Seán Óg Ó hAilpín: Ex-players need to step up to fix 'crisis' on Cork's northside

Ó hAilpín won two Cork senior hurling titles with Na Piarsaigh. Their rivalry with Glen Rovers was 'second to none'. But Ó hAilpín got no satisfaction from the latter's relegation

Thu, 05 Oct, 2023 - 10:27

Eoghan Cormican

In the days after Glen Rovers’ relegation from the top-flight of Cork hurling last month, this newspaper carried the story of how Glen legend Denis Coughlan had stood up at the club AGM the previous December and lamented the 2022 top-flight relegation of their northside neighbours and fierce rivals Na Piarsaigh.

Coughlan, an All-Ireland dual winner with Cork, made the point that Na Piarsaigh’s fall from the top table of Cork hurling after a stay of 65 years offered further worrying evidence of the issues and struggles facing clubs on the northside of Cork city, from which no club was immune. Not even his own Glen.

Coughlan has a kindred spirit in Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, and not just because he too wore red in both codes.

Ó hAilpín won two Cork senior hurling titles with Na Piarsaigh. Their rivalry with Glen Rovers was “second to none”. But Ó hAilpín got no satisfaction from seeing the Glen’s 97-year top-tier status brought to an end last month.

The Glen’s relegation was not to be celebrated by the neighbours. The Glen’s relegation confirmed a northside demise that Ó hAilpín views as a “crisis”.

In 2024, neither the Cork Premier Senior hurling nor Premier Senior football championship will contain a single northside club.

DARK DAY: Simon Kennefick of Glen Rovers gets his shot away despite the flying hurley of Ryan Walsh of Kanturk. The Glen's relegation means there is now no senior hurling club on the city's northside. Pic: Jim Coughlan

“The Glen going down would sound alarm bells for me,” Ó hAilpín began.

“If I was to take my Na Piarsaigh cap off, I would view Glen Rovers as the main hurling institution up the northside and so when you see a club that has been at the topflight for 97 years coming down, it raises serious questions.

“Some people mightn't view what’s happening on the northside as a crisis, but for me, it is. Trying to pinpoint one reason, it is not one reason. There are a multitude of reasons.”

Ó hAilpín has heard and acknowledges the various factors attributed to the decline of northside clubs. An ageing population. A shifting population that continues to see more people leave the area than come in. Lack of new housing. Lack of access to private housing. Lack of investment. The closure of hurling nurseries such as Farranferris.

None of the above is within the palm of clubs, though. What they must do, argues Ó hAilpín, is make sure familiar hands are on the pump.

In his own Na Piarsaigh, the 2005 All-Ireland winning captain threw down the gauntlet to fellow past players. Lamenting a club’s falling graph from a distance or from atop bar stools ain’t much use to anybody. The club needs a dig out from the men who once wore the black and amber.

After last year’s top-flight relegation, Na Piarsaigh failed to even emerge from their Senior A group this summer. The football picture is much bleaker. From senior in 2012, the club were this season relegated to the fourth-tier Intermediate A.

“I have been involved in my own club since I stopped playing in 2016, just helping out at underage and senior. A problem I see within our club is getting past players back involved and volunteering.

“There are a million and one other things I could be doing. I go up to Fairhill because the club was good to me over the years. It is a matter of some of the past players waking up now, smelling the coffee, and helping out because it has been lacking a small bit.

“I am only talking from a Na Piarsaigh point of view. But I'd imagine it is not only a Na Piarsaigh problem. Other clubs are also struggling.

“It does bring up the profile when you have past players back involved coaching. They are the DNA of the club. Representing the club jersey must have meant something to them once upon a time.

“Whatever about if the club were going well, but at the moment clubs need past members to give them a dig out because it is easy to say, while drinking on a Saturday night over pints, ‘Jesus, isn't it shocking about the club that we are down here’, but what are you going to do about it?

“Money will help but it is not going to cure. Our club, how was it successful 30 years ago? They had excellent people involved with teams. Looking at a lot of coaches and mentors I had, they had family lives and other things going on. But they were consistent in our lives that they were there three times a week showing us the proper skills and bringing us to Páirc Uí Chaoimh when our seniors were there.

“We need to do that more often just to get the kids more interested and give them a better product. That would be my call out to a lot of past players that I would have played with: What are they doing? I don't see many of them around.”

Fixing his gaze beyond the northside and onto Cork as a whole, Ó hAilpín is optimistic for the 2024 inter-county season. The expectation will be to get out of Munster, if not win the province outright.

“But that is nothing new. We expect a cup every year. I think Pat Ryan’s management have got a feel enough now and they have a feel of the players that they need to deliver silverware, if not get to the business end of the championship.”

Cork’s age profile is conducive, he adds, to challenging for said silverware.

“I think back to my own career, I didn't feel comfortable until I was in my fifth or sixth year. But I was fortunate enough to start at 19, so by the time I was 24 or 25, I was at a stage where everything happened instinctively rather than looking over your shoulder which you do starting off.

“A lot of guys given debuts over the last four years, they are coming into a nice stage of their career. They are getting a year stronger, wiser, whereas you look at the likes of Limerick, and they are still going to be the team to beat, but they are at the different end of the spectrum.

“How much more can they get out of themselves, where I think Cork are still on the upward step.”