Kerry Billboards Fail to Impress in Cork

22nd Jul 2008

Kerry Footballer Dominates Cork Skyline
Danny Elbow

Kerry footballers seem to have lost the run of themselves. Bizarre and embarrassing advertising billboards have popped up all around Cork city and county portraying one of Cork's fiercest rivals as a current footballing God.

As all humble Corkmen know, last year's All Ireland champions can be this year's All Ireland's whipping boys and Kerry are hardly the team to hold up on a pedestal after they were annihilated by Cork in Pairc Úi Caoimh just a few weeks ago.

Silly billboards like this one on the Coal Quay have popped up all around the Peoples Republic.

The Rebels routed the Kingdom in spectacular style and nobody on the losing side appeared as disinterested as The Gooch himself. Proven when tested? The bar for whatever test that is must be worryingly low at the moment.

No doubt a tidy footballer who Cork football fans respect in the broadest sporting sense, the Lucozade marketing team, possibly holed up in Dublin, the dark antithesis of gaelic culture, seem to have made an odd decision in assuming Corkonians would be impressed by giant billboards of Colm Cooper in Kerry colours. How naïve.

Cooper tested and proved? Just ask this focus group.

Is there no sense or perception of the lifelong rivalry between Cork and Kerry? We might be a warm and tolerant multicultural breed down here but there'll always be a cold place in the soul of every true Corkman reserved for Kerry footballers.

After this marketing faux-pas, who will appear next on the streets of Cork? Waterford's John Mullane endorsing hair products? Ger Loughnane pushing a Hurling for Dummies DVD? Bertie Ahern promoting tracker mortgages?

Come on lads. Give us somebody we can genuinely be impressed by.