ALL-IRELAND SFC FINAL:They are physically huge and yet skilful footballers, writes Keith Duggan, but the real strength behind this impressive Cork side is their self-belief
IN THE matter of getting their act together, no one can accuse the football men of Cork of lacking chutzpah. From the long period of disharmony over the managerial replacement for the iconic Billy Morgan to the rumblings of the Cork players’ strike, the Rebel footballers have settled into a new order under Conor Counihan and have scarcely put a foot wrong.
Not only have they stood alone as the coming football force, steamrolling even All-Ireland champions Tyrone on route to this final, they have done so in a fashion that has left veteran football men somewhat slack-jawed at the sight of them.
It is not as if any of the Cork players who will start tomorrow were plucked from obscurity, but the line-up and configuration Counihan has gone with means this is the biggest – the tallest and strongest – football team ever to line out in the All-Ireland championship.
Prior to this season, everyone was vaguely aware there were plenty of big men knocking around the Cork squad. But this summer, there has been an element of the schoolyard unfairness about the way Cork have approached matches, where the kids with the height genes simply keep the ball.
So-so in Munster, they were imperious in their quarter-final dismissal of Donegal and exceptionally tough-minded and composed when playing with 14 men against the All-Ireland champions.
So after a decade defined by abject disappointment against Kerry at the knock-out stages of the championship, Cork go into this anniversary final as favourites against a Kingdom side making their sixth consecutive appearance.
In a year when Dublin once more evaporated in the real heat of a quarter-final, when few outside contenders made convincing cases for their credentials and when Tyrone failed in their bid to repeat the surge of muscular, avant-garde football that has yielded them three All-Irelands, it could be argued Cork have saved this championship from ordinariness.
For Cork fielded a team that was in direct defiance of the GAA cardinal rule that a big man should be limited to catching, kicking and tolerating endless bad quips about his stature. Cork have looked like a prototype for how Gaelic football teams might look in several decades.
“They are big men but they play like small men,” is the succinct summary of Prof Niall Moyna, senior lecturer in exercise physiology at DCU. In February, Moyna was on the sideline preparing for DCU’s Sigerson Cup match, and as the Cork IT team took the field he was so taken aback he found himself uttering a phrase last heard when Boney M rode high in the charts.
As Moyna remembered it, he turned to Mickey Whelan and said: “Holy Moses. Look at the size of these men.”
“They were just massive. It wasn’t just the obviously big men. Even the forwards they had – Daniel Goulding and Colm O’Neill, were seriously big men.
“But what makes them unique is that they are very accomplished footballers. They have great balance and a great football sense.
“I haven’t spoken to Conor Counihan about this, but I doubt very much that he went looking for men over 6ft 2in to win an All-Ireland for Cork. I think he is just lucky in that he happens to have a group of individuals who happen to be big but mobile and extremely comfortable on the ball. I think O’Neill scored eight points against us that day, and he was just so powerful, so difficult to cope with. I thought that day that whoever would beat Cork would win the All-Ireland.”
Now, only Kerry can have that opportunity. Across the country, managers and players had reactions similar to Moyna’s when confronted with the sheer physical power combined with skill that has come to define Cork.
The reaction has been a bit like Chief Brody of Amity Island when he leans over the stern and gets his first eye-popping looking at the shark: “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
About a week after Donegal were swiftly ejected from Croke Park by Cork, John Joe Doherty phoned each of his players to get their opinions on what had happened. The Glen man could not recall having seen a team as tall or physically strong as Cork.
He knew early on his boys were in trouble. After 18 minutes, the scoreboard was fine – it read 0-4 to 0-2 in the Munster men’s favour – but all kinds of sirens were going off in his head.
Afterwards, he had declined the excuse that fatigue had overwhelmed the Donegal men and his conversations with his players confirmed that. It wasn’t that they hit some kind of wall.
Maybe the abrupt change of scene, from a series of gunslinging knock-out encounters played in Ballybofey or just down the road in Sligo to a quarter-final in Croke Park happened a bit too quickly.
“It was very easy to show up at 4.30 for a match in Ballybofey. Playing in Dublin added a new dimension to the thing and the way that Cork started us against us left us struggling to keep pace with them. Then, once we fell behind, we discovered that Croke Park can be a very unforgiving place. There is no hiding there.
“And I think that Cork are made for Croke Park; the size of the field suits their natural advantage in height and strength. The pace was hectic and we couldn’t match it. And we were criticised for the way we lined out, bringing men back from the half-forward line.
“But that was how we set ourselves up when we had beaten Derry and Galway. We felt we had no other option with the way Cork ran through teams. It looked like they were going to destroy Tyrone the same way before they had a man sent off. They are just very hard to contain.”
Séamus McEnaney was among the many watching on as Cork swiftly removed the wheels from under the Donegal Cadillac and left it mounted on blocks. The Monaghan man holds the distinction of being the only manager to have enjoyed a victory over Cork in league or championship this year.
Even as his team enjoyed a 2-13 to 1-9 win against the Rebels in Scotstown, McEnaney noted how considerably they had changed and improved since their last All-Ireland visit.
Now, he points out that their old failing of under-performing in Croke Park has been replaced: Cork seem to thrive on playing in the big theatre. “They showed that against us in the league final,” he adds grimly. But impressed as he is by their physique and overall skill, he cannot believe they are invulnerable to a classic Kerry ambush tomorrow.
“They beat a Donegal team that never really showed up that day. But it has to be remembered that Donegal still scored 2-10 against them. That is a serious score to give away. I think that would be a concern for Cork. The big struggle against Limerick would be a concern.
“Even that day in Scotstown, Cork showed signs of vulnerability. And against Kerry, in an All-Ireland final, these small weaknesses can be exposed. I think a lot of people are forgetting what a serious football team Kerry are.”
The nagging doubts McEnaney has about Cork closing the deal tomorrow are central to the fascination of the game. They are worries Doherty shares.
“Everything points to Cork,” the Glen man says. “Form, confidence, their approach; they have done everything perfectly. But an All-Ireland final is a one-off game and I expect the opening 20 minutes or so to be absolutely fierce. A lot of people would probably like to see a fresh team winning it. But something is drawing me towards Kerry.”
If Kerry win, it will go down in posterity as their craftiest All-Ireland ever. All the disunion and rumours of rows, even the Pintsgate controversy and the dropping of two made guys, Colm Cooper and Tomás Ó Sé, will be repackaged and reissued as part of the master plan.
The ingenuity of Jack O’Connor’s management regime lies in his ability to make these Kerry players, who represent the heart of the football establishment, play with the defiance and desperation of absolute outsiders. That was never so much in evidence as in his first All-Ireland final against Mayo in 2004.
Back then, John Maughan may have overachieved in guiding a youngish team so far. He might have guessed a bear’s trap awaited them on that mellow afternoon, but there was nothing he could do about it anyway.
But Maughan knows more than most how naturally the knack of claiming All-Irelands comes to Kerry teams: he stood there in 1997 as well and watched Maurice Fitzgerald pick Mayo pockets for an All-Ireland which, many felt, Mayo almost had a moral right to win.
The peculiar September black magic that Kerry possess is they place the entire burden of expectation on the opposition team (Tyrone were one of the few counties immune to its power). It is an entirely mental thing and it works. Cork know this.
Just how therapeutic the Munster championship wins and the victory over Tyrone have been for Cork in terms of dealing with their recent failures against Kerry is the big unknown.
They have said all the right things and have proven already this year they have the talent to beat Kerry. But after the red carpet has been rolled and the President has been received and the anthem has concluded, then the mind games begin. Aren’t Cork, with the memories of a 10-point defeat in 2005, a six-point defeat in 2006, a 3-13 to 1-9 All-Ireland loss in 2007 and even last year’s strange semi-final saga, which Kerry again won, susceptible to the doubts of all those losses?
“I don’t believe so,” Maughan says. “They have been streets ahead of all other teams this summer and they know that. They will carry that into this final. Their size is astonishing and all teams struggle to cope with that.
“But apart from that, Conor Counihan has transformed them in terms of their attitude, and I just can’t see them being vulnerable in that way. In fact, all the question marks have to be directed at Kerry’s form.”
When Niall Moyna thinks back to the last All-Ireland final the counties played in 2007, he recalls a Cork team whose game plan revolved around the threat of James Masters.
Now, Cork have been reconfigured to the extent that the Nemo Rangers man is part of a loaded bench and they have scoring options throughout the field.
“There is a totally new dynamic there now, so I just don’t buy that they will be vulnerable in the old ways.”
It all depends on perspective. Kerry’s peculiar summer form – “filled with ordinariness” as John Maughan puts it – and their startling hit-job on Dublin leaves them hard to read. That obscurity could be to their advantage. Nobody quite knows what to expect.
What if Kieran Donaghy, torturer-in-chief of the Rebels two Septembers ago, lopes in from the wings?
What if Tadhg Kennelly produces something special?
What if Kerry find a way, as Kerry so often do?
These are the imponderables for Cork. Christy Ring’s famous comparison of Cork teams being like mushrooms – they come up overnight – pertained to the hurlers of his day.
But this Cork football team seem to have grown remarkably quickly too. They loom over the football landscape now, in every sense.
They have earned the right to believe this is their time. To do so, they will have to beat Kerry in an All-Ireland final. It could never have been any other way.
Illusion is everything . . .
One reason Cork present such a daunting physicality is the alignment of the diamond of centre back, midfield and centre half forward is so impressive.
Graham Canty actually plays bigger than he is, but his forward thrust from the pivotal number six position has been a central feature of Cork's attacking game.
Pearse O'Neill's style of play at centre half forward is a complete departure from the traditional role as evinced by languid, cerebral footballers such as Greg Blaney or Pádraig Joyce.
O'Neill has football skill, but it is with his power and pace he has assaulted opposition defences.
With a tall and athletic midfield partnership in Alan O'Connor and Nicholas Murphy, Cork have built their supersized team around these four columns.
