Rebels’ days as ‘shoo-ins’ for glory long gone, admits Seán Óg

SEÁN ÓG Ó HAILPÍN has admitted that the days when Cork were ‘shoo-ins’ for All-Ireland hurling success are gone.

The experienced wing-back won three All-Ireland’s with the Rebels and captained them to their last MacCarthy Cup success in 2005.

But a mixture of age, the high-profile strike crisis that split the county last winter and Kilkenny’s dominance of all things hurling has forced Cork to lower their ambitions somewhat.

Ó hAilpín stressed they’ll still set out in 2010 with the ambition of winning every game under Denis Walsh.

And he said that if they meet Kilkenny in an All-Ireland semi-final or final, they’ll try their hardest to dash the Cats’ five-in-a-row hopes.

But he revealed the inner psychology of the panel when he admitted a first Munster title win since 2006 would represent significant success next season.

“There was a time in Cork people’s minds when we were shoo-ins to win the All-Ireland every year,” said Ó hAilpín. “That’s gone now.

“Where Cork are at the moment, we just have to get competitive again.

“We have to get back into the big ticket games again, All-Ireland semi-finals, finals, before we can even talk about stopping Kilkenny.

“Okay, if we get on a run and we meet Kilkenny in a semi-final then you think ‘imagine being the team to stop Kilkenny doing the five-in-a-row’. But at this moment in time, there’s no guarantee that will happen.

“We just have to get our house in order. We need to get competitive, we need to win a Munster championship.

“If Cork win the Munster final next year, that would be great progress.

“We’re three years in a row going through the backdoor system.”

But he said a more immediate goal is to continue to ‘build bridges’ between the Cork players and the public after the strike crisis that divided the county.

“We need to walk before we start sprinting,” he continued.

“We need to get our supporters back because not everyone is behind us from the fallout.

“We need to build bridges, we need to get a good uninterrupted training schedule again and once we get that, anything can happen.”

As a veteran of the Cork panel, Ó hAilpín was at the centre of the dispute between the 2008 panel, manager Gerald McCarthy and the county board that raged through last winter and spring.

He admitted he feels for the Clare players who are currently engaged in their own dispute with management.

“The problem I had last winter was that there were people commenting who didn’t understand what they were talking about,” he said.

“And I don’t want to be one of them now. You have to be involved in Clare to know. I was heavily involved in the Cork situation naturally enough but I don’t know the nuts and bolts of the Clare situation.

“From an onlooker’s side of things I just hope they can come up with a solution quickly because the longer it goes on, the longer it festers and gets more bitter and poisonous. Hopefully it won’t go as far as what happened in our situation and they can nip it in the bud and get back to Clare hurling.”