O’Mahony not burdened by Croker history
The westerners are haunted by tales of woe from their Croke Park outings over the last 20 years and beyond that it required a book, ‘House of Pain’, to chronicle them all.
From the four All-Ireland senior finals they’ve lost between 1996 and 2006 to the National League final defeat a year later to their back to back All-Ireland minor final losses there in 2008 and 2009, they’ve had more than their fair share of capital punishment.
But O’Mahony insists that record counts for nothing in the eyes of the current players and management.
O’Mahony himself, of course, managed Galway to All-Ireland titles in 1998 and 2001 while a handful of his players were U-21 championship winners in 2006, so there’s absolutely no inferiority complex he claims.
“Supporters have been through a lot in the last 20 years and, not in a malicious way, burden every individual team that comes out with what has happened previously,” said O’Mahony.
“That is not applicable at the minute because there were six guys playing during the league who won All-Ireland U-21 medals, ironically, against Cork. These young lads deserve to go up and see what happens.”
O’Mahony was quick to temper any over-optimism in his camp, however, insisting that Cork, whom Connacht champions Mayo beat in the final round of the league, must be considered favourites for Sunday’s final rematch.
“The reality is that Cork are the most likely team over the last 18 months to upset Kerry and Tyrone,” said the Fine Gael TD.
“That in itself is a huge task. Forget about all the sideshows. We will have to cope with huge intensity from Cork because they will have huge motivation and a huge need to win.”
Despite attending yesterday’s league finals launch to discuss Sunday’s game, O’Mahony couldn’t help taking a pot shot at last weekend’s Congress decision to reduce Championship match day panels from 30 to 26.
“You need a minimum of 30, and I don’t want this to be interpreted as knocking the GAA, but I think it’sa serious issue and I was surprised that it wasn’t picked up on,” he said.
Cork manager Conor Counihan also attended yesterday’s launch and agreed with O’Mahony’s complaint.
“Bringing it down to 26, you’re telling four guys every week, ‘Lads, thanks for coming in but we don’t need you,” said Counihan.
“It’s not a great situation. For counties developing players in different phases, having that 30 man panel gave you the liberty to do it. Turning it back now certainly restricts things.”
As for Cork’s form in the run up to Sunday’s Croke Park date, their first outing at the Dublin venue since last September’s All-Ireland final defeat to Kerry, Counihan expressed his satisfaction.
“We recognised that we needed to be a bit more consistent and that’s probably been the biggest thing this year,” said Counihan.
“There are periods of games where we tended to dominate then allowed opposition to come back at us so we need to be a bit more ruthless in that regard.”
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