Taking the right option
It's not about doing two things 50% better, it's about doing 100 things 1% better.
LAST Tuesday night John Allen addressed an adoring crowd outside the Na Piarsaigh clubhouse, home patch of Cork's inspirational captain, Seán Óg Ó hAilpín. He invited those in the crowd to identify the luckiest man present, and after the storm of incorrect guesses abated, answered his own question.
"Me," said the Cork boss. "I'm the luckiest, having these lads to manage."
With another team it could've been interpreted as playing to the gallery, but Cork's professionalism is now the accepted gold standard for inter-county sides. On and off the field.
THE scoreboard doesn't lie about Cork's lack of goals. In this year's championship they played five games, and a return of five goals is very low for a county with such an array of past poachers.
The current side, and Cloyne's Diarmuid O'Sullivan in particular, paid a good deal of attention to penalty technique this season to maximise their chances of a green flag. The full-back's fearsome power made him the obvious choice as penalty-taker, but when Cork won a penalty against Waterford in the Munster championship he got under the ball, sending it well over the bar for a point.
At a Cork training session some time afterwards O'Sullivan was taking penalties when another member of the panel approached. He pointed out that while the full-back was getting plenty of power into his shot, he wasn't getting the maximum return from his strike.
When lifting the ball, O'Sullivan was moving slightly ahead of the sliothar, thus robbing himself of a significant amount of his power when making contact.
The correction was taken on board, and O'Sullivan's return from penalties in training was "significantly better," according to a member of the backroom staff.
Equally significant was the role taken by O'Sullivan's fellow panellist. Justin McCarthy's fine autobiography "Hooked" describes his first training sessions with Cork in the early sixties, when the backs-and-forwards routines of the time weren't followed because it was felt that players might import club rivalries into their inter-county training.
This season O'Sullivan received a valuable pointer on technique from a team-mate he might yet face in the county championship; all in the name of maximising Cork's potential.
LAST year in this newspaper John Allen's diary revealed the secret weapon employed by Cork to while away their journeys to Dublin: a quiz.
This season the time spent on one of those trips was again spent answering questions, but it was also used to safeguard against complacency.
When Cork were drawn against Waterford, their backroom team faced a different challenge. The sides had already met in the Munster championship, a game that had been the focus of months of anticipation, but now they were to meet again and the Cork management team wanted to safeguard against any staleness.
Fixing on the 2000 All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Offaly - a game involving several current Cork players - the management sourced a photograph of Offaly players celebrating at the final whistle, had it blown up and copied it 30 times. Before embarking on the train to Dublin for the Waterford game, the players were each given an envelope and told to open it, to take in what it meant to other counties to beat Cork, and to ensure it didn't happen against Waterford. It didn't.
TEAM trainers Seanie McGrath and Jerry Wallace set out the cones for Cork's now-famous warm-up ahead of games. Before the All-Ireland semi-final with Clare, Wallace noticed that when he was pacing out his distances from the sideline he found himself in the large parallelogram a little sooner than expected. The pitch had been narrowed by two metres on each side, and outside each sideline, faint but identifiable, Wallace could see the original lines of the pitch. He could only guess at the reason, though with Dublin and Tyrone clashing in the All-Ireland football semi-final the day before, he wondered if it had been a big-ball ploy.
The reason behind the realignment was immaterial at that stage. It was too late to change the game plan, though Cork's support game would obviously suffer if they couldn't get away from their opponents on a tight pitch. It was also too late to tell the players, as last-second information would only blur the focus. The management sat tight. As it turned out, Clare put it up to Cork before the Leesiders rallied in the final quarter to overturn a six-point deficit, but the backroom team took more comfort than might have been expected from the breathless one-point win.
If others were ringing alarm bells about Cork's form without knowing that the playing field, while level, hadn't been the regulation size, so much the better, the management felt. However, they also resolved to ensure that the pitch would be regulation width for the All-Ireland final, and it was.
IN the countdown to the All-Ireland final, it's customary for teams to signal their press nights well in advance as the cut-off point; after that date the players are off limits for interviews.
Galway had their press night on Thursday September 01, after training; the same evening was scheduled as the 'open night' for fans.
After the players had finished their session, fans and reporters alike swarmed all over the field, and the Galway panellists ended up signing autographs on hurleys, programmes and jerseys while being interviewed.
It was hardly ideal. One clearly unhappy Galway player, sweat drying as he juggled the demands of media and supporters, shook his head and voiced his concerns about the prospect of catching a chill. In the general confusion, star corner-back Ollie Canning lost his favourite hurley, and despite the best efforts of the local radio station, he had to line out in his first All-Ireland final in four years without it.
Cork had their press night the following evening, on Friday the second. They brought three players and the backroom team to a hotel a couple of miles from Pairc Uí Chaoimh, and before the press conference began, the media were told that as the team were training that evening, there would be a finite time allocation for interviews. Players and management were freely available for newspapers, radio and television for an hour and a half, but when the time came they left, free to concentrate on their preparations.
DURING the season the Cork players and management team had been quizzed incessantly about their running game. John Allen was always at pains to describe it as a support game, however, and the difference was crucial. He and his backroom staff had watched the Galway-Kilkenny semi-final and thought the Connacht side had a fallible central spine to their defence. Getting the ball into that area quickly would be vital, but wouldn't that mean a complete rethink of their tactics, a dangerous move so late in the season? Not necessarily. On at least two different occasions during the year Cork players had said that while they had faith in their tactics, they also had faith in their ability to adapt their own game and to meet different challenges.
The management team didn't do a complete about-turn, either; they decided to "drip-feed" the change in tactics, as one mentor said, in the training sessions coming up to the final, gradually introducing the notion of a more direct style until, at the team meeting the week before the game, the players themselves settled on getting the ball into the full-forward line quickly.
A small change, but an important one. Equally important was the surprise element. The change wasn't sign-posted, and while there was the odd rumour about different tactics the week of the final, you have your pick of rumours in that week anyway. Cork didn't go route one from the throw-in, either; they eventually throttled the contest by playing much of the second half where Galway were unhappiest, just behind their 45-metre line, and the key to that were Donal Óg Cusack's booming puck-outs.
Cork were never going to hit long, aimless balls into random areas. Minutes after the final whistle last Sunday Ben O'Connor acknowledged the more direct approach but also said that the long ball was only used when it was the right option.
The last correct option in a season full of them.
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