Corn Uí Mhuirí: Kerry schools still set standard as Cork face hard questions

Kerry’s schools are still setting the pace in the Corn Uí Mhuirí, but across the border, Cork faces growing pressure to fix a broken underage system.

The Tralee CBS dressing-room is full of Frewen Cup (U17) winners, like Ronan Carroll, from 2023 and '24. Pic: Brendan Gleeson

The Corn Uí Mhuirí has come to operate something of a dual mandate on either side of the Cork-Kerry border.

In the Kingdom, there is intrigue as to the latest line of emerging talents. Intrigue also as to where the balance of power lies. In Tralee with Mounthawk and the Green, as has been the case for the past two years, or back the road in Killarney and St Brendan’s.

In Cork, the Corn Uí Mhuirí is less about intrigue and more about investigation. The Munster post-primary competition is a barometer of Cork football’s health and the effectiveness or otherwise of the development squads which so many of the students have been exposed to.

We’ll come back to Cork’s troubled underage system shortly. First, the necessary bit of housekeeping ahead of throw-in this Wednesday lunchtime.

The same as the hurling, competition size has been trimmed to 16 teams. Having had 19 schools on the start line last October, the reduced number means a discontinuation of the preliminary quarter-finals.

Included in the five to depart from the 2024/25 edition are Cork schools De La Salle Macroom, one-time visitors Mitchelstown CBS, and 2023 semi-finalists Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh, Bishopstown. But easily the most noteworthy departure is that of Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne.

Six-time champions between 2012 and ‘19, the Dingle nursery was a quarter-finalist earlier this year where they fell to Bandon by nine.

Joining the elite are two Tipperary schools. Both join off the back of provincial honours. Cashel Community School are the reigning Munster Senior B champions, while High School Clonmel step up following U17B honours last season.

Seven of the 16 entries have a Kingdom Eircode and it would represent nothing short of a spectacular upset if one of the seven didn’t extend the county’s 13-year stranglehold on the silverware.

Mercy Mounthawk’s stay atop the summit would appear on borrowed time owing to the fact that 11 of last season’s title-defending side have moved on. It was Tralee CBS and St Brendan’s they bested in the deciders of the past two years, it is Tralee CBS and St Brendan’s who are best placed to succeed them.

The Tralee CBS dressing-room is full of Frewen Cup (U17) winners from 2023 and '24. The Sem are the current holders of that particular piece of silverware, and so there’s no fear of the Sem newbies coming in to fill the gaps from last season’s final-reaching side not rising to the mark.

Back over the border. Once again, no Cork team is part of the silverware conversation. Indeed, if Tralee and St Brendan’s can keep on opposite sides of the road until February, it is impossible to see where space would present itself for a Cork team to be part of the concluding Saturday conversation. Claiming just one of the last-four spots has been the sum of Cork parts these past two years.

Somewhat despairingly for followers of Cork football, the five recommendations at the end of this summer’s 2,000-word review of the 2019-24 five-year plan made no mention of post-primary matters.

Each school, in essence, has been left plough its own furrow. A joint or overarching approach at post-primary level has once again been overlooked.

Four-in-a-row county championship winning boss Ephie Fitzgerald, in recent conversation with this newspaper, urged priority be given to schools, rather than the development squad model preferred by the Cork executive.

“I don’t believe they serve much purpose. The development for me has to start in schools, primary and secondary. In Kerry, the Sem, Mounthawk, Tralee CBS, and Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne - they are football nurseries. The majority of Kerry players will come out of those schools. In Cork, we don’t have that.

“People talk about where we are going wrong in Cork. I don’t think we are going wrong, I just don’t think we are doing enough of where we should be doing it.” 

Retired Cork footballer John O’Rourke, again in conversation with this newspaper earlier in the year, pointed to post-primary hubs as a road out of Cork’s current underage malaise.

“Can you have certain places in Cork where it means that instead of travelling five minutes to the nearest school, you decide to move to a school that is 25 minutes away, but it is a GAA hub while also matching up academically. The only way Cork schools would compete in the Corn Uí Mhuirí is if that happened, hubs in key areas such as the city, West Cork, and Duhallow.”