The Demise of Cork Hurling

11th Jul 2016

When the referee blew up Saturday evening’s game in Thurles ending another bitterly disappointing All-Ireland attempt by the Cork hurlers the atmosphere was unexpectedly calm among Rebel fans.

Maybe it was partially because we were all sitting in the stand where more even tempered fans who prefer its calm to the hysteria of the terraces like to sit.

At this lowly stage of the All-Ireland qualifiers the powers that be do not open them and the great unwashed must sit among those who don’t bat an eyelid when the young fella in the weirdly designed ticket hut behind Thurles Sarsfied’s pitch says “twenty five euros there boss”.

You get a better view but the atmosphere isn’t a patch on the terrace.
 

County board motion: We would like to congratulate the Cork hurlers on getting more goals than Wexford on Saturday night. All those not in favour of what I say, please stand on one leg.

That said during the second half when the sheets of sloshing July rain began to bluster in from east Limerick we were glad of our shelter. It only protected us from so much though. For us Cork fans there was no shelter from what was unfolding on the pitch.

The strange calm that accompanied the final whistle and the last and only quiet walk of the season away from Semple Stadium was born of the new lack of expectation of our hurlers and footballers. It is more than a little bit sad.

A few Cork fans joked outside the Kinnane Stand about being able to freely book holidays now.
 

Harnedy tried hard but was substituted

We filed on past a vigil mass at the Lady of Lourdes Church with quietly nattering locals lads in the porch -  possibly there for the sole purpose of putting a word in with Himself for their own team the following day. They had seen the result on their smartphones and were aware that our procession was one of mourning.

They paused their whispering for a minute’s silence as they watched us pass.

We gave them one of those knowing tight lipped smiles. The kind you might find at a funeral of an octogenarian.

- Sorry for your trouble. I know tiz very upsetting to lose him.
- Ah sure, look, he had a good life. He was ready to go anyway.

For the last ten years we’ve been called in a few times now expecting the worst. Galway, Tipperary and Clare have all sat on our oxygen masks to choke the life out of us. This time it was Wexford, God help us, who did the damage.

- The body wasn’t bad but t’was the mind that went in the end.
- Ah yeah, boy. Sure, tis an ease to ye all.  

A vivid image of the decline in interest among the Cork public was how eerily quiet Thurles was after the game.

The crowds didn’t come en masse for this one and they haven’t been coming for some time. It took barely five minutes to drive out of Thurles right after the game. C-reg’s sympathetically waved each other out into the long line to the motorway and away from our hurling cemetery. Death brings out little acts of kindness in everyone.

In other years after a championship exit there might have been long ‘wise-after-the-event’ rants about tactics and how certain defenders should have been moved on to the opposition talisman sooner.

There would be tirades about substitutions, intensity and passion that came too late or panic that came too early.
 

Round and round we go

After venting about the match the natural progression is to move your “expert” analysis to the county board and how much we’ve fallen behind the elite counties like O’Grady said we would. Not this time. Most Cork hurling fans just couldn’t be bothered.  

Clare and Limerick hadn’t finished their battle by the time we saw the Dunkettle Roundabout. Notwithstanding the blip in 2013 it’s not a bad metaphor for where we are at. We enter it at the same place every year, get stopped at a red light after a few yards only to go on and take the next exit like we always do.

Going the whole way again seems like light years away.

And maybe that’s what goes on inside the heads of Cork’s hurlers too. Who can explain how the likes of Anthony Nash can miss a free that he would have nailed in 2013 with his eyes closed? How does Seamus Harnedy could go from one of the country’s most promising young talents to looking disinterested and ineffective?

It’s too easy to point fingers at just the players and it’s disappointing that most analysis in the local media has been limited to their performance alone while pundits outside the county now revel in starting their diatribes with “it gives me no pleasure saying this about Cork hurling but..”.

Losing has now become the norm so we’re not that surprised or even put out if we get throttled by Tipp or routed by a bunch of strawberries.

But it’s not all bad news. The county board have been working hard to bring top flight hurling to Leeside – very soon we’ll have a lovely €70 million stadium where we can go to watch other counties fight it out for the Munster hurling title.