Counihan: ‘we can perform even better next year’

IT’S 1990 since Conor Counihan was last on an All-Stars trip. He earned his ticket to Toronto that time on the strength of Cork’s second successive All-Ireland title and his own back-to-back nomination as the game’s outstanding number six.

Twenty years on and the latest tour has taken him to the city of Kuala Lumpur, a passage he earned by the dint of leading Cork on another victorious march up Croke Park’s Hogan Stand steps in September.

The symmetry is nice but the Aghada man still finds it difficult to process the fact that the Munster county failed to claim another Sam Maguire in the intervening years. No wonder, then, that relief is still the abiding emotion more than two months on.

“Twenty years is a long time. I never imagined it would be that long. It is a great sense of relief for everyone involved and I suppose relief is the big thing. We will enjoy the few weeks now and get back to work in January.”

Some light duties demand his attention before then, however.

Cork, as everyone knows, is a big county and the whirlwind of visits accompanied by Sam Maguire has yet to wear itself out but the cup has been in just as much demand among the exiles in Malaysia’s capital.

Just as they did two months ago, Counihan and James McCartan will manage opposing sides today when the 2009 and 2010 All-Stars meet at the Royal Selangor Club in Bukit Kiara — the region’s persistent monsoon rains permitting.

A fitting reward for Counihan and one that could have been his swansong. After the defeat of Down he told this paper that he would take three weeks to mull over his options and talked about how he didn’t want to end up needing the Cork role more than it needed him.

In the end, he committed to the position for another two years and will return in 2011 with the same management team but he admits that the temptation to walk away while at the top had stalked him for a time prior to his decision.

“You certainly would be (tempted). There is a lot of pressure in the job but at the same time I probably felt, having listened to the players over the last number of weeks that maybe we can perform a bit better than we did last year.

“That is the big incentive — knowing that guys want to do more now. Saying that is one thing, getting fellas around and getting them out to do that is another. We have to see how fellas react in the New Year.”

Counihan points, in particular, to the games against Dublin and Down as prime examples of how Cork cut it tight last season and he knows, too, that their elevation to the summit has only exposed them to greater difficulties against opponents eager to claim their scalp.

The champions found out a great deal about themselves during their detour though the qualifiers last summer and Counihan will be hoping to add to his depth of knowledge and talent in the first five months of the coming year.

“We would like to do well in the league but we have to give some of the guys under the line an opportunity to perform there and that is a big chance for them,” said Counihan.

“Equally for some of the lads that have been around a while it is a new season and we are starting with a blank page. You know what happened last year is history and that is the way we’ll be looking at it.”

No news being good news in the off-season, Cork supporters will have been delighted with the fact that there have been almost no retirements from their All-Ireland winning squad.

Having reached the summit, there were fears that veterans like Alan Quirke (34), Nicholas Murphy (32) and John Miskella (32) might call it a day but Derek Kavanagh, so far, is the only man to have actually done so.

All in all, then, Counihan would appear to have most of his ducks in a row and can enjoy the break here in Malaysia’s heat and humidity while the majority of his colleagues plot and ponder his and Cork’s downfall amidst the winter’s icy grip.