GAELIC GAMES: SEAN MORANsays Kerry and Tyrone's elimination has presented Cork with a glorious opportunity and their major advantage in experience can now stand them in good stead

IN WHAT has evolved into the most open All-Ireland football championship in years there’s no mistaking the team bearing the most pressure. Cork have been rated all year together with Kerry and Tyrone as one of the “Big Three” counties and after a convincing NFL win in the spring were widely tipped to win a first All-Ireland in 20 years.

In common with all the other semi-finalists, Cork found June a depressing month. Having laboured under the apparent inability to beat Kerry in Croke Park – all of their All-Ireland exits since 2004, including the finals of last year and 2007 had been at the hands of their neighbours – they sustained a first Munster defeat in three years and found themselves bound for the qualifiers.

But after weeks plying their poorly attended trade off Broadway, Cork woke up one morning to find that the two biggest shows on The Great White Way had precipitously closed. Suddenly there’s only the Big One still in contention.

The team would have had to repeat last year’s All-Ireland run-in, meeting Tyrone in the semi-final and most likely Kerry in the final. Instead Dublin have materialised for tomorrow’s penultimate stage and Down or Kildare wait in the wings.

This isn’t unchartered territory for Cork. There are striking similarities with the golden age of football in the county. Twenty years ago the county recorded its first back-to-back All-Ireland success. There had, however, been a tough apprenticeship.

Three times, including the 1988 replay, Cork had failed to beat Meath in the All-Ireland final. Few doubted that they would have to cross the same hurdle in 1989. But as has happened this year, the team’s bête noir was surprisingly eliminated.

Niall Cahalane, corner back on the double All-Ireland winning teams from 20 years ago, remembers the disorientation when a Dublin team they had beaten well in the league final emerged in place of the then All-Ireland champions.

“We knew the 1987-’88 finals were part of a learning curve even though of course we were gutted and disappointed to have been beaten. At the start of the year (1989) we would have been saying that Meath were the team to beat. When they were knocked out it came as a disappointment to us and when we played them in the following year’s final it was additional motivation.

“I wouldn’t say the motivation went completely out of it for us when Dublin came through but it took a bit of readjustment. It’s the same this weekend. For most of the year it’s looked like a Cork-Kerry final so that requires readjustment as well.

“To be honest, I think Cork are as well off that it’s Dublin they’re playing. After giving Tyrone such a hammering last year I’d be more worried if they’d come through but that’s not to say that you’d be overconfident against Dublin, either.”

Cahalane believes that exposure to the top level such as both his team and its current successors acquired is a significant advantage and more important than the lacklustre form the county has been exhibiting this season.

“I’d say the experience of losing the finals is huge even if there is a little thing at the back of your mind that you failed before.

“Probably Cork haven’t been as accomplished this year. They’ve changed their style and are more difficult to break down even if they’re not racking up big scores but they’ve come through the qualifiers without too much trouble. Even against Limerick they completely dominated until getting caught at the end of normal time.”

Recovering focus isn’t the only precedent that Cork need to absorb. Four of the last five All-Irelands have been won by teams coming through the qualifiers. This year will make it five out of six, as for the first time none of the provincial champions have reached the semi-finals.

All qualifier-travelled All-Ireland victories have turned on a single epiphany, which revealed a losing team transformed in the course of a single match. Encouragingly for Cork, three of the past four champions discovered that transformation against Dublin.

Mickey Harte twice managed Tyrone along that road to redemption and, whereas he acknowledges the role played by luck, he can clearly identify what the advantages were.

“It’s not definitive. We nearly lost in the years we ended up as All-Ireland champions through the qualifiers and similarly in the years when we were knocked out as Ulster champions there were times we were unlucky.

“The first and most important benefit is that you get a taste of defeat but you haven’t really been defeated. You’ve experienced a knock-out but you’re still there. You’ve had the bitter taste of defeat but are in a position to do something about it.

“You also experiment, look at players in different positions in a competitive context.”

Harte has seen Cork at close quarters, most painfully during last year’s authoritative dismissal, and is optimistic about their chances of delivering on the out-and-out favouritism they now enjoy even though their form has been unpersuasive to date.

“They’ve had a hard year going from being seen as shoo-ins for the All-Ireland, which wasn’t realistic, to being written off when they faltered, losing to Kerry in extra-time after a replay. Both were overreactions. I think there’s a lot of good football left in Cork. I’d like to have that potential to unleash in an All-Ireland semi-final.”

The third precedent which looks favourably on Cork is their persistence over the years and more particularly the past three, which have included two All-Ireland final appearances. Maintaining a consistent presence at the top is one way of “earning” the title.

Cork did it 20 years ago, Dublin followed five years later and Armagh were doing it 10 years ago. Enda McNulty was on the Armagh side that lost to the ultimate All-Ireland champions in three successive years, 1999-2001, before winning the county’s first title in 2002.

They led Meath in the ’99 semi-final for a long time before getting overhauled, took Kerry to a replay and extra-time at the same stage in 2000 and fell to a last-second point by Galway’s Paul Clancy in the following year’s qualifiers.

A sports psychologist and performance consultant, McNulty agrees with Niall Cahalane about the benefits of repeatedly competing at the top.

“Losing didn’t make us more fragile but stronger. There was a strong belief when we sat down and reflected on those defeats. We knew that we had the potential to beat these teams on a given day. I remember being in the Canal Court (hotel in Newry) after the Meath semi-final and Tony McEntee got up and said, ‘if we don’t win an All-Ireland in the next few years it’ll be a huge waste of potential’. From then on we were almost on a mission.”

He believes that, like all good teams, Cork have continued to learn from the often agonising experiences of recent years and that this is of practical application on big match days.

“The winning IQ dictates how teams handle a crisis in matches. Through all of those defeats Cork are increasing their winning IQ, learning how to react to a goal, a man getting put off or other pressures. Since the defeat by Kerry they haven’t been playing great football but they’ve been winning and that’s a good sign.

“It’s like the Munster rugby team. Think of the number of times they’ve not played their best rugby and have been outplayed in a game but still come through because their winning IQ is better than the opposition’s.

“I’m hugely impressed by Cork’s talent, size, physical strength and work ethic. Armagh were a physical team but they have a different dimension to that. They’re meant to be mentally frail but I’d suggest the opposite and I think it’s only a matter of time before they win an All-Ireland.”

The only question remains how successfully Cork can alter their frame of reference in what has effectively become a parallel universe.