At the height of the last great Cork team’s powers, say somewhere around 2004, there was a wonderful comfort to be found in the Evening Echo’s Championship preview on the Friday of the game. John Horgan always finishes his previews with a simple statement as to who will win and back then it was invariably Cork. If Cork had to open up the Championship away to Mordor, John would note the problems the All-Seeing Eye would pose to the half-back line but the final line was always the same.
Verdict: Cork.
He was merely being realistic. That was a ferocious team that in many ways laid the foundation for the tyrannical Kilkenny reign that followed. Last Friday though, Horgan’s preview - while noting a new physicality with Cork - gave the verdict to Tipperary narrowly. Tony Considine, writing in the same paper set the scene for an ambush and reckoned Cork would upset the odds.
This notion of an ambush was a popular one but those of us that predicted it were basing that prediction on Cork being Cork. Once William Egan lined up as a sweeper and Tipperary’s arrowed supply cut him out of the game, predictions of ambushes and tight games looked silly and naive. Tipperary played in second gear and saw off the type of feeble challenge that should never be accepted on Leeside.
Kieran Kingston has to receive a degree of sympathy when one considers the players he has at his disposal and the parched well that has been Cork underage hurling for over a decade. And while he should be cut some slack for his decision to deploy a sweeper, he has to be held to account for the sheer flatness of Cork’s performance. Jimmy Barry Murphy – deity that he is – was still derided by some in the county for not being a tactician but JBM understood the DNA of Cork hurling and the type of defeat that Cork people can stand. If we at least fire our shots and go down swinging, that’ll do.
@officialgaa outlaw the sweeper system with immediate effect so we can have game's like this every week #sundaygame #TIPPvGAL
— Diarmuid O'Sullivan (@dsully3) August 16, 2015
The sweeper is something Cork felt they had to use given their knack for conceding goals and while it ruins a spectacle and can be a damage limitation exercise, it can also be very effective. The war between traditionalists who want to play man-on-man and the new breed who see the fifteen as chess pieces will rumble on but Cork’s sweeper should not become the focus for yesterday. Cork fans weren’t expecting much this year but there’s a baseline of acceptable performance that has to be attained and yesterday dipped perilously below that baseline.
The Cork public has something of a strange relationship with its hurling team. When they motor, it lets us play up to the stereotype of Cork cockiness. When they stutter, we write them off as hopeless but we all harbour a belief that the natural order of things will eventually emerge and we’ll pull of a performance because, well, we’re Cork.
Now, the overriding emotion is apathy. We’re approaching the stage where the likes of Tipp are starting to take pity on us and we're becoming the focus of a fascinating case study: just how can the biggest hurling county in the country be so bloody awful?
The weakness of the club game in the county has been well documented. The 2004 All Ireland winning Newtownshandrum team backboned the last great Cork team but there isn’t anywhere near a comparable side operating in the county now. The likes of St Finbarr’s and Blackrock [Ed. - the Barr's and the Rockies, surely?]– once the pillars of a good Cork side, have been barren for going on a decade now while Cork’s problems at underage are so well documented, they are reaching cliché levels at this point.
There is no easy fix and a long term plan to get Cork back to the summit must be separated from one summer. But Cork fans face a trudge through the Championship with no promise of better times to come. It’s been over a decade since Liam made his way to the South Mall, it’s not outlandish to suggest that another barren decade awaits.
A shiny new Páirc Uí Chaoimh will be scant consolation if the notion of Cork hurling is eroded to the point to irrelevance.
And irrelevance is where it’s heading. Perhaps the back-door will open up a summer of some promise, but you suspect the verdicts on future Cork matches will only go one way from here.
