Allen a winner and a gentleman

HALF an hour after the final act in the 2006 All-Ireland hurling final, and there’s a mob scene outside the Cork hurlers’ dressing-room.

The press are waiting for the usual from the losing side: a snarl about the referee. A curse about the pitch. A chop across the knuckles of the media.

We’re going to be disappointed (as it happens, when the reporters do get a flake across the fingers it’s at the other end of the corridor).

When John Allen steps through the Cork door, head up and chest out, he nods to those assembled before picking out one face in particular. The fact that a chance to make history drained through his fingers like sand a few minutes ago doesn’t put Allen’s manners on hold; he thanks the reporter for the present of a book the previous week before heading up the corridor to congratulate the victorious Kilkenny side.

You’ll notice a common thread to the tributes to John Allen which are being paid at the moment. His retirement as Cork hurling manager has put terms like gentleman and a class act on heavy rotation, and little wonder. For the last two years the St Finbarr’s man has given a fair exhibition of how to behave — in both victory and defeat.

There’s a lot of steel behind that velvet, mind. If you disagree, consider a quick shortlist of some issues that popped up in Allen’s tenure: a media standoff with RTÉ ahead of last year’s Munster final that could have blurred the focus of his players. A controversy that erupted out of nothing when two players carried unapproved logos on their boots in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final.

It’s forgotten now but that storm in a beer bottle, for a few anxious days, threatened to put those players out of an All-Ireland final. Another controversy was concocted out of nothing when Cork’s choice of sliotar was criticised in a game this season during which a) one of his players was assaulted by an onlooker coming onto the pitch at half-time and b) another player was prevented from taking a penalty by opposing players.

He hit the right note each time, choosing solidarity, in-house discipline and a dignified silence in turn to deal with the problems as they arose.

After the defeat by Kilkenny earlier this month there were, inevitably, murmurs and moans among the Cork public about switches that were never made and substitutions that were never tried. How quickly they forget — it’s 13 months since Cork were six points down with 15 minutes left against a rampant Clare side in the All-Ireland semi-final.

Allen and his selectors didn’t hesitate: Brian Corcoran and Ronan Curran were pulled ashore for Neil Ronan and Wayne Sherlock. Those were tough substitutions to make.

But the changes drove Cork home. Neil Ronan broke Brian Lohan’s dominance and a rejigged defence closed suddenly like a steel trap.

It’s not surprising that Allen was able to see the bigger picture; his frame of reference is habitually broad. After a breathless Munster final last year he namechecked his current reading, The Da Vinci Code. This year an interview this reporter set up with him was held up by a free-ranging conversation that roved from San Francisco to Kabul and back to Sardinia before finally settling on Semple Stadium and Croke Park.

And God only knows what Sean Óg Murphy would have made of Roy Keane’s arrival in the Páirc for that chat this summer.

Now he’s resigned, the speculation starts, with current selector Ger Cunningham in pole position (another Barrs man — what is it about the water in Togher?) His resignation sparks thoughts of other implications. Have the stakes at intercounty level become so cutthroat that it’s hardly surprising to see a manager resign after losing one championship game in two years — and that by three points?

Well, that’s for another day. After last year’s final this writer wrote a tongue-in-cheek evaluation of Allen’s season, framed as a school report, which the manager took in good spirits. He took issue only with a B-minus in music, challenging us to produce another intercounty manager who could recognise a B flat diminished.

We couldn’t. Given Allen’s inability to hit a bum note, consider it upgraded to A-plus.