Cork legend Cummins backs Cats to continue domination

FORMER Cork dual star Ray Cummins believes the Kilkenny hurlers will continue their dominance of the All-Ireland championship for several more years.

The captain of the first of the Rebels’ treble sequence in 1976 said it was ‘scary’ to watch the way Kilkenny hurled against Tipperary on Sunday at such an early stage of the season, adding that they looked ‘an awesome team, with huge aggression’.

“It just worries me for the game of hurling that they are way ahead of everybody else at this point in time,” he said.

“I don’t think four-in-row is going to bother them — it’s going to be five- or six-in-a-row at least.

“I’d love to understand what makes them so special, but they obviously have the formula right. They have a conveyor belt of players at all levels coming through and they are obviously doing something right that the rest of us obviously are not doing. I think it would be worth our while to go up there and try to figure out how they are doing it.”

Joking that Cody finished his career when he played his last game for Cork in the 1982 All-Ireland final (they played on each other), Cummins said that there was a shared pride amongst the players that their achievement of winning three-in-a-row had stood the test of time for over three decades.

“From that point of view it was nice to have been part of it. Any team that performs to that level for three years in a row has to be special and as a group of players they were.’

Paying tribute to their backroom team, including (deceased) coach Fr. Bertie Troy and trainer Kevin Kehilly, Cummins said their combined contributions had been as critical to their success as any of the players on the field.

For Martin O’Doherty, the 1977 captain (who now lives in Los Angeles), one of the outstanding memories of the win over Wexford was a crucial save made by Martin Coleman late in the match. “I saw it there again today (on DVD). That was a defining moment. Had it gone in I might not have captained a winning team,” he commented.

“The character of the team was great. Maybe that was because we were together so long.”

Acknowledging the role of Christy Ring (a selector over the three campaigns), Galway-born O’Doherty felt that while his contribution might have been taken for granted at the time, on reflection he appreciated that he played a key role in the background.

Charlie McCarthy, the 1978 captain, revealed that he had felt under a certain amount of pressure after Cummins and O’Doherty had lifted the MacCarthy Cup. “I was delighted and privileged to make it three-in-a-row. It was something you could only dream about,” he said.

McCarthy regrets their failure to continue the winning sequence in 1979. “In the first round we beat Tipperary in the Park by a point and went on to beat Limerick well in the Munster final.

“At the back of our minds we probably thought we’d beat Galway and be ready for the All-Ireland final — but they have a habit of beating Cork in semi-finals and we probably didn’t realise it at the time.”