Ó Sé: ‘There’s just no confidence in Cork at the moment’

Kerry great Tomás Ó Sé stands over his claim that Cork is ‘predominantly a hurling county’ and has complained about the lack of respect towards football in the county.

The Cork-based schoolteacher and 2018 All-Ireland club finalist with Nemo Rangers stated on The Sunday Game last summer that Cork is “not a football county in my eyes”.

He was speaking in the wake of their exit from the Championship after back-to-back heavy beatings by Kerry and Tyrone and claimed “there is a culture down there of things being half acceptable for the footballers”.

Weeks later, an agreement was reached by Cork GAA to draw up a five-year strategy for the future of football in the county and #2024 - A Five Year Plan for Cork Football nwas launched earlier this month. It sets out a number of ambitious targets for Cork football, including the headline ngrabbing aspiration that they’ll be All-Ireland contenders in three to five years.

Ó Sé said that despite being brought up to ‘supposedly hate Cork and to see them as your biggest rival’, he wants the plan to succeed and revealed his disappointment at the current situation.

“I don’t know, there’s just no confidence in Cork at the moment,” he said.

“I do think that they are [serious about improving]. You have Cáirde Chorcaí, you have the county board drawing up this plan. Brian Cuthbert is involved, who’d I’d have great time for as a GAA mind. They have guys like Conor Counihan and Billy Morgan, they have those people to tap into.

There’s the 2010 winning team, the 80s winning team, there are people down there that are innovative people. I just think they could be getting a lot more out compared to what they’re actually getting, if they’re serious about it. It’s one thing declaring this and putting out a proposal, it’s another thing following through with it.

Asked if he believes Cork GAA is serious about football improvement, Ó Sé said he believes they are.

“You don’t want to be critical, you just try to call it as it is,” he said. “I think it’s pointless, utterly pointless [talking about the future] unless you see an improvement at underage.”

The legendary wing-back transferred to Nemo late in his career and said there are major problems with club structures in Cork.

“I played Cork championship the last few years, it can’t help the bigger picture the way the club scene is down there,” he said. “It’s all over the place. They have intermediate, there’s A intermediate, B intermediate... so many competitions, so many players overlapping between hurling and football.

“It’s an absolute nightmare. In my mind, club players are getting very disillusioned and they’re walking away. The club scene is getting weaker than it’s ever been in my eyes.”

Ó Sé said he doesn’t want to be seen as a Kerryman being critical of Cork. “You were brought up to supposedly hate Cork and see them as your biggest rival but feck it, like, I’d love to see them going well, I’m teaching down in school there and I’m coaching in the school.

The former wing-back described Cork, who drew 1-5 to 0-8 with Fermanagh in their Allianz League Division 2 opener last weekend, as a sleeping giant of the game.

“Obviously they don’t have the same numbers as Dublin but west Cork is predominantly football, there’s a huge amount of clubs back there and a good population spread out over the county,” he said. “The outskirts of the city; Douglas, Ballincollig, Midleton, they’re all huge hinter townlands.

“But I see my young fella now, he’s 13 and the amount of young fellas that drop off the scene completely when they go into secondary school is scary. I do think it doesn’t help underage football when there’s A, B, C teams and fellas are saying: ‘I’m not even getting on the C team, I’ll go away and get a game of soccer somewhere else’. I think we shouldn’t be as competitive at underage level. That was always the template inside in Nemo, you mix up the teams.

"They’d get a call from another club, ‘We’ll play your A team’ and Nemo would say: ‘No, we don’t have an A team, we’ll mix it up’.

“The attitude in there is that you don’t give out to a player for not doing something right — and you’ll carry them all with you then.”

Tomás Ó Sé was speaking at the launch of the Gourmet Food Parlour HEC ladies football championships.