Dave Barry has been through it all. A member of the football team which completed the double for Cork in 1990, he is now manager of the Cork City soccer team which won the 1998 FAI Cup final. The 1990 All-Ireland medal was his second, Cork having won in 1989 also.
Now, he sees a wonderful opportunity for Cork to repeat that double experience and believes they can do it. He remembers the imagined pressure which came on the team for which he played in 1990.
"The fact is that, as far as I can remember, we were not under extra pressure all that much. We were aware of the significance but we didn't feel anything other than that we wanted to win. Afterwards we realised the importance of what had happened and that Teddy McCarthy had entered the history books.
"I suppose n Sean Og O hAilpin will be conscious that he will be expected to repeat Teddy's feat but he is a very level-headed guy and I don't think he will have anything else on his mind but winning the football on Sunday." Barry says. "There is great excitement here in Cork as you would imagine. Supporters would kill for tickets. There is a great deal of pleasure in the fact that Jimmy Barry-Murphy has led the hurlers to an All-Ireland victory. I played with him for the first time on the Cork football team in 1980. We played in the right and left corners. Jimmy gave up football to concentrate on hurling, just like Brian Corcoran. It is a great compliment to him that he has succeeded both as a player and as a manager.
"There have been some great days for me with the Cork team. I remember in 1983 we were leading by a goal in the All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin when Barney Rock scored a spectacular goal. The replay was in Pairc Ui Chaoimh and Dublin beat us well. "The situation in both football and hurling is that things come in cycles and Cork are now back on the top of the heap. We beat Meath by 11 points to nine in 1990 and I am confident we can do it again," he says. He believes that there are many different aspects between the running of a soccer team and Gaelic football.
In soccer the emphasis is on the National League competition. In Gaelic the All-Ireland championship is the big competition.
"You can prepare for football or hurling for eight months and then be beaten in the first round. It requires a lot of dedication and commitment and great disappointment at the end if you are knocked out.
"In football and hurling there is training four nights a week and a lot of commitment involved. If you want to succeed at inter-county level you have to give up a lot of your leisure time or the time you would spend with your family. I believe that there has to be a new look at the way players of football and hurling are treated. When I played football for Cork I know I lost money because of the training and playing schedule.
"What must be kept in mind is the grass-roots of the games at local level. There is so much voluntary effort that you would be in danger of losing that if players were being paid.
"There is far more media pressure on players of Gaelic games than on those in any other sporting pursuit. "All you have to do is to look at the kind of hype that surrounds the hunt for tickets for the big matches these days," he says.
