Expectations may weigh too heavily on Corbett

Lar Corbett’s intriguing return to the Tipperary hurling setup presents many challenges for the 31-year-old current All Star

THERE’S GENERALLY good reason behind the old boxing adage “they never come back”. Although it can be used as a motivation for whoever’s doing the coming back, the facts remain that outcomes such as that in the old black and white melodrama of the same name from 80 years ago are in the minority.

There are equally reasons to distinguish Lar Corbett’s announced return to action with the Tipperary hurlers from the frequently downbeat tales of material compulsion that run like a frayed thread through yarns of boxers, who have seen better days, coming out of retirement to try to make up for money squandered, swindled or otherwise lost.

It hardly merits description as a comeback when there are injuries, which could have kept Corbett out for longer. That, however, would have been different. In that case he would have been working hard to get back. What actually happened was that a then 30-year-old current All Star decided he had had enough, or at least that his everyday life had become incompatible with continuing to be an elite hurler.

Gaelic games have plenty of comeback stories. Jimmy Keaveney, exasperated by the directionless trajectory of Dublin football and content to have a social life instead, was targeted as a special project by Kevin Heffernan and both enticed back and his return policed for compliance.

But he was still young, not yet 30, and when the call – the idea legendarily implanted in Heffernan’s head by a friend’s child – came there was still enough time to play a lead role in the decade of the Dubs and pick up three All-Irelands, three All Stars and two Texaco Footballer of the Year awards.

Older players, who after promising beginnings have known no success, are driven and if F Scott Fitzgerald’s belief that there are no second acts in American lives is in a way an echo of the central theme about never coming back, in the case of Keaveney it would be more accurate to say that by the time Heffernan reeled him in, there had been no first act in his life.

Lar Corbett is different. You could argue this is his third act. He had a fantastic first act – as a livewire young forward on Nicky English’s All-Ireland winning team of 2001, his pace and unorthodox style a danger to any team. But Tipp slipped precipitously, their tumble apparently accelerated by the emergence of what would be Kilkenny’s decade, albeit featuring for a while a strong dissenting judgment from Cork.

Injury and a sense of futility often undermine the focus of players who knew ultimate success early in their careers and who must watch as that becomes distant memory, unlikely to be revisited.

English always believed Corbett would return to the top, as much because a successful Tipperary team would have to find a way of both accommodating and exploiting his speed and unpredictability. Eamon O’Shea’s coaching framework, with its emphasis on movement and precision, appeared to throw the switch.

In the past three seasons – last year under new management when Declan Ryan took over – Corbett has scored 18 of the 26 championship goals that an 11-year career has so far produced. He isn’t the only Hurler of the Year to have walked away before reconsidering. Brian Corcoran was 28 when he decided he’d had enough of the grind and intrusion into his life and he stopped abruptly – county and club. By 2001 he’d been nearly 10 years at it, Hurler of the Year at 19 and again seven years later when he anchored Cork to the 1999 All-Ireland.

When he returned two years later it was initially with the club but expectations sprang up that he would be back at the highest level – even though those watching his initial resumption with Érin’s Own feared his game might have atrophied beyond recovery. But incrementally, he made it back and reconditioned as a bustling full forward, won two further All-Ireland medals and made a sufficiently significant contribution to add another All Star in 2004.

Corbett hasn’t been out for two years but his withdrawal too has been total in the seven months since he played for Thurles Sarsfields in the county championship.

Once the acclimatisation is concluded, pressure will inevitably intensify. This is after all a player who by last September was reigning Hurler of the Year and had scored six goals in getting Tipp back to the All-Ireland final but who experienced an unforgiving reaction after a subdued afternoon. Is the expectation to be that he should always be capable of getting three or four goals in a match?

According to the player himself, business commitments got in the way a few months ago but he’s now sorted that out. It’s not clear to what extent Corbett has missed the involvement of regular training and building up to matches, experiences that have been so much part of his life for so long.

The most accurate comparison may be with a Hurler of the Year and prolific goal scorer who sensationally stepped aside in 1998 because he felt the twin pressures of business off the field and expectations on it.

DJ Carey’s absence from Kilkenny was measured in weeks rather than months and his return was eventually garlanded with All-Ireland medals and like Keaveney’s, with Player of the Year recognition.

A year later, as he prepared for another All-Ireland final, Carey tried to explain in this newspaper what had happened.

“The pressures have eased and I’ve probably grown up a bit myself too,” he said. “I felt there was too much going on around me and that’s been well printed and I felt that I didn’t want to be part of that. Why should my head be on the block every time I go out on the field? You don’t perform or Kilkenny don’t perform, why should you have to put up with that?

“I felt I wouldn’t be able to perform in the championship at the level I wanted and I didn’t want to go into a championship being half-minded about it. Probably I’ve learned to grow up a little bit and realise that whatever goes on with me, goes on with everyone else.”

It all worked out in the end but that’s not necessarily foreseeable when you once again cross the white line. Comebacks might be irresistible but they still take a lot of nerve.