Racing to a red light: Cork revert to most frustrating version of themselves
A DECENT RULE is to play sport if you can, especially if it’s something you like to watch, coach or write about.
Playing will take the edge off your harder judgements. You don’t need to be operating at any kind of level – just enough to bring on fatigue and humility.
For some of us that’s six-a-side on the astroturf. A galaxy removed from Thurles on Saturday night. Yet sitting in Semple Stadium, groaning as Cork tried to tiki-taka their way to the Tipperary 65 with a series of high-risk, low-reward transfers, I knew that in a little over 12 hours I’d discover for myself again what it feels like for things to not quite work out.
You only have to f**k up once, as Avon Barksdale said. “Be a little slow, be a little late, just once.”
Most of us, well, we’re slow and late a lot of the time. But not all the time. Sport is cruel that way – gives just enough little moments of satisfaction to keep you hooked and hoping.
Top level people, the ones we pay to watch, they’re rarely slow or late. But when you try to thread a sliotar through the eye of a needle four times in the one move, which Cork do tend towards, then the odds will catch up with you more than you’d like.
And the dizzying speed of the game now can only truly be appreciated from the front few rows. So, how, as Avon asked, “you ain’t never going to be slow? . . . Never late?”
There are a number of caveats to Cork’s defeat to Tipperary on Saturday. Absences to key players, especially forwards who would help them to vary things with a more direct style which worked well at times last year, Seamus Harnedy and Declan Dalton among them. Pádraig Power’s season-ending injury is another cruel blow.
A lack of league success does not make for a poor championship. Cork’s opening half against Kilkenny this time last year has not been forgotten for its wretched nature. Limerick won a single game of five in 2022, and won the All-Ireland later in the year. You could fill the page with similar examples.
The public never knows where a team is at with their physical or tactical conditioning.
There is all that, but there is also the fact that the game is on, it happens in something we regard as the real world – so it’s not totally irrational to draw the odd conclusion or two. Or to hope that you might see a draft plan of something that might work later in the season.
Cork gave close to the full bingo card of their failings on Saturday night: looking good in spells then drifting out of the game to the extent that they spend a lot of time and energy chasing; squandered goal chances; intricate build-up play that invites more problems than it solves.
The last one is the most maddening.
We know it’s deemed simplistic to say that the ball will travel more quickly than anybody can run. But so many times over the years it feels like the Cork gameplan is a thesis on a question which occupied the great mind of Gareth Keenan from The Office: Will there ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark?
I feel like I’ve heard a lot more about Cork’s blistering pace than I’ve seen top class defences ripped apart by this pace. Because the thing with pace is that nearly every team has it now.
Then there is Cork’s possession game, which has been known to result in the loss of possession in awkward areas.
To illustrate this point we could use many passages of play from Saturday, or from many other days. But we’ll go with a short piece of action which takes place shortly after the 57 minute mark.
A Tipperary shot drops short. Patrick Collins catches well, has time to assess options, and drills a low pass to Diarmuid Healy on the left wing between the 45 and 65.
It’s an accurate ball, but it’s asking quite a bit for Healy to do much with it as he gathers while facing his own goal and running towards the line. Naturally, he’s under pressure, which increases once he turns and starts running. One stray handpass later, the ball finds its way to Craig Morgan, who is glad to be able to smash it over from 65 metres.
Less than a minute later Luke Meade collects a stick pass from defence. There are three Cork forwards inside, with the big unit that is Brian Hayes one-on-one close to goal. Any kind of ball in front of Hayes or in the air is going to cause trouble, but instead Meade stick passes it barely five metres to Shane Barrett on the wing. To be fair Meade has company and Barrett is unmarked.
So now Barrett will bomb it in, you think. Not as effective as if Meade had let fly because it’s been slowed down, but it’s still on. Instead Barrett goes for a low-percentage shot which falls short.
Barry Hogan then clears it long, a ball which leads to Tipp’s second goal. In the space of a little over a minute the score has gone from 1-19 – 1-17 to 2-20 – 1-17. Cork now have little hope of rescuing the result, but true to their character they give it plenty of effort and close the gap.
Yet it’s all so laboured, energy sapping and cumbersome. They’re like a cyclist grinding a big gear up a hill, while another spins the wheels and passes in an effortless, graceful style.
Tipp were more intelligent, more economical and more direct in their play. Which is not to say they’ll carry this form throughout the year. With returning players and an injection of aggression you’d suspect Cork will be capable of getting a result against them come spring. The same goes for others.
But you can see Tipp building towards something, it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to see them in the All-Ireland shake-up in the next three years, even when you consider how Liam Cahill teams have not always carried league results into the championship.
Cork were so close last year, both to All-Ireland victory and Munster championship elimination. It feels no less precarious.
There is a type of Cork supporter you see around the place. Good humoured, strong city accent, almost regal in their bearing. Their eyes have seen the glory and they don’t begrudge anyone a victory over Cork. Baked into this grace was always the knowledge the next great day would soon be along. The same people are losing their savoir faire.
“This is suicide hurling,” a fella a few rows back said during one of Cork’s many east-west moments on Saturday. There was a further exposition on why they couldn’t deliver the f**king ball into the f**king forwards and what it was doing for his state of mind.
I get a sense that the gentleman feels too much of the short stuff and hard running is unbecoming for Cork. He wants a certain daring and panache, not for a series of system hacks and workarounds. That all feels a little . . . small time.
Eveybody knows the time of leathering the sliotar forward no matter what is well finished, yet the fact remains that the forwards will only prosper once decent, playable ball comes their way sooner rather than later. Cork’s forward will hardly have felt they had this chance on Saturday.
Limerick have had incredible success with a game based largely on passing over 15-25 yards, but it does not seem so complicated and high-wire and break-neck paced as Cork’s. When Limerick were finally undone, it was by a team that pushed up on them last year, and went over their half-back line where possible.
If anything that style paid off too well for Cork and they were predictable come the All-Ireland final, with Clare able to pick off a lot of the long puckouts and set their own attacks in motion.
So it’s entirely rational that someone as sharp as Pat Ryan sees the need to be comfortable in a number of styles that can be deployed come the summer heat.
Yet a big part of the answer cannot be lads receiving the ball facing their own corner flag with nothing but off-the shoulder runners and blistering pace to burn.
As Cork proved on Saturday and many times over the past 10 years, there never has and is unlikely to ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark.
The 42
