Anthony Daly: Cork and Wexford weekend trips are loaded with risk 

When Dublin lost to Antrim in Croke Park in 2010, I hadn’t the stomach to go home. I drove to Galway, booked into a hotel and spent the night staring at the ceiling

Aware of the dangers: Cork manager Kieran Kingston. ©INPHO/Ken Sutton

During my time as Clare and Dublin manager, there were often games that you just wanted to be over before they even started. To get the job done. To get out of Dodge with your head and your team still intact. Because you knew if you didn’t, there would be hell to pay.

When we lost to Antrim in Croke Park in 2010, I went into a trance afterwards. I hadn’t the stomach to go home. I drove to Galway, booked into a hotel and spent the night staring at the ceiling.

The following day, I went home via the Burren. I stopped off around Black Head and spent over an hour staring into the vast Atlantic Ocean wondering what it was all about, where I was going next as Dublin manager.

Antrim deserved to beat us that day but the questions were rattling inside my head like a woodpecker going to war on the bark of a tree. Why were we beaten? Were we not prepared enough? Was it all down to me?

Kieran Kingston and Darragh Egan don’t need me to tell them how much today’s games against Antrim and Kerry are loaded with risk. They know full well themselves. They’ll also be fully aware that defeat here would be deemed so seismic and unforgiveable that there would probably be no way back and that P45s would be issued in the aftermath. That might sound disrespectful to Antrim and Kerry but are you telling me that won’t happen if Cork or Wexford are beaten?

For me, there are a couple of dominant themes framing the background to these games. Having to go to Corrigan Park and Austin Stack Park will put Cork and Wexford on red alert. Antrim and Kerry will be looking to take full advantage of playing at home but it’s still all wrong that both sides only have a week to prepare for this game after last Saturday’s Joe McDonagh final.

I won’t say it completely diminishes their chances of getting a result but it’s just not fair. We’re all the time on about player welfare, which is really obvious in how we won’t allow our U-20s play at the grade if they feature in the senior championship. The GAA could argue that loads of teams have to play big matches seven days later. But you can’t compare one competition to the other, especially when a team like Kerry – who haven’t been in Division 1 in the league – are expected to go up against a side now which beat Kilkenny in Nowlan Park in their last match.

Are the GAA really serious about this or is it just a box-ticking exercise? Is the mindset really governed by the thinking, ‘Yeah, ye have had yere day in the sun now with the Joe McDonagh, but ye have no real business up here now’. It certainly looks that way.

How could Darren Gleeson or Stephen Molumphy talk about these games at any stage in the year prior to this week? Both would be accused of taking their eye of the ball. But now when both can, they have just a handful of days to get ready for it. It all seems very disrespectful to me anyway.

Cork are Cork so I expect them to win. If it was the other way around and Wexford were travelling to Corrigan Park, I think an upset would be on the cards. Kerry will still have a rattle off them but it’s just so hard to make that step up when Kerry have been operating out of Division 2.

Both Cork and Wexford will need to be ruthless early on. Cork find themselves in Corrigan Park which is a venue Antrim are really comfortable in, especially having beaten Clare there in the league last year, along with almost having taken out Waterford there back in the spring. Antrim know the dimensions and how the field plays so they won’t stray too far from what has worked for them there before.

Mentally, the challenge is all the greater again for Kerry with the players having suffered a third successive Joe McDonagh final defeat last weekend. It will be hard for Molumphy to lift the group but it might not be as difficult as we think either if he pitches it right.

Kerry were arguing that they should go straight into Munster if they had won the Joe McDonagh, as opposed to being forced into a play-off. Well now they have an ideal opportunity to show that they are at that level, and are entitled to that right.

This is absolutely thankless stuff for Cork and Wexford. If they win by 20 points or shade it by one after extra-time, they’ll still get the same thanks – zero. This is just bottom line stuff. Get the job done. Get out of Dodge.