The road not taken: Cork and Tipp reunion shows counties' contrasting trajectories  

The sides face off in the championship this weekend. 

Referee Maurice Deegan and the two captains, Conor Sweeney of Tipperary and Ian Maguire of Cork, before the Munster SFC final at a practically empty Páirc Uí Chaoimh in 2020. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

After eight meetings in the space of six years, Cork and Tipperary have been football strangers for nearly six years now. Thurles, on Saturday, offers a long overdue reacquaintance. It will absolutely not be a case of picking up where they left off.

Disregarding pre-season irrelevancies, the most recent meeting of the counties is the enshrined-in-history 2020 Munster final. A three-point Tipp win on empty Cork soil and a first Munster title in 85 years.

Tipp went from there to Croke Park a fortnight after. Beyond that, though, two counties who were close to inseparable over the previous six years went off in completely different directions.

The gap of close on six years to their last meeting feels almost false for the sheer volume of change - welcome and unwelcome - both sides have undergone in that period. The two counties, but most especially Saturday’s hosts, are unrecognisable from the covid clash of November 2020.

Tipp have spent four of the past five springs in the League’s basement tier. That’ll again be their residence in 2027. Cork are at the other end of the League ladder. They’ll wear Division 1 clothes next year.

Since overcoming Cork in the 2020 Munster final, Waterford are the only side Tipp have managed to beat in the provincial championship. Two years ago, they couldn’t even manage that, with defeat to the Déise making the latter’s first Munster victory in 14 years.

Granted, Cork have only bettered Limerick in the same period, but they’ve also been within a score of Kerry for the past two years.

Where there’s been a slow evolution of Cork’s playing personnel, arriving at the present point where the forward unit is filled with actual finishers and not counter-attackers, relentless turnover has condemned Tipp into a perpetual state of rebuild.

One-third of Niall Fitzgearld’s starting team for the quarter-final win over Waterford a fortnight ago - Charlie King, Joe Higgins, Killian Butler, Shane Garland, and Eoin Craddock - were making their first championship start.

Of the 26 that togged the same day, there were, incredibly, just two survivors - Paudie Feehan and Emmet Moloney - that had featured in the 2020 provincial success.

“It has been a tough couple of years,” Feehan said at the recent Munster SFC launch. “A lot of lads dropped off the panel, new lads came in, and there was a lot of turnover for a couple of years.

“That was one of the main things Philly [Ryan] said to us at the end of last year was to try and stick together, that we were on the start of a journey.

“He got a group together last year, whereas for a few years we had lads dipping in and out, but last year he got a full squad together that really wanted to play for Tipperary. When you have that, you are going to retain lads.” 

Though no one knew at the time, the 2020 Munster final was the climax of the county’s modern-day rivalry. And a rivalry it had become. Red regression and Tipp progression saw the relationship become that of equals, even if those in the red corner were reluctant to admit such.

From the 2014 Munster semi-final at the old Páirc Uí Chaoimh to the final clash six years later, only two of the eight meetings across League and Championship were decided by more than a single score. They both actually came in the same year. Tipp’s six-point win on the opening night of Division 2 in 2018 was followed a couple of months later by a 1-17 to 0-9 comfortable Cork stroll in the Munster semi-final.

The other four championship encounters were split evenly. In the two that Tipp didn’t win - 2014 and ‘17 Munster semi-finals - they led going into injury-time but were overtaken by a succession of Aidan Walsh points in the first instance and a 70th minute Luke Connolly goal three years later.

On the run into the 2020 decider, then Premier boss David Power captured accurately the Cork-Tipp relationship.

“This group won't fear Cork, because we've beaten them at every level going up. Even back in 2016 [Munster semi], they beat Cork. OK, over the last couple of years, Cork have kind of got the run on them. But there were a couple of occasions where Tipp could easily have won, especially the game in Páirc Uí Rinn in 2017. The players will believe that they can beat Cork and that's a crucial thing.”

That’s no longer the case. The current Tipp class has no experience of operating in the same realm as John Cleary’s side, never mind toppling them.

Premier regression and red progression has opened up a chasm since they last crossed paths. They haven’t had to cross paths for the relationship to be completely redrawn. Saturday will confirm their changed circumstances