rebel worries about keeping that midfield healthy, but he has a positive outlook on their attacking strength.
“The midfielders are an excellent combination, but if anything happens, we don’t have that prototype to replace them. Tom Kenny doesn’t spend that much time in midfield, because he spends a lot of time supplementing the backs. Last year, Tom made vital tackles, back on his own 21, in crunch games, while Jerry O’Connor also gets back - and forward - very well.
“There are question marks about the Cork forward line the whole time, but in last year’s All-Ireland final Ben O’Connor played very well at wing and corner-forward; Timmy McCarthy played well and Niall McCarthy played well. If you go back through Cork’s scorelines, back to 1999, they’re not too different.
“If you get up around 25 points you’ll win most games, and Cork have been up around that level.
“People in Cork should remember that in 1999 there were supposed to be no forwards in Cork, yet Jimmy Barry-Murphy picked a youngish forward line and won the All-Ireland.”
“Going back further to the three-in-a-row, even though Cork had great forwards, if you looked at the press cuttings they probably said that if something happened to a certain forward the team was done for.
“Cork’s defence is strong, and if they need to bring in players they have them to bring in. Further up the field it’s different, but that applies to every other county.
“Cork’s defence is athletic, fast and strong. Every one of them is over six foot and 12 stone and that’s what you need in today’s game.
“All things being equal, if Cork have the same drive and hunger and stay injury-free, they have every chance of getting there. That’s not to say they’ll win it, but they have every chance.”
So much for the marquee names in hurling; how about the game in general?
O’Grady said the 2004 All-Ireland win was vital for hurling to stay strong in Cork, and he warms to that theme.
“You have to be strong at the bottom if you want to be strong at the top,” he said.
“For the month after Cork win an All-Ireland, kids are out pucking around in red jerseys, and you can’t buy that kind of PR.
“The more often you win an All-Ireland it encourages people to go out and puck around.”
“Modern life doesn’t support kids going out and hitting a sliotar against a blank wall. There’s traffic, there’s apartment living, and kids don’t play on the street - it’s all centralised on the club. You have to go to the club to play, whereas years ago you could walk out the front door and play - ‘slogging’ out on the street. It’s only a few people who’ll persist with that, who’ll keep going.
“Children are different, too. There are one, two-child families, so you don’t have a load of brothers to play with you. There was a time, 30 years ago, you’d go through a housing estate and the green patch would be brown up the middle from kids playing on it. Now they’re beautiful and green, because there aren’t as many kids playing there.”
It won’t surprise anyone who ever participated in an O’Grady training session that he sees the future of the sport resting on the correct techniques being taught to young hurlers from an early age..
“I know there are different traditions of sport, but in traditional hurling areas - or even new areas - if every single child came out of primary school with the proper grip, left or right-handed, and the basic rudiments, such as being able to hit the ball on the ground left and right, there’d be a great chance that the game would stay strong.
“You have a captive audience in schools, because kids have to go to school. How much work is being done there? The IRFU and FAI have trained coaches - not paid, that’s not the point, but trained - in there.
“Hurling’s like any other sport, it’s a pyramid with elite practitioners at the top, but you have to keep things strong at the bottom.”
“You can’t stress quality coaching enough.”
“In any business, you try to build on your strengths and work on the challenges before the organisation. You should keep hurling strong where it’s strong, and hurling was always strong in Cork city,” he added.
“You enjoy the game a lot more if you have all the skills...I’d see flicking the ball away at a crucial time in a game as being as important as a goal or a great save. In the Galway-Tipp game last year Paul Curran flicked the ball away brilliantly at one stage and the crowd really responded, maybe because it was unexpected. I’d put a lot of emphasis on having the proper technique - or at least, the proper technique as I saw it!”
That kind of attention to detail makes it surprising O’Grady didn’t emerge as a candidate for the vacant director of hurling job.
“I never considered it, I hadn’t any interest in it. I don’t think there was any job description - what do you need as director of hurling, do you need an administrator or a coach? It’s based in Croke Park, so I assumed it was an administrative role, but I wasn’t really aware that it was something that was being considered.
“Take Garret Fitzgerald, the chief executive of Munster rugby; he was a great coach but as chief executive he’s an administrator.”
O’Grady feels the GAA’s approach to hurling is getting better. He welcomes the Ring and Rackard Cups, and suggests that maybe amalgamating the Ulster counties for the National League and Leinster championship would bring them on.
He sees cracking Dublin as the key for hurling, but acknowledges the difficulty involved. Despite the obvious passion, however, he rejects any notion of small-ball zealotry.
“I don’t like the term hurling man, I don’t know what that means. I’m more interested in hurling than football, that’s how I’d put it.”
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