TOM HUMPHRIESon how the famous Cork-Tipp rivalry abated in the 1990s and has since struggled to regain its former lustre

NO ROMANCE. Hurling’s revolution years ended with an emphatic act of suppression as the game came through a period of growth and breakthrough and rounded the bend into a new century.

Having been sidelined like Eastern European dictators through most of the ’90s, between them Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary won three All-Irelands straight from 1999 onwards and have refused to give the trophy back ever since.

The world would look the same as it had been before Loughnane, Griffin et al, but it would never actually be the same to live in. Cork and Tipp would be big time again but Cork and Tipp wouldn’t ever again be a fixture to still the heart. Not then. Not now. Not tomorrow. Time overtook Cork and Tipp.

Cork’s breakthrough in 1999 under Jimmy Barry Murphy had introduced a young Cork side to an increasingly desperate equation. The big three were marginal and Cork were more marginal than most. JBM won big however and Brian Cody and then Nicky English followed suit in the seasons that followed.

The holy trinity were back. Business as usual. The notion of Cork and Tipperary being in the ascendant at the same time should have been sealed the deal for traditionalists. So much lore and legend hung on that relationship.

And now . . . the hay still got saved, but nobody worried too much if Cork still got bate. Or if Tipp did.

The rivalry, if not quite stillborn, was a meek and timid thing and not a centrepiece of the game. Cork and Tipp should have spent the past 10 years hurling balls of fire at each other. Instead, one’s weaker moments have coincided with the other’s blue streak and vice versa. Even tomorrow, when they meet for the first time in sixth years, there is no sense of the pending apocalypse.

A defeat for Cork won’t significantly alter the lifespan of a team which has been the most charismatic and controversial the sport has known. A loss for Tipperary, provided it wasn’t a collapse, would only briefly impact on the belief they are still the side best equipped to deal with Kilkenny later in the year.

The irony is that the connection with each other which Tipp and Cork missed was one which the floor has been cleared for.

When the sides met in Millennium Year in the Munster final of 2000 the province had gone nine years without sampling the most traditional of Munster final pairings.

For Nicky English, who managed Tipp that day, it was less of a walk on white hot coals than he had been preparing for.

“We played them in the Munster championship in 2000 and looking back I always thought we were very inexperienced and it was a flat occasion. People said the second half was very good but . . . I always remember one of our best players leaving a message on my phone the morning of the match looking for a car pass. It was more like a rock concert for people because it hadn’t happened for so long. They hadn’t seen one for the guts of a decade. The rivalry had absolutely abated.

“It was the chance to get it back on the road. From a Tipp perspective it felt pretty flat.”

Tipp lost by two points having missed two penalties (the first after the famous Paul Shelly, Donal Óg Cusack jockey back incident) but Tipperary never owned the momentum.

“The players had been very young in the late ’80s and early ’90s . . . Tipp lost and then that was it.We didn’t play them for the next two or three years.

“I don’t think we played Munster championship against Cork again till Babs (Keating) was in charge of Tipp in 2005.”

By then Cork were intensely engaged in their staring contest with Kilkenny. Cork won the 2004 meeting with Tipp in the qualifiers and the Munster engagements between the two sides in 2005 and 2006.

Nothing special.

That indifference to each other was odd. In the 1990s anybody throwing straws in the wind would have looked at the underage scene in Munster and beyond and predicted that another gilded age was about to be bestowed on the rivals. Jimmy Barry Murphy’s All-Ireland minor-winning team were succeeded on the throne by Tipp.

At under-21 level the current ran the opposite way. Tipp won an All-Ireland in 1995 with a side containing Brendan Cummins, Paul Shelly, Philip Liam McGrath, Tommy Dunne, Terry Dunne, Eddie Enright, Kevin Tucker. Cork’s confidence in their ability to spark a renaissance was born in part out of beating Tipp in the next three under-21 championships, the pivotal game being the Munster final of 1997 in Semple Stadium when, despite being outplayed for stretches, Cork won with an injury-time goal from Timmy McCarthy.

“At underage level things would have been much bigger for Cork and Tipp than they would be later,” says Jimmy Barry Murphy who managed Cork to their 1999 senior All-Ireland triumph.

“In my time with the minors in Cork in 1993-1995 they beat us in a Munster final in 1993 but we didn’t come across them at all really . . . The struggle was at under-21. That rivalry got intense. They had some great games in Thurles and Cork and 1997 was the one that mattered. In injury-time Timmy got a late goal to win the game in Semple Stadium after Cork had been outplayed for most of the game. That was a huge boost for Cork and a huge setback for Tipp.

“We went on to to win the Under-21 All-Ireland that year and winning it was a big factor for that group – it was a huge boost even for us in the senior set-up . . . ”

In 1998 Cork cantered home against Tipperary’s Under-21s and the nucleus of what would become the Cork team of the past decade was ready to deliver precociously early. For Cork, Donal Óg Cusack, Diarmuid O’Sullivan, Wayne Sherlock, Seán Óg, Timmy Mac, Mickey O’Connell, Joe Deane, Ben O’Connor and Neil Ronan all won under-21s in 1997 or 1998 and graduated straight to a senior All-Ireland in 1999.

“It is hard to win things without a basis of underage success and for 1999 that was hugely encouraging,” says Jimmy Barry. “The minors of 1995 and those under-21 successes under Bertie Óg Murphy were a huge stepping stone. In that way Cork are the same as all other counties. . .

“When I took over the Cork seniors in 1996 I didn’t realise how bad things had got until the first year. Lack of underage success kills you. Kilkenny and Galway are proving that the other way around now.”

English agrees the environment the young players of either county graduated into was different to that experienced by their predecessors. There was a residual from the revolution years, counties with their own jumped-up notions and agendas. And there was a change in structures.

“It never did take off as the sort of rivalry which Cork and Tipp were maybe due to have and part of that was due to the teams themselves. They didn’t consider that beating the other was going to be the winning of the All-Ireland championship in any of the years when they actually played each other. That’s a big difference.

“Tipperary lost the Munster final in 2002 to Waterford. Couldn’t say that playing Cork would have made things different. Maybe it’s just part of the overall change. Munster got more competitive. Tipp and Cork missed each other for a few years and had enough to be keeping their eye on with the other teams. And then the back door came in and it wasn’t life or death anymore anyway. To have a really serious rivalry in a province it has to be knockout. ”

Jimmy Barry Murphy saw the taming of the relationship but wasn’t overly concerned.

“The quality is what matters. Waterford came in as a factor. Cork and Waterford had some incredible games. Tipp and Waterford too. That Waterford team were a fantastic side and those Cork and Waterford games were equal to anything you would get. Sensational games. Both teams scoring late winners. They took on a life of their own. You can’t keep saying ‘ah it’s not like Cork and Tipp’ when you are getting serious games like that.”

Tomorrow in the Páirc is another day in an altered relationship.Two years ago Tipperary came to town and altered a keystone of the relationship between the counties. They beat Cork in the Páirc for the first time.

And the world didn’t end.

People saw the state Cork were in, the ambition Tipperary had. They moved on.

“You wouldn’t feel the rivalry has ever got to the stage that it did in the ’90s or ’80s or back down the decades before that. It’s part of hurling that has probably gone for good,” says English

The Páirc will be full tomorrow. But the tension, the expectation, the stakes will be different.

Not quite no romance.

Rationed.