Cork’s twins turbo hit top gear

It was about three years ago, in knowledgeable hurling company in Kilkenny, that the questions were asked.

Are the O’Connor twins of Cork the real deal? Can they be counted on under pressure? Can they stand up to a hit, to a physical marker?

Yes, yes and yes again, came the replies from one who had seen them answer those very questions time after time with their home club.

Newtownshandrum is both home and club to Ben and Gerry O’Connor. Identical twins, Ben has been part of the Cork senior set-up since 1999, the glory year, while midfielder Gerry came on the scene in 2000.

But long before that, both had been synonymous with Newtownshandrum. They spent four or five years in every underage-group up along, were the principal driving-force behind the U-21 county three-in-a-row side, starred in the intermediate county-winning side when they were barely out of U-16, and helped Newtown to its first-ever senior county title, in 2000. In the Cork colours, Ben is the better-known of the two, the flying wing-forward, scorer of flash on-the-run points from wide right while his twin is generally held in reserve, introduced in the final quarter to run at tiring defences.

Back home in Newtown however they are appreciated equally, Ben for all those points, those goals, Gerry for providing all the ammo, with the non-stop effort, 24-hr Le Mans engine.

Over the years, that devotion to their home cause saw the twins put in a phenomenal effort with club and county. Not just the O’Connors either, because as Newtown became more successful and reached last year’s county final again, more were called on. Goalkeeper Paul Morrissey, centre-forward Mike Morrissey, full-back Pat Mulcahy saw service with Cork, tried to serve two masters. At times, it was all too much, reckons Ben.

“I’d say there were times last year when the Newtown boys would actually train six nights a week, play a league match with Cork at the weekend and then straight after that, hit off home or somewhere else to play a game with Newtown. That was cut out this year, and thankfully too. There’s no way a fella could keep that up. If we train three or four nights a week with Cork now, I won’t train at home at all.

“If the club had a match at the weekend, a league match, I’d play that and that’s fair enough. The boys at home are happy enough now knowing we’re training with Cork.”

It is a two-way street though, because the boys with Cork also know that the boys at home are training, and almost as hard. “The gap between county and club training is closing all the time. I can only speak for the situation at home, but our training is savage, on a par with what we do in Cork. Newtown do three nights a week, as hard as any inter-county side, on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then a match at the weekend.

The appliance of science is also be used to great effect. “At home now we have Ger Cunningham, from the Activity Centre in UL, and everything is planned out the same as Gerry Wallace and Sean McGrath do in Cork.

“Everything is marked out, you can walk in and ask what are we doing tonight, and they can give you a minute-by-minute breakdown. Most clubs are the same, the training is every bit as hard, and if your club isn’t doing it, you’re going to fall back and you’ve no chance of winning. That’s what keeps fellas moving all the time.

“It’s the same at inter-county, it all started off with Clare. They brought in all this physical stuff, won an All-Ireland, then everyone said we’ve got to do all this physical stuff too, or we’re not going to get anyplace. It just continues on like that.”

Newtown have now qualified for the quarter-final of the Cork senior championship and are looking good while Cork play Wexford this Sunday in the All-Ireland semi-final. Is it all worth it? Certainly, according to Ben.

“This is what we were looking for so we can’t complain. If we were told in January that we would be going up to play Wexford in an All-Ireland semi-final on August 10, we’d have been quite happy. Everyone is looking forward to it at this stage.”

It helps of course that Cork took the short-cut to this stage, remained unbeaten, picked up a Munster title on the way. All part of a vast and greater plan.

“Yeah, at the start of the year we looked at that too, decided we wanted to get the semi-final playing as few games as possible, and that’s what we did.”

It helped out Mr Frank Murphy also, the long-suffering but super-efficient Cork county secretary avoided fixture clashes with the back-door qualifier route.

“It’s important to keep the club scene going as well. You see other counties call off all matches, don’t start until after they’re out of the championship and there’s a backlog then. That’s ruining hurling in those counties, but we’re lucky enough. Our aim is to get to the All-Ireland final playing four games, win it, that’s all we want to do.”

Whether they do or not will depend heavily on how Ben O’Connor and his two line-mates in the half-forward row do against a very highly-rated Wexford half-back line. Can they pull it off?

“Every time we go out, the opposing half-back line is expected to be on top but up to now we’ve been coming up trumps, won a few balls, throwing it around a bit. Sunday is no different, we know their half-back line is very good, they have experience, speed, hurling, everything a half-back should have. We’ve trained hard for it and hopefully things will go right for us on the day.”

Hopefully?

“Yerra we’re just delighted to be there. Looking back to last year, you’d have wondered would Cork hurling ever be back at the top. We’re confident going in on Sunday that if we click, if things run right for us, we’ll be in the All-Ireland final.”