Mike Quirke: Cork must banish crutches and excuses
After Cork’s humbling at the hands of Kildare last Saturday night, I thought of just how suffocated by adversity they have become in the past two years. I even listened to Joe Brolly on Sunday night talk about the ‘catastrophic refereeing decision by wee Paudie’ that cost Cork a Munster title.
Did it really? Was there not time on the clock for Cork to deal with that hardship and bounce back? Was there not a replay? Was there not an opportunity against a Division Three team last weekend to take their frustration out on and get to Croke Park to have a crack off the Dubs?
Where was the resilience? The bounce-back ability?
My club Kerins O’Rahillys were beaten by Kilmurry-Ibrickane in the Munster Senior Club final of 2009. Picture this: I had got married two weeks previous and had to cancel the honeymoon. Not a good start to any marriage.
Two of our inter-county thoroughbreds, Tommy Walsh and David Moran, took off to Australia two weeks before it and were lost to a foreign game, with David returning the day before the final to play a subdued part, still half jet-lagged. We had a man sent off in the first half, and playing against a strong wind had managed to doggedly stay the course with them until the dying seconds. It was a level ball game when we scored a perfectly legitimate goal in injury time that was disallowed by the referee. While we protested, the Clare champions swept up the field and kicked the winner. Game over. Ball burst.
Of course, the referee needed a police escort to get off the field safely because there were a lot of angry supporters baying for blood — figuratively I mean.
But my attitude was very different to that of our supporters. Why blame the referee? Why weren’t the supporters getting thick with our guy who got sent off? Were they as cross with all of us who had kicked 14 wides on the day? If we only kicked 12 wides we would have won the game and the provincial title.
By taking the emphasis off the players and hitching it to a refereeing error is doing a great disservice to your team. The best players and teams want that personal responsibility and will take ownership of the situation to deal with that adversity. It develops leadership. But passing the buck onto a bad call by an official ignores the other 40-50 individual errors made by the players over the course of the game, and it was never something we focused on or spoke about with Kerry.
No excuses, no crutches.
I think that’s why I was so intrigued by the article written by Conor McCarthy’s on these pages before the Kerry and Cork replay that got everybody in Kerry so hot and bothered. He made a case that suggested Kerry were the “intuitive masters of the darK art of referee plámás”. He inferred Kerry footballers were somehow genetically predisposed to cajole favourable calls out of referees by using their inherent cuteness and high- profile status to influence the decision-making.
I thought it was an incredibly insightful article, but it told me much more about the weak mentality that exists in the Cork dressing room than it did about Kerry’s ability to con referees.
When Cork manager Brian Cuthbert came out to face the TV cameras after defeat to Kerry, his dejection was manifestly evident. I found that astounding. As the leader of his group, he should have been projecting a confidence and a pride in his players’ performance who were due to play again only seven days later… what he gave us instead was a reflection of the dark mood and mental fragility in his dressing room.
There was no positivity. No air of optimism. They were mentally broken. I had a fair idea they were a beaten docket as soon as I saw that interview. Perhaps unintentionally, Conor McCarthy’s article gave us a window into the psyche of that Cork squad and highlighted the heavy burden and sizeable chip the players in that more recent Cork dressing room carry around on their shoulder with regard to Kerry — it’s like they have developed an inferiority complex. Maybe they don’t even know it’s there… but when you start to itemise bad refereeing decisions made against you, and you start to see Kerry as having an innate ability to manufacture those good calls through a nod and a wink with the referee, you are in a bad head-space.
If I had the time or inclination to examine the negative impact Cavan referee Joe McQuillan alone has had on Kerry in big games in the past five to 10 years, it would frighten you — crucial calls at critical times that had huge implications on the direction and ultimate outcome of huge matches. Joe must somehow be impervious to our powers of plámás. And he’s only one example. But, as players, you cannot allow yourself to focus on those negatives. You must compartmentalise it and move on. New script.
The Cork players had put forth so much honesty and effort the first day out against Kerry and felt they were completely wronged again by an official. And from reading Conor’s article you can see how it had such a negative impact on them. This notion of referees favouring Kerry has become ingrained in their psyche and the dressing room and has evidently affected their focus.
Once Kerry ground them down the second day, Cork had no more to give against Kildare. Their minds let them down. They were in too deep a hole, unable to bounce back — still licking their wounds after getting screwed over by a referee again. Feeling sorry for themselves and pissed off that another official, as Conor put it, “simply succumbed to a very human condition and found safety in bringing the world back into order. Kerry don’t lose in Killarney”. If that is really the way they think in that Cork dressing room, it explains a great deal. In Semple Stadium on Saturday night, they looked devoid of energy and appetite for hard work. They allowed Kildare luxurious time and space on the ball to find their comfort zone and ease their way into the game. It was uncomfortable viewing. Not all, but a lot of Cork players appeared to just roll over and clock out long before the final whistle.
Now, you may think as a Kerry man, I take pleasure in saying these things about Cork, but I do not. The truth is, we were coming under a vaguely similar set of pressures two or three years ago when Kerry was getting lambasted for not producing bigger, more physically athletic players out of development, minor and under 21 squads — for not achieving more success at underage level, and not winning titles at senior level for a number of years. We were in full transition mode, and that’s where Cork now find themselves too. But it can change quickly.
Cork have far too many high quality footballers to be floundering the way they are at present. But lingering talk of bad refereeing calls and conspiracy theories will do little to steel their resolve. The players must take responsibility for their position and strive to escape from the pity-party environment. Only then can they achieve the consistent level success their talent is capable of bringing them.
There was no positivity. No air of optimism. They were mentally broken. I had a fair idea they were a beaten docket when I saw the interview
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