Cork’s trip North brings back memories of Cahill’s bold statements

Dinny Cahill still finds himself looking back to an interview almost 20 years ago when his Antrim team were preparing to face Cork...

Sat, 11 Jun, 2022 - 07:20

Declan Bogue

DESPITE all he did since, with his successful spell coaching the Portumna club side to All-Ireland success, his time coaching DCU, getting a close-up look of the present Limerick team when he was a coach under TJ Ryan…

Despite his time in Armagh and Derry, his current posting with Sarsfields in Galway, despite all of that, Dinny Cahill still finds himself looking back to an interview almost 20 years ago when his Antrim team were preparing to face Cork.

“We are going to win the All-Ireland this year. We can win the All-Ireland after getting over this game, anything can happen from there,” he told this newspaper’s correspondent Michael Ellard.

Then he turned his sights on Brian Corcoran.

“Cork must have a problem when they recall Brian Corcoran. They have to have problems. They have a dreadful inside forward line all season, couldn’t get the scores. They had to recall a man who was finished playing. Well, he will be finished after Sunday. There’s no doubt about that.

“I talk straight. I say what is true. People can publish what they like but I’m telling the truth. Cork are finished, Brian Corcoran is finished.”

Later, he referred to centre-forward Niall McCarthy as “dreadful.”

What happened a few days later was the perfect response. By half time, Corcoran had the ball in the net twice to lead 2-13 to 0-3 at the break. They tipped away in the second half with their point made to finish 2-26 to 0-10.

Thinking back now he doesn’t deny the words, but says there were subtleties lost in the interpretation.

“I didn’t say I was going to put Brian Corcoran into retirement. I never said that,” he maintains.

“It is very easy to put something in the paper, but what I said was given a completely different meaning. I didn’t say that Niall McCarthy was a bad player. I said what points he got in the game previous.

“Niall McCarthy, we all know, was a good player. But he got too much freedom against Tipperary. So there were things I said and by saying that it looked like I was saying he was a bad player. But that is the way it was worded!"

At that point, Cahill had been into his third year of his first spell. In year one they gave Tipperary a scare. A year later, Wexford just about escaped them.

But Cork laid them to waste.

There were no such proclamations by the present Antrim manager, another Tipp man in Darren Gleeson, ahead of today’s All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final meeting in Corrigan Park.

The fixture has captured the imagination of the Ulster hurling folk. During the week the bandwidth opened up for online ticket sales. 4,200 tickets were gone in ten minutes.

The two teams have little history.

In 28 meetings across senior, intermediate, junior, Under-21 and minor, Antrim have only won a single game, the Junior final of 1959 on a 3-4 to 2-3 score.

When Antrim reached their first All-Ireland final in 1943 it was Cork they met in the decider. Having beaten Galway and Kilkenny in the previous rounds, both played in Corrigan Park, the romance ended in Croke Park, 5-16 to 0-4.

Prior to the game, Antrim captain Jimmy Walsh handed his counterpart Mick Kenefick some tea. The gesture was returned with Kenefick handing Walsh some butter which was an oddly appropriate gesture in that time of wartime rationing.

The last time they met, Cahill was in his second spell as Antrim manager. There were no pre-game pronouncements and this time Antrim gave Cork more to think about.

Full-back Cormac Donnelly was bullying Aisake O hAilpín to the extent that he was replaced by a fresh-faced youngster by the name of Patrick Horgan on 50 minutes.

Liam Watson had spent the winter playing soccer for Donegal Celtic and was tempted back for the closing games of the National League, only for his involvement to be curtailed by a suspension.

Starting on the edge of the square and then moving to centre-forward, he burned through a succession of markers in compiling 0-6.

But his talent was always volatile. After wrenching John Gardiner’s helmet off and tossing it 30 yards away, he was given his second yellow card and Antrim hopes went with him as Cork hit the last three points to butter up a 1-25 to 0-19 scoreline.

“He was on Eoin Cadogan,” recalls Cahill now.

“It was Cadogan that acted up but I think Liam might have come out on top in that game.

“I wasn’t surprised at that, because Liam was a top-class player. And the bigger the occasion, the more he responded to it. And I think Croke Park suited him. He showed that in the club Championship when he hit three goals on his own.

“There were players that could always step up on a big day and he was one that could do it.”

Much-travelled and vastly experienced, the Cloughjordan native has always been in demand. Nowadays he is with Sarsfields in Galway. On his journeys in and around the shed where he runs his cabinet-making business, he will still pick up a hurl every day and batter a ball against the wall.

“That will never go. Never go,” he laughs. “I keep striking the ball and have the eye in. You need it when you go coaching and need to strike a ball. I am a great believer in leading by example.”

He’s a big fan of what another Tipperary man in Darren Gleeson, is doing in Antrim and still keeps a keen eye on their progress.

“It is a huge jump from playing Kerry, to playing Cork,” he says. “I hope they give a good account of themselves and I have no doubt they will give themselves a good chance and you never know what can happen in any match.”

Liam MacCarthy Cup hurling back in Belfast. It’s a start.