Cork hurling's gory years, and six days that helped Rebels keep the faith
Cork's Alan Cadogan dejected after the 2021 All-Ireland SHC final defeat to Limerick. Picture: ©INPHO/Laszlo Geczo
No one wants to go back there. Revisiting the meetings and mediations and press conferences in hotel rooms, the marches in the streets. Determining who was right and who was wrong.
Some will say they set Cork hurling back for over a decade. Others will contend that the players were only trying to arrest rather than precipitate Cork’s decline and that the footballers and county would never have had 2010 only for the strike of 2007-2008, just as the hurlers and the county would never have had 2003-2006 without the now almost-innocent strike of 2002.
What everyone agrees on is that they were horrible days, months, years.
It was such a low point that few remember it now and at the time it was met more by a collective shrug than a scowl, apathy instead of anger. When Cork bowed out 0-23 to 1-17 in a qualifier to Liam Dunne’s Wexford, only 15,000 bothered to make it to Thurles – the lowest crowd Cork have had (2020 and Covid excepted) for their final game of the season since Clare in ’93 – and a good share of them were there purely for the Clare-Limerick game that was on straight afterwards.
It was the first time in 60 years and seven games that Cork had been beaten by Wexford in championship. The support and performance was in keeping with Cork’s lame Munster championship defeat to Tipp in the same ground when they could only muster a miserable 0-13, adopting a Waterford-like, and very unlike Cork, sweeper.
Kieran Kingston, to his credit, would rebound from such a horrendous first season in charge to win Munster in 2017, while six players who played that day are still involved now: Patrick Horgan and Seamus Harnedy (starters both days), Damien Cahalane and Conor Lehane (starters then, subs now) and Shane Kingston and Mark Coleman (subs then).
It’s quite remarkable the multitude of Cork managers whose last match in charge happened to be an anaemic defeat to Galway. Bertie Óg in 2002. JBM in 2015. Kieran Kingston in 2022. The way Cork went out of those championships was a signal that it was time for them to move on themselves.
Possibly the most deflating of the lot though was 2011. This time it was in Limerick rather than Thurles and it turned out to be the end of not just Denis Walsh but the core of a once-great team he’d tried to squeeze one last bit of juice from. After the way they faded away in a 12-point defeat to a Galway team that would lose to Waterford by 10 points their next day out, there had to be change. Seven of the team that started that day were survivors from 2005 but a year later when the counties met in an All Ireland semi-final only one of those magnificent seven, Brian Murphy, was starting. Ben and Jerry O’Connor, Donal Óg, Gardiner, Curran: they either never played or started in championship again for Cork.
Since Kilkenny foiled the three-in-a-row in 2006, there’s been several categories of Cork defeats in Croke Park.
There’s been the We’ll Be Back losses to Waterford in 2007 and 2017 and bang in the middle of them a 2012 semi-final defeat to Galway. The Well Off It But Still Respectable to Kilkenny in 2008, the Well Off It But Didn’t Expect Any Better in 2010 to Kilkenny and the Off It When Expected Better to Kilkenny in 2019.
Then there’s been the agonising So Near So Far moments of 2013 and 2018. Some supporters would have at the top of a list like this but for us the fact there was glory and honour in them disqualifies them as being a lowlight.
But then there’s been The Big Letdowns, In 2014 Cork went to Croke Park with the kind of momentum, crowd and swagger that they hadn’t had since the O’Grady-Allen years. JBM and his project seemed to be on a certain trajectory. 2012: League finalists and All Ireland semi-finalists. 2013: All Ireland finalists. 2014: Munster champions and…?
Tipp swept them aside in that semi-final as if they were lightweights, pretenders, which basically Cork would revert to for the following couple of years.
2021 then was different yet similar and even worse. People weren’t necessarily expecting Cork would beat Limerick but they were definitely expecting much better. A contest. They didn’t get it. Limerick beat them by 16 points. The kind of margin that Limerick in their pomp could beat teams by but Cork aren’t meant to lose All Irelands by; it was the 50th time Cork had won through to an All Ireland final and the most they’d ever been beaten by in any of them, more than the previous high of 14 points to Dublin in 1927. That’s how far you’d to go back. That’s how far Cork seemed behind Limerick a few years ago.
Although JBM provided several great days in his second coming day as Cork manager, he could never regain that upward momentum and positivity after that Big Letdown to Tipp in 2014.
The following year the team were flat in both the league final and Munster first round to Waterford before Johnny Glynn waltzed straight through the heart of their defence in the opening minute of an All Ireland quarter-final in Thurles. By the game’s end Galway had won by 12 points, racked up 2-28, and damningly to all concerned a further 22 wides – back when no one was thinking of getting 50 shots away like Kiely’s Limerick would.
After the game when Jimmy was asked by RTÉ if he was looking forward to next year he answered in the affirmative with a laugh. Secretly he knew he was going back to being a former Cork manager. It was time to go back to the dogs, where Cork seemed to have gone to as well.
Six days since 2006 and before 2024 that helped Cork keep the faith.
Yes, it’s the biggest What-If of them all. And because Brian Gavin held off a blowing that whistle while the cameras were hovering around JBM, Cork’s wait for an All Ireland continued. But it gave the county a taste and sight again of what it’d be like, Cork back at the summit, a halfway house between 2005 and now.
A year earlier had been a nadir for Cork hurling after the lame losses at the same venue to Tipp and Wexford. Tipp went on to win both Munster and the All Ireland. And yet in the very first day of their defence of those titles, Michael Ryan’s team were ambushed by a Cork team full of bold new players: Coleman, Fitzgibbon, Meade and Shane Kingston who went for 1-4 from play. A late goal from sub Michael Cahalane sealed the deal, prompting a post-match pitch invasion. Tipp were out and Cork were off; they’d subsequently go unbeaten over eight games in Munster, claiming both Munster titles on offer.
The perfect response to losing the 2013 All Ireland final replay and the perfect farewell to the old Páirc. The field was a sea of red afterwards, celebrating the county’s first Munster title in eight years.
Even sweeter than the previous year’s win over Clare at the same stage at the same venue. Not only because it backed up that success but because of the comeback; a minute before half-time Clare had been eight points up.
Exhilarating, given the nature of the win – it required extra-time –and the opposition. Since beating Waterford in another epic semi-final in 2006, the only other counties Cork had beaten in championship in Croke Park were Antrim and Dublin.
It proved to be a false dawn, especially as Tipp went on to win the All Ireland. But for a moment Denis Walsh rightly had his hour in the sun and we got a reminder as much as the stirring 2008 comeback against Galway in Thurles why Cusack, Seán Óg and the crew were once kings.
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