McCarthy admits he does not have backing of Cork hurlers

[Tatler Jack]

Nothing you say Zulu refutes my point that nothing was gained from the strike except as you say giving the CB a bloody nose. I am not in the business of giving bloody noses and somebody has to clean up the mess. Many of those in our club who were most vociferous at the meeting called to discuss the issues are notbaly absent from club activities since.

Like you I have not intention of continuing this debate and if you want to believe that performaces have improved from 2007/08 then fair enough - as I see it any change one way or the other is marginal. 

[dowling]

Going back there Zulu, did Cork not have a structured development squad? And was its work not severely disrupted by the strike?

[heffo]

Kieran Shannon maintains his role as a fully impartial & objective 'journalist' able to step back and write a mature reflection on where Cork Hurling is at

http://www.tribune.ie/article/2010/jun/06/different-strokes/?q=Kieran%20Shannon
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Why Cork won

Justification of the strike was always on the players' minds, writes Kieran Shannon

Minutes after his team's victory last Sunday, Donal Óg Cusack gave an interview to The Sunday Game. There was no sense of triumphalism, only a few graceful comments about Tipperarys prospects for the remainder of the year and acknowledgment that it had been a step forward for everyone connected with Cork. It was, of course, much more than that.

Even Cusack admitted that everything had been on the line. He wasn't asked to expand on what he meant by everything nor did he volunteer to do so but he'd have known exactly what was not just the rest of their season and their careers but all they'd achieved in their careers and how those careers would be remembered. Lose and they'd have been summarily dismissed as troublemakers rather than champions, those upstarts who couldnt even get to a Munster Final for four years running while Kilkenny were gunning for five All Irelands running. Now? Few may want to admit it, out of either suspicion of, or downright contempt for, the players motives in recent winters, but what they cannot even whisper we can state now: last Sunday justified the strike. To paraphrase Van, they endured days like those for days like this.

There is no way Cork would have won last Sunday, let alone in the manner they did, if they were playing under a coach they didn't believe in, just as the Cork footballers would never have overpowered Tyrone last August if Teddy Holland was their manager. Last Sunday's demolition was a victory for method and for process, the very things these Cork players downed tools for.

Two years ago at the same venue Cork threatened to blow Tipperary away but when the visitors stormed back to leave only a puck of a ball in it going in at the break, Cork's belief and that in their manager wobbled and ultimately collapsed; the proper foundations like attention to detail and trust werent in place, something Gerald McCarthy himself would admit after facilitator Cathal O'Reilly oversaw a review of the game. Last Sunday when Tipp again rallied before the break, Cork's pillars were immobile. Their belief in themselves, their manager and their system was bomb proof.

There is a line from Sun Tzu's Art of War, cited by more than one inter-county coach, which reads: a victorious army first wins and then seeks battle. A defeated army first battles and then seeks victory. If ever there is another book on Cork hurling in the early part of the 21st century, that quote will be on the page just before the first chapter. Against Limerick in 2001 the team bus never showed up and players ended up urinating in the warmup room. Cork were expected to just go out and hurl and battle first; win later; ditto against Tipp at the same venue in 2008.

Their opening game in 2010, once again in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, was won before it was ever fought. It wasn't just won with the short puckout from Cusack followed by the long ball into Aisake; the decisive period in the game was minutes 40 to 44 when Cork reeled off five points by running the ball and using the flanks and pointing from out the field.

It was won in a little detail like Jerry O'Connor barely pucking a ball so Conor O'Mahony would puck even less, and Patrick Horgan opting to aim away from Brendan Cummins' centre; in 2007, 2008 and 2009 Cork's first game in Munster also turned on a penalty and this time they made sure they weren't going to miss.

This game wasn't won over 70 minutes in Pairc Uí Chaoimh. It was won in the wee, wee hours talking and planning in the hotels of Cork the winter before last, and as a consequence, plotting with Denis Walsh a strategy to take down a side that had won back-to-back Munster titles and reached back-to-back league finals.

Reaching a league final themselves this year should not be underestimated, though some commentators have done just that. As their countyman Noel O'Leary pointed out last month in the wake of the footballers' triumph, a league final itself isn't so important as the games you win to make that final. For the last three years Cork were beaten in their opening Munster championship game by a side coming off playing in one. They were, essentially, one big game behind their opponents. This year they were the ones with that advantage.

In our championship preview I predicted Cork to win this year's Munster championship for the same reasons I predicted them to do the same at the outset of the 2003 campaign – they had five months' training uninterrupted with a coach they believed in and would be propelled by a sense of mission greater than anything the rest of Munster could muster.

Now Croke Park is opening up for them. They are not there yet. In many ways they are not really that further on than Tipp; they each have to beat one other top-five county to reach an All Ireland semi-final; in Cork's case, probably Waterford in a Munster Final; in Tipp's, the Leinster runners-up. Eighteen scores, their tally last week, will win them only one more game all summer. In truth, many of these players aren't what they once were; there has been some slippage.

That was what was a bit sad about last Sunday. If that's what these players could do with so many of them just either side of 30, what could they have done and won in the lost years that were the Gerald years? The history of the first decade of the 21st century will show that it was blessed with a spectacular team in Waterford and two truly great teams in Kilkenny and Cork and what separated those two great teams was that one had its county board fighting alongside it while the other had its county board fighting against it.

But that history is for the future. Once again it is peacetime on Leeside and all that occupies this Cork team is the now. For the first time in four years the red and white flag will be out in force on Munster Final day and it no longer matters which ones belong to Gerald sympathisers and which he'd apportion to shoppers. That was the one victory only won last Sunday.

kshannon@tribune.ie

June 6, 2010

[dowling]

Zulu I doubt if I'm the only one fed up with this 'if the players don't want the manager it's time to go.'
It would be hard to believe that everyone on a panel, or even everyone on a starting fifteen, would all decide that a manager wasn't for them. Some one or two individuals start it. And it happens at all levels. And depending on who starts it it can get into other players heads, players who didn't see any problems until they were convinced there was a problem and then the whole thing takes a life of its own.
How many players does it take to question a manager's ability before he should resign? All the players? More than half? Just under half? Just under half would be a big destablizing factor.
And at what level should your advice aaply? Just senior level? Under 21? Minor? Underage, even if a team of fourteen year olds said they didn't like the manager? or if their parents said they didn't like the manager?
I'd guess if most of the strike leaders are sticking around they wont be looking Denis Walsh there next year. So maybe he should just go too, irrespective of the team's display.

[magpie seanie]

Zulu - what did the strike achieve?

It brought democracy back to Cork GAA, it got the clubs to take back control of the GAA in their county as evidenced by the club forum that was set up. Junior clubs in Cork now have a single vote, it gave the CCB a badly needed wake up call, and Cork got to their first Munster final since before Gerald.

So all that fuss was worth it.

[EddieMerx]

Shannon looks like a right old plonker now, he should really have held off until they actually did more than win a game

[orangeman]

Shannon looks like a right old plonker now, he should really have held off until they actually did more than win a game

Shannon just couldn't wait - he's been so far up their arses as past few years it was difficult for him to see balance.

Sunday's piece will be interesting.

[heffo]

Shannon looks like a right old plonker now, he should really have held off until they actually did more than win a game

Shannon just couldn't wait - he's been so far up their arses as past few years it was difficult for him to see balance.

Sunday's piece will be interesting.

Or the silence could be deafening

[deiseach]

Or the silence could be deafening

That'd be interesting!

[heffo]

Or the silence could be deafening

That'd be interesting!

Well where can he go?

He stated that the players & Walsh worked out tactics - now that those tactics were proven inept (against Waterford & Antrim) - I'm not counting KK as they aren't in their league whatsoever - what can he say about the senior players role in everything??

[the Deel Rover]

jesus is this thread still on the go 

[heffo]

See Donal Óg is gone from the Cork panel.

He's over in New York at present - his second such junket two months there with the GPA.

Nice work if you can get it.

[orangeman]

See Donal Óg is gone from the Cork panel.

He's over in New York at present - his second such junket two months there with the GPA.

Nice work if you can get it.

I had a feeling JBM was Frank Murphy in disguise !

[Mourne Rover]

The RTE news tonight showed Donal Og working on a construction project for victims of the New York flooding. He and the other GPA members were putting in voluntary 12-hour shifts on the building sites, according to the reporter. There was also film of their dormitory, which was a row of camp beds in a large and very basic room. It really did not look much like a junket...

[Minder]

The RTE news tonight showed Donal Og working on a construction project for victims of the New York flooding. He and the other GPA members were putting in voluntary 12-hour shifts on the building sites, according to the reporter. There was also film of their dormitory, which was a row of camp beds in a large and very basic room. It really did not look much like a junket...

I can't imagine some of the characters involved doing it for nothing.