John Fogarty: Cork must shed their soft image to prosper
Cork, known in Congress as the county that likes to say no, could very well turn out to be the only traditional hurling power to vote yes to the sin bin come Saturday week.
The county board meeting earlier this month gave a great insight into not just how Cork sees itself but others.
Valid points about ridding hurling of the rugby tackle were made but there was a touch of victimhood about some of the remarks.
Reported on by this newspaper, one delegate’s claim that Kilkenny had indulged in “strategic fouling” for years was read with anger on Noreside.
County secretary Kevin O’Donovan highlighted Cork were no innocents when it came to cynicism but on the matter of getting rid of the maor foirne he stressed the county were “impeccably behaved”.
As a highly-regulated county when it comes to hurling officiating, Cork’s backing for the black card is not earth-shattering.
Former county secretary Frank Murphy, after all, is a member of the playing rules committee, which has put forward the motion.
Feed into that Dónal Óg Cusack’s long-held views about the illegitimate use of the spare hand and unlike John Kiely and Brian Cody Cork were unlikely to believe hurling should be left well enough alone.
But over these past 15 years what good has good behaviour done Cork?
Shortly after stepping down as senior manager, John Meyler bemoaned the strictness of the refereeing in last September’s Imokilly-Sarsfields, Glen Rovers-Newtownshandrum senior quarter-finals.
“Cork is refereed by the rules of the book,” he said.
When I go to Thurles or matches in Kilkenny and it’s a different game. They apply the rules here and that’s just it. When you play in the Munster championship, it’s totally different.
"I think it is (hurting Cork). The intensity of the game, the continuity of the game, the excitement is not there. I know the conditions were poor but there were two matches here last week that were stop-start as well and there was no flow.”
Meyler had made similar remarks four years previous when he said the Cork club game was delivering players who were “too nice” for the inter-county scene.
A few months before he became Cork coach last year, Ger Cunningham acknowledged refereeing in Cork may have impacted on the aggression of the senior county team.
“It does seem to be a situation where fewer frees are blown. Sometimes we do overblow the whistle a bit.
“If you are involved coaching or doing matches and young lads are looking for frees, you’d be encouraging them not to blow for frees. I think it is part of the reason, it is something you could consider.”
It’s not just Cunningham in the Cork management team who believes an intensity has been missing. Manager Kieran Kingston said last October:
“Aggression is around the whole area of work-rate, hunger, desire... they all feed into the same.
"There are times when we shouldn’t have been beaten but we weren’t as hungry as the other teams we have come up against.”
Four years ago, Diarmuid O’Sullivan in his first spell as a selector with Kingston admitted he had to teach players to be cuter.
I still take an active part in inter-county training with the lads, not because I want to make a comeback, but the fact I’m trying to teach them the dark arts which have kind of got lost on a few of them.
It was under Meyler that Seán O’Donoghue’s niggling of Aaron Gillane prompted the Limerick forward to lash out and earn a red card in their Munster SHC game two years ago but O’Sullivan would likely have approved of his methods.
That being said, Seamus Harnedy has been dismissed in each of the last two league campaigns for similar retaliatory offences.
Bill Cooper and Tim O’Mahony know how to mix it but Cork can often be too passive or reactionary for what’s required.
While not wholly condonable, the divilment that was once an ingredient of Cork’s make-up — Cusack breaking Micheál Webster’s hurley, soaking sliotars, the no-nonsense approach of current selectors O’Sullivan and Pat Mulcahy brought has players - has largely disappeared.
As a county that has also gained an unwelcome reputation for not scoring enough goals, their stance on the black card makes even more sense. But rule changes alone aren’t going to push Cork over the line.
The mollycoddling of players at club level will take time to address.
Until then, any protestations emanating from Cork about the state of the game will be interpreted by opposing counties as sour grapes.
Just like the length of the Croke Park grass in 2006, the amount of additional time in 2013, Austin Gleeson remaining on the field in 2017 or extra-time applying in 2018.
It doesn’t matter that Cork had genuine grievances for one or two of those instances: in the context of serial defeats complaints become moans.
A motion by any other name...
You might remember six years ago a proposal to prevent penalty takers from advancing the ball further than the 13-metre line was rechristened the Anthony Nash motion in light of the Cork goalkeeper’s exploitation of the penalty rule.
It was eventually withdrawn to be replaced a year later by Hurling 2020 committee’s recommendation that penalties become one versus one situations.
There are a multitude of motions on this year’s Congress Clár that can also be named after hurling luminaries including two Corkmen:
The Seamus Harnedy motion — the former Cork captain’s club St Ita’s are calling for replays to apply to All-Ireland semi-finals when teams finish level at the end of normal time. The facility currently extends to All-Ireland and provincial finals only.
Harnedy was one of three Cork players injured in the 2018 All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Limerick when extra-time separated the sides.
The Mark Coleman motion — Coleman isn’t the only sideline cut expert in the country but his superb slice to win UCC their Fitzgibbon Cup semi-final against UCC will be freshest in many people’s memories as delegates vote on whether to make a pointed sideline cut worth two points.
The Greg Kennedy motion — The GAA’s plans to end the role of the maor foirne.
The running selector had been under threat before the Dublin selector intercepted TJ Reid’s quick free last summer but that incident was the last straw for authorities.
The Darragh O’Donovan motion — Limerick wants teams to be able to review refereeing decisions by asking the HawkEye official to view video replays.
This comes after Limerick appeared to be denied a 65 in the closing stages of last year’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Kilkenny when O’Donovan’s sideline cut seemed to touch Cillian Buckley’s hurley before going out over the endline.
GAA fall foul of climate change
And so for the third season in a row the Allianz Hurling League Division 1 final will be played later than scheduled. It won’t surprise anyone if the football competition follows suit and spills over into the designated club month of April too.
The impracticality of staging an eight game-day competition that is hurling’s Division 1 over nine weekends has yet again come back to bite the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC).
Should Special Congress endorse the fixtures task-force proposals in September, a further two weeks will be freed up for clubs in May, thus providing six club-only weekends. On the face of it, that’s a healthy move but might a compromise have been met so as to extend the Allianz Leagues into the first week of April?
That way, there would be some more wiggle room to stage postponed games without upsetting the original timelines of the competitions.
Not only that, it would be a pro player welfare move. Limerick, Galway, Tipperary, and Waterford now face five games in 35 days if they are to reach the Division 1 final. At this time of year, in this current weather, that is more than a trudge.
On many levels, the GAA are responding to the need to be sustainable. For instance, none of Croke Park’s waste goes to landfill and last week they revealed plans for a 50-mile menu at the stadium in which all ingredients will be sourced from 50 miles or less from the venue. But their fixture making shows a distinct lack of appreciation for how the climate is changing.
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