One of the sideshows from Cork’s hurling summer was to be knocked off the main stage by a singer-songwriter, told to pack up the bus and take their hometown show on the road instead.
The motivation behind giving Ed Sheeran precedence at Páirc Uí Chaoimh over both the Cork hurlers and footballers this year was totally financial, but it came at a cost to the teams, believes Diarmuid O’Sullivan.
In particular, the hurlers suffered most. The Cork footballers had their Munster semi-final against Kerry switched, eventually, to Páirc Uí Rinn – which was possibly a more suitable venue for them to tackle the Kingdom than Páirc Uí Chaoimh would have been.
But the hurlers had to travel to Semple Stadium for their home game against Clare in the Munster SHC. Having lost their opening match to Limerick, there was extra significance to the Clare encounter so playing on Leeside would have been preferable for the Cork players and management. Clare ran out two-point winners in Thurles.
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O’Sullivan, who was part of the management team, is a strong advocate of other sports and events taking place at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, but he hopes the temporary removal of county teams to accommodate concerts does not become a bad habit. And he certainly feels any future arrangements should come with a proviso that Cork would not be forced to cede home advantage again.
“One hundred per cent, absolutely 100 per cent,” said O’Sullivan. “Definitely, in terms of yourselves, it does impact, because you would have got 35-36,000 people down the Páirc for the Clare game.
“I know the Cork support is similar to the Munster rugby support when they get behind them, there is a great motivation factor from the supporters, especially at home.
“Travelling to Thurles was a bit different obviously, the crowd wasn’t there. It is definitely a motivating factor, you want to win your home games, you want to have your games at home and I think we did fall foul of that over the course of the year.”
The controversy stoked a debate over whether Páirc Uí Chaoimh should only be rented out in the off-season and kept solely for GAA activity during the championship.
“That is for the hierarchy of the board to decide,” added O’Sullivan. “I am not going to enter that debate but you don’t need to be a genius to work it out at the same time.”
Cork’s championship ambitions came to an end at the All-Ireland quarter-final stages, losing to Galway by a single point. It was a frustrating year for the Rebels, as their form fluctuated over the course of the season.
They showed strongly during the league, advancing all the way to the final, but then lost their opening two games in the Munster championship. Victories over Waterford and Tipperary catapulted Cork to the knockout stages of the All-Ireland SHC, but they failed to convert enough of their scoring chances against Galway.
“Twenty-one out of 58 opportunities. Unfortunately, that’s not good enough,” stated O’Sullivan. “It’s no slight on the guys who took to the field on the day. There are plenty of other sports teams who have gone out throughout the years and not converted their chances and have suffered the price for it, similar to us this year. But it was no fault of their efforts on the day.”
One of the big calls by the management team that day was not to start Patrick Horgan, who was introduced off the bench for the second half and contributed 0-4.
“We made a decision, we stood by our decision, and people will question it rightly or wrongly. But we, as a management team on the day, believed it was the right thing to do,” said O’Sullivan.
“Would we change it? Unfortunately, you can’t change it, there’s no changing it. You could ask the same question about Alan Cadogan, should we have started Alan Cadogan? He came into the game and did really well, other guys we introduced into the game did really well, so I don’t think you just have to pick it as one individual and Patrick.
“There was a lot of focus and attention on it and again, Patrick being the character he is on the field, when he came in he didn’t leave us down and he never would.
“I think going forward he definitely still has a role to play for Cork under Pat and his team. He’ll get his opportunity again. I’d say he’ll stay going until he’s around 45 until someone tells him he has to go!”
Pat Ryan has taken the reins in Cork and one of his first tasks will be to assemble a plan for the national league. The current league structure has created a generally lacklustre competition and O’Sullivan questions the benefit Cork got from getting to the final of it this season.
“Look, I am not really sure how you can reinvent the national league,” he said. “It’s obvious that something needs to be done with it. You know, we got what we wanted out of the league, we got a couple of early results, trained extremely hard following those couple of early results. We were planning on a long summer ahead
“I think a manager needs to be very, very aware of what they want to get out of the league. Do they really want to go to a semi-final, final stage, the way the championship is so close to it now? It’s a difficult one.”
Diarmuid O’Sullivan was speaking at the announcement that Pinergy would be the presenting partner for Munster Rugby’s historic clash with South Africa at the Cork GAA grounds on Thursday, November 10th
