If one county can cope with getting high on its own supply, it's Cork

The Rebels will attempt to bounce back from a deflating trip to Limerick last weekend. 

HEAD OF STEAM: Niall McCarthy, Cork, races away from Diarmuid Fitzgerald of Tipperary in their All-Ireland SHC qualifier at Fitzgerald Stadium in 2004. Picture credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE

Twenty-one years ago, Cork manager Donal O’Grady was driving by Páirc Uí Rinn when he saw something that made his heart soar.

Cork had been beaten by 14-man Waterford in one of the great Munster finals but their supporters would not be deterred. Queueing for tickets in their hundreds for the subsequent qualifier against Tipperary, he knew the Cork public still believed.

Any misgivings about Timmy McCarthy were put to bed when he came off the bench to turn the game around in Killarney. Any misgivings about the short pass, running style were more than offset by the strength of personality on and off the field. If O’Grady or Brian Corcoran said it was okay, then it was okay.

Cork dominated the 31,231 crowd that travelled to Fitzgerald Stadium that day as they did for the games that followed against Antrim, Wexford and Kilkenny. Because they had a team to follow.

As evidenced by the hoards that follow them and the 42,000 tickets sold for Sunday, this current Cork team is clearly a team to follow. The yearning for how it felt in 2005 aside, as Tomás Mulcahy said in these pages earlier this week, their brand of hurling is extremely easy on the eye. It harks back to the old Cork philosophy of the way you win being as important as the winning itself.

For the fourth year in a row, they look set to top the goal charts in Munster (they shared that honour with Clare in 2023). They are also in the running to be the top total scorers for the third consecutive season.

In the 1989-90 Division 1 campaign, a Mulcahy-captained Cork found the net 23 times in nine matches before doing it another 18 times in six championship outings. Last year, their goal count was 27 in their first 10 games before it dried up to two in their last three although in the All-Ireland final they created six openings. This year, their running total is 26 in 11.

That ruthlessness is so very sepia-tinged but also has shades of Waterford’s swashbuckling, cavalier days under Justin McCarthy. Yet when the goals didn’t come for the Déise, there was often panic and there were elements of that in Cork’s display last Sunday as Limerick presented a united front.

Something like that and having to contend with a seriously scorned Limerick side on their own sod is more reasonable than simply claiming Cork were swallowed up by their own hype. If one county knows how to cope with getting high on its own supply, it is Cork.

The default setting of the Rebel supporter is to be buoyant. The bond between the team and county grew considerably 12 months ago when Limerick were felled at the finish and was double-knotted after the All-Ireland semi-final but it’s not as if the bumper crowds are a new phenomenon. When Patrick Horgan described Cork’s following as the best in the country, he was talking from years of experience.

Cork’s cocksureness has been a punchbag the last week (who at this stage not received the NASA WhatsApp message?) and was last month pounced upon by enterprising bookmakers. Pat Ryan isn’t oblivious to the fanfare but seems bemused by it too. "What is the hype?” he said before the Division 1 final, attended by 43,243 people in SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh. “People are enjoying going to matches, that’s what we’re asking for.” 

TRUE COLOURS: Cork fans who stayed on against Limerick last weekend. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

After the opening Munster draw with Clare, he offered: “I think most of the people getting carried away are outside Cork, to be honest with you.” Earlier this week, after seeing off Louth, Offaly’s proud Leinster minor football winning manager Roger Ryan spoke of “Offalyness”: “We met as a management team on September 1 and I wrote a word called Offalyness on it and the boys looked at me and they knew what it meant.” 

Later in the week, selector Nigel Dunne described it as “going against logic. You don’t care about odds or opinions. It’s that never-say-die, dog ignorance.” 

It would be typical and probably correct that Cork people would claim their own long-coined characteristic inspired Ryan’s motivation for his team. For the record, Google’s new AI feature defines that Corkness as “a unique blend of pride, confidence, and a strong desire to be the best, often associated with a competitive spirit and a determination to win. It's a cultural trait that's perceived as distinct to Cork.” 

Bandon singer Lyra displays Corkness in spades. She was told she spoke weird and sang too loud by her advisors so she changed them. “They massively accept me for me,” she says of her team now. “The way I talk, the way I really badly dance, the way I like to dress, the way I sound.” Being true to one’s self, Cork won’t change nor should they. Their balloon didn’t burst last weekend – it only lost air. On Sunday, the pumps will come in their thousands.