Give clubs back captain’s call, say Tomás Mulcahy and Larry Tompkins
It’s eight years since Cork did away with the rule and permitted managers to select their own captains. The 1990 All-Ireland senior winning skippers were nominated by Glen Rovers and Castlehaven after they won their respective county championships the year previous.
Mulcahy and Tompkins were speaking to the Irish Examiner as part of a joint interview for an upcoming 25th anniversary special publication marking the last double All-Ireland triumph.
Mulcahy returned to the Cork panel as captain in 1990 having been dropped the year previously. He described his journey from being demoted to lifting the Liam MacCarthy Cup as “a fairytale”. Seeing how Kerry and Kilkenny remain true to the tradition and the success they continue to enjoy, he can’t understand why Cork chose to get rid of the rule in the first place.
“It was something that changed in Cork. I was lucky enough to get the honour to captain the team. It came on the back of representing Glen Rovers who previously nominated Martin O’Doherty, Christy Ring, Jack Lynch and Connie Buckley as Cork captain. I felt the honour of that was just incredible.
“It was a team that won it but to have that honour was everything. Then we changed from a county-winning club nominating a captain to who the county management felt was best to lead the team. I would love to see it go back to where the captain comes from your county champions because if you are county champions you are on the crest of a wave. You’ve delivered in a county championship the previous year.
“Kilkenny do it and if you’re not good enough to be on the team, you sit on the bench. How many guys have we seen over the last few years that haven’t played in All-Ireland finals but were still captains of their teams and went up to collect the cup?
“There’s so much for a club to get out of that as well. ‘We’re county champions and we now have the county captain for next year’. It’s something I would be very passionate about.”
Tompkins led Cork in 1990, having guided Castlehaven to a final win over St Finbarr’s in 1989. As a Kildare native, he was humbled by the privilege bestowed on him by the club.
“I would agree totally with Tomás,” he said, adding, “for Castlehaven to turn around and nominate me and the likes of Niall Cahalane and John Cleary having grown up there, it was huge for me but that’s the way Castlehaven are. I captained the team when we won the county and it was a majority decision that I go forward to captain Cork.
“My driving force in relation to Cork was that I wanted to win and I didn’t care who I hurt along the way and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
In 2007, Erin’s Own’s Kieran Murphy was the last hurling captain to be appointed by his club, although Joe Deane took Murphy’s place later that year when he didn’t start games.
John Gardiner was the first captain to be officially appointed by a manager, Gerald McCarthy, in 2008. Nemo Rangers’ Derek Kavanagh guided Cork in 2007 after his club claimed the county title the previous year. Following the early 2008 strike, Conor Counihan selected Graham Canty as his captain.
Proposed by Ballinhassig at a county board meeting in October 2007, the motion to get rid of the club captaincy rule was passed by a margin of 69 votes to 23.
Delegate Donal Coleman had highlighted Brian Corcoran’s admission in his autobiography that he felt uncomfortable captaining his county at the age of 19 in 1993.
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