Old stagers keen to finally get grip on Sam

IT was only an off-the-cuff joke, but half the country would understand where Pearse O’Neill was coming from. “Darragh (Ó Sé) must have four or five All-Ireland medals at this stage,” said the Cork centre-forward, tongue firmly in cheek, at the Cork press night last week. “All I want is one.”

Cork are not the kind of county that can illicit any great sympathy from the neutral — it has been far too successful for that — but their footballers’ travails have come close.

For most of this decade they have been hanging around the Sam Maguire without ever getting acquainted, much like a teenage boy left watching his crush dance the slow sets.

Anthony Lynch was there (along with Nicholas Murphy) batting his eyelids in vain in 1999 when it was Meath who danced up the Hogan Stand steps.

Galling as that was, he could never have envisaged a scenario where he would still be seeking to emulate Sean Boylan’s side a full decade down the line.

“That’s what people thought at the time, particularly with a younger team, but it didn’t work out that way and that’s sport,” Lynch said.

“You have to take your chance when you get it.”

Graham Canty joined the chase a year later and the pair have soldiered together since. Most campaigns have stretched long into the summer but all have ended in failure. Lynch has at least tasted senior success with the county already, having claimed a National League medal within months of joining the panel, but little has separated their careers since.

The duo have shared eight Munster titles and a pair of All Star awards equally this decade, and both have played some of their best football while in the green and white of Ireland.

Their best moments on international duty probably overlapped in the same second test in Melbourne in 2003 when Lynch’s display was just overshadowed by Canty’s unforgettable duel with big Barry Hall.

They have known their bad times too and not all have been mere defeats. Their bodies have suffered as much as their souls. Canty has endured medial and cruciate ligament troubles as far back as 2002 and the memory lingers of his stricken form, arm upstretched, lying on the turf during the ‘06 Munster final replay.

The Bantry defender would miss the next ten months in recovery and it is hard now not to surmise that his absence cost Cork a shot at the All-Ireland that summer.

Lynch’s woes have, if anything, been more sustained and sapping. Trawl a search engine for his name and the amount of times it is bordered by words like ‘out’ and ‘injured’ is staggering. The most frustrating must have been the broken bone in his hand which reduced him to a sub’s role for the 2007 final but the setbacks have never made him contemplate walking away.

“It was frustrating, but you just get over it and move on. All sports people will tell you that injuries are the worst thing you have to deal with, but you just have to get on with it.

“I never thought about retirement. I was always just thinking about the next game to be honest. That’s the way I’d look at it. I try to be positive.”

Conor Counihan would probably choke on the very thought of Lynch calling time. This is a man whom Billy Morgan compared with Kevin Moran after one seminal display against Galway in the 2005 quarter-final.

Canty’s input has been no less central to Cork’s perennial march through to the back end of successive championships. That much was emphasised again at the start of the year long before a ball was kicked.

For years Cork, like many other counties, had allowed their club champions to nominate the senior captain and, like everywhere else, it had been a case of hit and miss, at best.

When that all changed with a vote of county delegates, it was Canty whom Counihan turned to, though it’s a role and an honour he, unsurprisingly, plays down.

“I don’t approach anything differently. There are players on this team playing for Cork longer than me and probably bring more leadership than I ever bring. You do what you can to help the younger lads. A lot of the younger lads have their own experience, whether it’s a Sigerson victory with CIT or maybe an U21 All-Ireland final or title.

“They are coming into it with their own experience. They feed off you and you feed off them — the intensity, the hunger they have for the game. It works both ways.”

Much has been made of the recent youthful influx of faces, and rightly so, but the presence of players like Canty, Lynch and Murphy have provided the bedrock on which they have thrived. For years we were used to seeing Canty hold the fort on the last line while Lynch juggled his defensive duties with attacking gallops as a half-back. Now those roles have been reversed.

Lynch finds himself at corner-back where he has already shone on Colm Cooper this summer while Canty has been repositioned further afield to the number six spot. It all seems to add up. The new blood, the old vets and the cathartic win over Tyrone at Croke Park but, if they win, you can bet that no-one in Cork will be happy with just the one. Not even Pearse O’Neill.