The last thing Brian Cuthbert needed was a reminder of what happens next. Every manager tells you they take it one game at a time – only Cuthbert must have known what was coming down the tracks for his Cork team.
Under the modified qualifier format introduced last year, the losers of the Munster football final replay had already been lined up against Kildare: whoever wins that was also lined up to face Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.
And, like it or not, Cuthbert only had six days to worry about it. That fourth-round qualifier against Kildare has now been confirmed for Saturday at Semple Stadium (7.0). Beaten provincial finalists are normally given at least two weeks to prepare for their qualifier, but Cork’s replay against Kerry ate into that little comfort.
Different challenge
“Yeah,” said Cuthbert, “six days to get ready for a very good Kildare team, who’ve had a very good run over the last few weeks, who will be very, very difficult to beat, and who will bring a very different challenge to what we’ve faced over the last two games against Kerry.
“It’s a huge challenge, one the whole group faces, the management and the players, and by Saturday we’ll just have to be ready. Physically, the players are extremely fit, and I’d expect them to have recovered in a couple of days, but mentally this is going to have taken a lot out of them. So it’s a mental challenge now, really, because a result like this does take a lot out of them.”
Part of that mental challenge is knowing – or rather fearing – the record of beaten provincial finalists in the football qualifiers. Since 2001, there have only been isolated cases where those beaten finalists have recovered to make the quarter-finals.
Perhaps more worryingly for Cuthbert, no team beaten in their provincial final has ever come back through the qualifiers to win the All-Ireland.
The qualifiers have, since 2001, seen six counties come through to win the All-Ireland, but in all cases they came from the earlier rounds.
In 2001, Galway came from round two of three qualifiers to beat Meath in the final; in 2005, Tyrone came from round four to beat Kerry; in 2006, Kerry also came through round four to beat Mayo; in 2008, Tyrone came from round two to beat Kerry; in 2009, Kerry came from round three to beat Cork; and in 2010, Cork came from round three to beat Down in the final. That year, 2010, was also notable in that all four provincial champions were beaten in the quarter-finals: Kerry, Roscommon, Meath and Tyrone.
Dominant
Since then, however, the provincial champions have been dominant: all four prevailed in the quarter-final stage in 2011, 2012, and again last year. The only blip was in 2013, when Tyrone beat Ulster champions Monaghan.
Against that backdrop, Cork won’t need any reminding of how different things could have been had they closed the deal against Kerry the first day, or rekindled that same fire in the replay.
Cuthbert puts that down to a number of things, the standout difference being Kerry’s goal in the second half.
“If you look back at the first half, they got what, eight points? And certainly we gifted them three or four very, very handy scores.
“We gave them some very soft frees, made it easy for Bryan Sheehan, things we didn’t want to do. Still, we felt we were in a very good position at half time, but then once the goal came, we just found it very difficult to do the right thing with the ball.
“Certainly we weren’t running through them as well as the first day. Or doing the right things on the ball.
Opportunity
“And when you’ve 1-4 on the board at half time, you’d expect to kick on, and we didn’t and we have to look at that, and make sure if the opportunity comes again, we will kick on. So players are very, very disappointed, because they were extremely confident that they could do what they needed to do.”
Cuthbert’s worries don’t end there. Eoin Cadogan was named to start against Kerry on Saturday evening, although that was a dummy selection, as Cadogan had actually been nursing a hamstring tear since the drawn game, 13 days previous.
“It will be very, very tight,” said Cuthbert, on whether or not Cadogan will feature this Saturday evening.
The modified qualifier format has split teams into groups A and B, depending on which side of the draw they had played in their provincial championships. Each team is drawn to face an opponent from the same group as themselves, meaning A teams were paired with A teams, and B teams were paired with B teams.
This was partly designed to avoid the situation where beaten provincial finalists had a qualifier tie six days later, although for Cork, like a lot of things this summer, that wasn’t to be.
