Same old story: Cork football’s spring struggles continue as relegation looms

Cork football faces another relegation battle, familiar criticism, and leadership silence — will this be the year for real change?

GROUNDHOG DAY: John Cleary during the Allianz Football League Division 2 match between Cork and Roscommon. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Groundhog day for Cork football.

In no particular order we have the scrap for Division 2 safety, criticism from a former player, and a well-intentioned county board delegate airing their concern at the poor health of the game in the county.

Three is absolutely never a crowd where the annual spring woes of Cork football are concerned.

Five years ago, and with Cork again dicing with relegation from Division 2, then Kildorrery club delegate Tony McCarthy took the microphone at the February county board meeting and let fly. McCarthy’s ire stemmed from the 2-12 to 1-9 home defeat to Meath the weekend previous.

“This board has to have a serious discussion about where we are going with football. What I watched last Saturday [against Meath] was absolutely disgraceful. We are in serious trouble with football in this county,” McCarthy stated.

At last week’s March meeting of the Cork County Board, Carbery delegate Tom Lyons took the microphone and expressed the same sentiment as McCarthy five years earlier.

He too had been stirred into action by a comprehensive Division 2 defeat. He too wanted a discussion on the state of Cork football. Of course, the top table would not allow it.

In between McCarthy and Lyons’ mirroring concerns was the executive’s five-year plan for Cork football. A plan that ran up until 2024, but the results of which have never been parsed through.

“There has to be change. We have been doing the same thing for the last 10 years, more or less,” Lyons told the Irish Examiner this week.

“The development squads aren't working; they are not producing. Everything needs to be discussed. The famous five-year (2019-24) plan, we still haven't had a discussion on the aspirations in that.”

Lyons wasn’t the only follower of Cork football exercised by what he witnessed during the 2-21 to 0-13 trouncing at home to Roscommon.

In his Southern Star column last week, 2010 All-Ireland winner John Hayes said coach Kevin Walsh “must show there’s more to this Cork team than the overloaded kick-out and sideline attacking obsession."

It’s an observation manager John Cleary does not agree with and has labelled “unfair”, citing the many teams now employing the overloaded kick-out in response to the rule stipulation that all restarts must travel beyond the 40-metre arc.

Hayes’ view does not sit in isolation. Patrick Kelly, a former teammate of his, made similar observations as a columnist for this newspaper in recent years.

“I thought it was one dimensional,” Kelly said of Cork’s style in the 2023 League opener defeat to Meath.

“It is very much a running game. Very little looking up to kick and to move the ball through the lines quickly.”

You surely see the trend at this stage?

Year after year, there is the same cycle of relegation-threatening results, same criticism, and same calls for change.

Change, though, has yet to enter the picture.

In fairness to the men stepping inside the whitewash, they’ve managed to haul themselves out of the quagmire each spring bar 2019.

Where it is Louth potentially defining their season on Sunday, read Fermanagh last year, Offaly in 2022, and Westmeath the year before that. Cork came up trumps each time. Backed into a corner, they’ll squeeze a route out.

“The lads know they have to perform on Sunday and get a result. Hopefully they can draw on past experiences from the last couple of years,” John Cleary said this week.

Maybe that is why the Cork football discussion is put off and maybe that is why nobody in power is in any great hurry to bring about the required meaningful change.

The slew of positive results achieved at the end of every spring to secure mid-table Division 2 safety serves to stave off the drop to Division 3, consequent involvement in the Tailteann Cup, and the unavoidable soul-searching and hand-wringing the latter two outcomes would bring about.

Cracks, in essence, being annually papered over.

Such a broad picture is not Cleary’s remit. His focus is Louth. His focus is tidying up the many defensive shortcomings that contributed to 5-37 being conceded against Monaghan and Roscommon.

Their recent four-day warm-weather training camp to the Algarve, coming off as they were the seven and 14-point beatings, was most timely.

“We were disappointed with those two games so the very fact that we were going away to do a block of work, and part of that was looking at the two previous games we lost, helped us.

“You can't dwell on it too much because there is another game coming up against a different opposition and a different challenge. But, overall, the mood is good in the camp.”

These players have been here before. They know what’s at stake. They know there is only one acceptable outcome.

Groundhog day for them too.