Leeside’s stock on the rise with JBM

FOR a historical parallel we’ve gone to the 1950s, but you’ll indulge the flight of fancy.

It was said of Italian-Americans that they walked with a particular bounce to their step the morning after a Rocky Marciano heavyweight title defence. The fearsome boxer displayed zero tolerance towards challengers, which in turn imbued his fraternal comrades with a cheery confidence.

Thus the Cork people you meet today.

The decision by the appointment committee to recommend Jimmy Barry-Murphy as Cork senior hurling manager has had a revitalising effect on Leeside already. As the word spread, Moody’s or Standard and Poor’s could have upgraded Cork’s credit rating.

After the euphoria, the hard questions remain about Cork. When Barry-Murphy last took over, for the 1996 season, the Rebels had exited the previous year’s championship to the eventual champions Clare after a last-minute goal. This year Cork were beaten by 12 points in the championship by a Galway team beaten the next day out by 10 points.

The parallels don’t oblige by continuing neatly. In 1996 Clare had set the physical template and other counties were scrambling after them. In 2011 power and strength are a given.

Cork don’t have a once-in-a-generation minor team to draw from either, like they did in 1995, but there are promising U21s coming on stream and — unlike the teams in the late 90s — a cohort of players in their mid-20s with plenty of experience to complement the older players who have survived since 2004-05.

In that sense Cork may be better placed than in 1996. The stakes are higher physically, but the players have a better spread of experience.

The manager is more experienced as well.

Speaking years after the 1996 baptism of fire, Barry-Murphy was frank: “Cork had come close to Clare the previous year, but to be perfectly honest we’d fallen way behind the general standard.”

Barry-Murphy changed that: he appointed Ted Owens as physical trainer and Cork matched other teams for fitness. Nowadays, that preparation is a given.

What people will be particularly interested in is Barry-Murphy’s style, but that is linked to physical preparation. When they won the All-Ireland in 1999, for example, it was an irresistible game based on speed and touch: Cork torched teams in the final 10 minutes because they had natural speed honed by Owens in punishing sessions in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

The intervening decade has seen a multiplicity of game plans and tactics introduced to the game, but the continual switching of the Tipperary forwards to create space, now seen as the best way to unlock the extra-man defence, is a strategy which depends on an individual’s hurling nous.

It’s a style that would appeal to the stylist in Barry-Murphy. In 1999 he said they’d won “playing real Cork hurling, and that was important to me”. They may still be playing Cork hurling in 2012, but it could have a blue and gold tinge.

There are other challenges, most notably the growing sense within Cork that the county senior hurling team simply cannot do without footballers Aidan Walsh and Ciarán Sheehan. Barry-Murphy, one of the greatest dual players of all time, is uniquely placed to handle that delicate matter.

If you still feel unsure about the appointment, wait until Sunday week for another kind of ratification.

The Cork All-Ireland-winning team of 1986 will be introduced at half-time in the final, as it is 25 years since their victory over Galway. There’ll be a special welcome for Jimmy Barry-Murphy, even from Kilkenny and Tipperary; you can guarantee that.

Listen closely and you may discern a slight note of unease in those cheers.