One more with feeling

Paul Kerrigan should have the world at his feet. One of the key players on Cork’s All-Ireland winning team, he has a business masters in his back pocket and youth on his side — but the young attacker can’t get work.

He’d have left Ireland if it wasn’t for Cork football and a deep hunger for success. That’s why, among all the subs, he’s hoping Conor Counihan turns to him during tomorrow’s final and gives him the nod.

ONE of the big things they’ve learned as Cork footballers is the power of sticking at something and seeing things in a positive light.

In the lead up to last year’s All-Ireland final they steeled themselves from buying into all that talk of Down’s invincibility by deciding anytime they’d hear mention of the red and black’s 5-0 count in September showdowns, they’d immediately counter it in their own minds with another count: 9-0, the stark contrast between the number of All Stars the current Cork team had amounted between them and the number James McCartan had to work off.

Their mantra is whenever one of them finds an opponent giving them lip, they negate it by right away communicating something positive to a team-mate.

So, Paul Kerrigan isn’t exactly moping about the place. We meet on the outskirts of Cork for the launch of the Crown Decorating Centre during the week and he explains that while his hamstring twinged playing for Nemo last weekend, he’s hopeful of coming off the bench against the Dubs in Croker and playing his part, hopefully a big part.

He appreciates it’s a good time to be a Cork footballer; tomorrow is the team’s fifth successive national final in the space of just 24 months. But he also knows it’s not a good time to be a 24-year-old in Ireland, looking for work that isn’t there.

A month after finally landing that first All-Ireland, he went looking for work having just graduated with his masters in business from CIT to go with the honours degree he secured a year earlier.

He got a bit of work alright with a drink distributors company in their six manic weeks leading up to Christmas through a connection with Nemo, but that was strictly seasonal. In March, he thought he had something but it fell through and since then there’s been nothing.

It’s not due to a lack of effort. Every day he finds himself filling out a form to some recruitment company or applying for a job he found advertised in the Irish Examiner, or sending a CV on to someone in Nemo who might know someone, or corresponding with some of his lecturers about any prospective jobs. But so far, there’s been zilch.

“It’s nearly depressing at this stage,” he smiles, but only with his mouth, not his eyes.

“There’s nothing really to get up for, except applying here, there and everywhere. Someone might get on to you, ‘This fella could have a job going’ and so you ring him but it turns out there’s nothing going.”

He’s been pretty good at keeping himself active, though the other day he couldn’t resist heading off to the bookies where he bumped into Donncha O’Connor, another current All-Ireland medallist drawing the dole.

Sometimes he’ll play a round of golf. Usually he’ll head to the gym or the field. But there’s no escaping it, at least not for long. He’s unemployed and any time he switches on the radio or the TV he’s reminded of that fact.

“When you go off to college, you nearly expect that when you come out that you’re going to get a job. It would nearly get you down, seeing the amount of fellas having to emigrate, or the amount of fellas on the dole, with all their qualifications.”

A good few of his class have emigrated now. A lot of friends have gone travelling, just for the year, but some of them are now thinking of making their trip more permanent and it’s something Kerrigan has considered too.

“I’d say I’ll definitely go away some winter, and it’s nearly getting to the stage where you’d think about emigrating altogether. My buddies are talking seriously about going to Canada and you’d be thinking, ‘Gee, maybe I should head off too.’ But you stay. Because of the big games. They mean so much. You just can’t beat them.”

He says he wouldn’t still be here only for Cork, but it would be just as fair to say Cork wouldn’t be here as reigning All-Ireland champions only for him.

Last August in one of the big games he cherishes so much, Cork were trailing Dublin by five points with 20 minutes remaining in the All-Ireland semi-final. Everything seemed to be with Pat Gilroy’s team — the Hill, the force, the momentum — when Kerrigan suddenly took the ball and the game by the scruff of the neck.

Derek Kavanagh saw it unfold from the bench. For years he’d been telling anyone who’d listen that if you were to line up every GAA player in the country for a 100m race, Kerrigan would scorch the lot. A season or two earlier, Kerrigan wouldn’t necessarily have made the best use of that pace, maybe burning himself out to drop the ball into the goalie’s arms, but now his understanding of the game and his own game was more complete.

“You get times, like that time,” says Kavanagh, “where you get the ball around midfield and there’s no long ball on, the corner forwards are all tied up.

“That’s when you need someone to just take the ball and run. Paul sensed that and just took off along the wing, drawing a free [from Kevin Nolan for Daniel Goulding to slot over]. It was something simple but it was as just as big as the penalty Donncha put away a couple of minutes later. Even the way he reacted to it, [punching his fist and hopping into the air], it really spurred the whole thing on — the Cork crowd, the team itself.”

Kerrigan can’t really recall giving that lion’s roar, only the game-plan that helped draw that foul.

“Leading into the game we felt that while Dublin were very good defending as a unit, one-on-one every one of our forwards would take their backs. I’d got on a couple of balls at the end of the first half and scored a point and hit the crossbar with the other, so I knew I had the beating of my man.

“But I hadn’t been on the ball for a while in the second half, I was almost getting frustrated, so once I got it, I just went for it and a gap opened up. It was nothing to do with getting the crowd going. I suppose I was just so psyched up for that game and so sick of us losing All-Ireland semi-finals and finals.”

After that it was a test of nerve. Kerrigan considers Bernard Brogan’s performance that day as probably the best individual display of 2010 yet he was amazed by the “silly” shot the Dublin man took on in the closing minutes from an impossible angle.

Donncha O’Connor’s penalty didn’t amaze him. He knew he’d nail it, he just didn’t know where. “We always go kicking after training or before it starts up. A lot of fellas stick their penalties to the same side. Your man plants them everywhere. The one against Armagh the last day was the opposite side to the one he put past Cluxton. It’s very hard for goalies to read him. When crunch time comes, our fellas now seem to know what to do.”

He puts that down to a number of things. He gives huge credit to Kevin Clancy, the performance psychologist that has been working with the team since 2009. There’s not a player on the panel that hasn’t had a chat and a coffee with Clancy over the past few years and Kerrigan has benefited enormously from those chit-chats, from setting goals like winning three breaks in his next in-house game or competitive match, to visualising for five minutes on the parents’ couch before heading off to training that evening.

But as much Clancy and psychology has helped him cheat some experience, some experiences you just have to go through.

The 2009 All-Ireland final was an assault on his senses. The previous month Cork had played and beaten Tyrone in an absolutely pivotal game in the life cycle of the team but even a game of that magnitude, in front of 60,000 people, was a world away from playing there in front of 82,000.

The packed stands up above, and then all the drums and the flags and the noise on the field; he just wasn’t ready for it. He spent the day “chasing shadows” and his team either pumping in or chasing brain-dead ball for Tom O’Sullivan and Marc Ó Sé to gobble up.

“Kerry would feel they have a superior mindset to us when it comes to the big games,” he says, and while he disputes that claim now, he didn’t dispute it then. “Back then they were that bit cuter. They out-thought us.”

The hurt and the knowledge gained that day served him well 12 months later.

Against Down he found himself not even half as nervous as he’d been against Kerry and unaffected by all the hoopla and ceremony. In the first half his two shots at the posts had sailed wide of them but at half-time he remained very upbeat; he had already been on the ball more than he had in the entire 2009 final, and he’d won a couple of scoreable frees to show for it.

That outlook helped him to win another free and 45 for Goulding to convert, provide the assist for Ciarán Sheehan’s equalising point, and then the point Kerrigan himself kicked on the run to give Cork a lead they would not relinquish.

It’s been a rollercoaster since. There was the high of the final whistle and the team having the field all to itself to celebrate; he’ll admit openly he prefers it that way, rather than the traditional pitch stampede, because you get to share the moment with every member of the panel and backroom team.

He spent 10 days in Kuala Lumpur as an All Star replacement and was struck by how many players from other counties were struck by how close and tight the 11 Cork players on tour were.

That bond was further cemented by the panel’s three-week holiday in South Africa, from going on Safari to all getting sick while shark diving, like Hooper in Jaws.

After that he was back to Nemo, where they went from the high of beating Dr Crokes to the crashing low of losing to St Brigid’s in the All-Ireland semi-final.

“It’s fierce regretful. I’ve never known more competition for places out in the club or fellas doing so much work on their own. I thought we were going to go all the way this year.”

He was given three weeks off following that by Conor Counihan. Kerrigan found himself itching to get back by the middle of week two, but Counihan insisted, so Kerrigan had to be content with ticking over in the gym on a weights and running programme.

The break was for the better and he finds the team is as hungry as ever too.

On their last day in South Africa the retired Derek Kavanagh spoke to them for the last time, reminding them that while it was so sweet to have scaled the mountain, the real satisfaction was in the climb, not living off it.

Counihan has certainly kept the foot down and the standards up, making it clear to them they would be out to win every game in 2011, and by extension, the league itself. Kerrigan finds the team is more accepted by the Cork public but that kind of external validation is something the team long gave up seeking and he knows it’ll be a long time before it is universally gained.

While he’ll be the first to say that he had no claim to an All Star last year, it did rankle with the group that the entire forward line was overlooked, proof that the team has some way to go to get the respect it probably deserves.

“You’ll hear fellas saying around the place, ‘That was a soft All-Ireland, without having to beat Kerry.’ But the mental toughness and experience we’ve built up over the last few years and all the defeats, we’ve shown we can do it and fellas are a lot more confident now in their ability and the belief we can go and win it again.”

The Kerry thing is still there. But he wants Kerry. He grew up spending his school holidays sown in the family’s summer house in Derrynane and tagging along with his father Jimmy on the biennial pilgrimage to Killarney.

He’s delighted now that as a player it’s almost an annual pilgrimage down there. Some people question, even deride, the value of their early championship clashes, but for Kerrigan they’ve been essential in making both teams as good as they both are.

He can’t understand how beating Kerry in Munster can be interpreted as an unwise development, even if Kerry have come back to beat them in Croke Park.

“I love playing them. I think we’re in a great position that they’re in our province and we get to play them at least once every year. It’s brought us along as a team.”

A Munster final in Killarney this July; it’s for days like that he’s stayed around.

And for days like tomorrow. He’s come to admire this Dublin team. Pat Gilroy’s methodical, understated way reminds him a lot of Counihan and he finds the team itself “more likeable” now compared to when they were a “bit flash a few years ago”. They’ll be a serious force this year, he reckons, which is all the more reason “to put a bit of doubt in their minds” tomorrow.

“During the week there’s been a real intensity in training; the hitting has been good, the tempo has been good. I wasn’t there when the lads played Down in the league but they’ve said they had the same focus and intensity going into that game.

“That was a game they really targeted and they ended up blowing Down away. Dublin will be tough but we had a good chat last weekend about how we wanted to play and I think we’re ready for it.”

It’s that quest for more medals that’s making the quest for that job all that bit easier for him.