Mulcahy a defender well able to keep his corner

PAT MULCAHY has to be the most unlikely corner-back in the modern game of hurling.

He’s everything that the prototype isn’t, almost, but note that ‘almost’. He isn’t a small ball of energy, fast, fiery and furious, with the bristling ferocity often associated with terrier dogs. With his club Newtownshandrum, Pat is an elegant, controlled, centre-back, the guy who sees all the pitch, dictates the defence and is also a primary launch-pad for attack. How did he end up in the corner?

“Yeah, corner-back is more to do with the fella you’re playing on, is he tall, small, fast, which way does he turn, hit the ball, whereas out in the half-back line you can afford to make one or two errors, if your opponent gets a point, you can recover easier.”

Perhaps even get a point yourself, put him on the back foot?

“Exactly, whereas that’s not likely at corner-back. You have to be tougher mentally than when you’re playing outside, can’t afford a slip in concentration. It’s a lot different to what I’m used to, with Newtown, one mistake and you’re in trouble, you’ve got to try and play yourself back into it. I hadn’t played there much up to a few years ago, but playing with Cork, I’m a lot more comfortable there now.”

Centre-back with Newtown, corner-back with Cork, few people are in a better position to assess the new ‘possession’ style game favoured by both. Many claim one is a carbon copy of the other, that last year Cork simply adopted the style which won Newtown an All-Ireland club title.

“Not so,” says Pat. “Though we both do play a very structured game. What amazes me about the long-ball/short-ball argument is that when a team is playing the long-ball game, and a player is hooked or blocked down trying to deliver a long ball down the field, the player is blamed; when a pass goes astray in the short-ball game, the game is blamed, it’s the tactics that are wrong, not the individual. Against Waterford, we were passing it around in the first half, but what people forget is, we were playing into a strong wind, and any clearance we were likely to hit was going to land high on their half-back line, and they’d lap that up. What we were trying to do was work it out to someone who could deliver it up to our full-forward line, taking their half-back line out of it. Of course some passes are going to go astray, that’s the risk, but people should look at the big picture.

“This system does work, we have an All-Ireland to prove it. It’s been drilled into to us, take the right option. No player travels faster than the ball, if we get an opportunity to deliver a ball eighty yards into the corner, we’ll do that. But if you’re bottled up, give it to someone who isn’t, and let him deliver it. It’s a high-risk style and demands high levels of intelligence, with rapid decision-making the key.

“Certainly you must be more aware, and you have to work harder. It’s a very easy game to criticise, but it’s a very demanding game to play, everyone must play their part. You’re not going to train for nine months, then go out on the field and just start blowing balls all over the place, hoping they land in the right place. It’s a different game now, teams have a lot more time together there’s a lot more effort put into the preparations.”

Against Tipperary, Pat could find himself on either the stocky and supremely skilled Eoin Kelly, a tall, long-limbed player like Lar Corbett or even Redser O’Grady.

“Eoin is a class hurler, one of the best in the country. But it doesn’t matter so much anymore who you start on anyway, against Waterford, I’d say every Cork back marked every Waterford forward at some stage, they just kept rotating. Whoever comes your way, you must be capable of picking up, and marking; you must also be capable of playing any position in the full-back line, you can find yourself in different positions during the course of the game.

“It used to be that you would have a small fella in the corner, the big strong fella inside full-back or full-forward, now they can be anywhere. Now you could have a big strong fella in the corner, high ball pucked down to him, possession won out there. It’s a changing game. A tall full-forward can be bunched out of it too easily. You don’t have to be tall either to catch a ball, and Eoin is good in the air as well. You have to be ready for anything.”

Ready for another classic Cork/Tipp Munster final? “I don’t know about that, but it’s a great rivalry. Clare came through in the 90’s, then Waterford in the last few years, Limerick also, and we’ve had those rivalries as well. The Cork/Tipp went on the back-burner for a while, but there’s no doubt that this is traditionally the big one.”