Cork V Clare: Rhapsodising the joys of the grim fundamentals

Allianz Hurling League Division 1A

It’s always good — indeed, for the purpose of balance it’s essential – to have a forward who does things that none of those around him do

There was a gentleman from Cloyne sitting in the middle of the main stand in Páirc Uí Rinn this night last week.

He was generously bearded but looking trim and, all told, was the same unmistakable figure of a decade ago.

While yearning the heroes of yesteryear were still with us is the most idle of pursuits – taken to its logical conclusion it would mean lamenting the fact that, say, Jamesie Kelleher and Lory Meagher weren’t facing each other seven evenings ago – it was possible, nonetheless, to reflect Cork could have done with Diarmuid O’Sullivan.

To be more precise, it was impossible not to reflect Cork could have done with the attributes Diarmuid O’Sullivan brought to the shirt. The bouldness. The bloody-mindedness. The realisation that every match was a battle.

And so, a year on from a winter spent marvelling at Clare’s tactical ingenuity and waxing lyrical about runners from deep and pondering what to do about Tony Kelly when he drifted, we’re back where we’ve been for most of the last 10 years.

Talking yet again about the importance of desire and determination and focus and hard work. Rhapsodising the joys of the grim fundamentals. The old landlord is back in charge and the house rules are the same as they used to be.

Problem was, nobody told Cork or Tipperary this last weekend. Far worse, they weren’t able to work it out for themselves. Cork? Inexplicable, the more so because Saturday was an evening they knew they’d be subjected to a full-cavity search.

Kilkenny do many things, but surprises ain’t one of them. The visitors weren’t coming to Leeside bearing Valentines gifts of flowers and chocolates.

Instead, summa cum laudes in asphyxiation that they are, they were coming to press and hook and harry and block, from flagfall to finishing line. They duly did, and answer there came none. If last year’s All Ireland semi-final was a match Cork wandered into with eyes wide shut, this was a match they entered eyes firmly open.

Tipperary? Infuriating for their supporters, the more so because Sunday was a day for making a statement.

The visitors to Parnell Park may not have been facing the MacCarthy Cup holders but they were facing a team eager to impress their new boss, which still doesn’t explain how a side that hits 1-28 on the first Sunday of September can go and lose by 10 points on the opening day of the new league.

Just when it appeared they’d got themselves back in the good books of the supporters, mood swings continue.

It isn’t that Tipperary over the past couple of years have lost too many matches. It’s the manner in which they’ve lost so many of them. In the short term Tipp will remain Tipp. Sunday’s misadventure will not prevent them winning a game in style before too long. Nor will it stop them shooting the lights out against someone come summer. For the moment that much will have to suffice as consolation for their fans. It’s the hope that enervates you.

One can if one chooses blame the Tipperary and Cork management for not having their troops properly prepared.

The buck always stops on the boss’s desk. Yet enough of both counties’ respective starting XV’s last weekend have been around the block for long enough. The Cork players, in particular, can’t claim they didn’t know what was coming.

They knew for one thing that while Kilkenny’s nuclear warheads of yesteryear have largely been decommissioned, the All Ireland champions possess a bulging portfolio of conventional tactical weapons, the absence of the Ballyhale contingent notwithstanding.

They knew for another thing that one guaranteed way of disarming these weapons was to show superior – or at worst similar — application. Cork showed nothing of the sort.

The evening’s emblematic moment arrived shortly before half-time when Richie Hogan was allowed rise between three opponents and, unhindered by any of them, catch a dropping ball before turning and putting it over the bar.

Not one of the red-jerseyed trio found it appropriate to even vaguely wave a stick in his direction until Daniel Kearney came back to give chase, and by then it was too late.

Kilkenny won the first 20 min of the new half 0-8 to 0-2 and that — up to those late moments when Paul Murphy’s lack of nous on the edge of the square was manifested, at any rate – was that.

As mentioned by Donal Óg Cusack on RTE the following night, Cork face one obvious attacking problem: getting the right ball to the right men.

Conor Lehane and Alan Cadogan scored two points apiece from play in the first half, but didn’t manage a white flag between them once proceedings tightened up.

This shouldn’t matter in the early stages of the championship, particularly not in one of those nicey-nicey matches in Munster when scores are being rattled over from all angles and both sides break the 20-point barrier. It’ll matter later on, though.

If there was a Kilkenny forward Cork could have done with last week it was not Hogan but Walter Walsh. It’s always good — for the purpose of balance it’sessential – to have a forward who does things that none of the men around him do; think Bonner Maher.

The centre-forwards of yore stood in and pulled. The centre-forwards of today carry the ball into contact and commit defenders, as Walsh did to such effect in Páirc Uí Rinn.

Opening night is no bad time for an alarm bell to ring. Besides, one lacuna is easily filled. Move Aidan Walsh to left-half forward and leave him there.

Now Cork have an operational base 50 metres from the enemy posts, and if Walsh can’t catch every puck-out he can break a few down, or have the centre-forward break them down for him, or even – shades of a favourite trick involving Alan Browne during the Donal O’Grady regnum — vacate the space and have Pat Horgan come out to fasten onto puck-outs.

What’s more, deliveries to Walsh will not have to be calibrated with the delicacy of deliveries to Lehane and Cadogan. Variety, spice, etc.

There’s a line that’s been doing the rounds on Twitter of late, savoured and retweeted as though it were the latest secret of Fatima. “If you train badly, you play badly. If you work like a beast in training, you play the same way. And these guys, they train like beasts.” The speaker was Pep Guardiola. It might, of course, have been Pep Cody.

It is, however, temporarily or otherwise, Kilkenny’s world once more, a world of frugal comforts and simple, basic virtues. Virtues like determination, focus and honest toil. Last weekend, Cork and Tipp made a strikingly bad fist of co-existing in that world.