‘WELL, HERE’S ANOTHER nice mess you’ve gotten me into!’
It could be Laurel and Hardy except it’s not. It’s the Cork county board and THAT statement released yesterday.
What was a red-letter day for the county’s ladies footballers turned into an embarrassing one for Leeside top brass.
As the senior ladies were busy getting their season back on track with a 40-point victory over Meath in the TG4 All-Ireland qualifiers, somebody, somewhere, was pressing ‘send’ on an ill-advised and badly-timed statement.
And so big wins for the senior and minor ladies footballers were overshadowed by a Cork county board missive (rightly) backing Brian Cuthbert but also blaming Padraig Hughes and the weather for Munster final defeat to Kerry.
The statement insisted that Cork could be in All-Ireland semi-final if it wasn’t for the factors noted above.
Had they forgotten that Fermanagh might have been their opponents in the quarter-final, a team that lost by eight points to a Dublin side that hammered Cork by eleven in the Allianz League final?
The Cork county board release is deflecting from much deeper issues.
As a regular reporter on Harty Cup hurling matches, it’s disappointing to note the decline of Cork schools in the competition in recent years.
The closure of Farranferris secondary school in 2006 was a major blow, an academy that usually provided a number of cracking young minor hurlers to Cork teams over the years.
The stream of talent from the city’s schools has dried up but of course, it should be noted that many people now live in the suburbs of Cork city, in areas like Bishopstown and Douglas, and the local clubs there are working hard to provide players to the Cork squads.
Rochestown College also contested Harty and Corn Uí Mhuirí finals this year but the wider issue is the underage malaise in the city that generally went unchecked.
Last week, we carried some reaction to Brian Cuthbert’s decision to leave the Cork football job, and the state of Cork GAA in general.
Former Cork hurling captain Pat Mulcahy believes the Rebels have fallen ‘ten years behind’ the leading contenders and asked why development squads didn’t come on stream sooner.
Painting a more positive picture, 2010 All-Ireland winning footballer Derek Kavanagh hailed the success of the Rebel Óg underage system and Kevin O’Donovan’s superb work in this area.
But Cork were reactive rather than proactive with the belated introduction of development squads.
Where once they were the market leaders, Cork are now struggling to keep up.
“It doesn’t take that long for a strong county to come around and become serious contenders again,” former GAA President Sean Kelly told me last week.
“It won’t take Cork that long either once they have a good reflection and put the proper structures in place.”
Let’s hope that is the case because a competitive Cork in both codes would be good for hurling and football.
Mulcahy also urged more ‘transparency’ from the county board but yesterday’s statement took that to the wrong level entirely.
It’s all well and good being honest and sticking up for your own county men and it’s generally accepted that Cuthbert, a fundamentally honest and decent man, was on the receiving end of some ‘studs up’ tackles over the past number of days.
But at a time when Cork need to make their senior football post attractive to prospective contenders, what kind of a message have they sent out?
John Cleary told me after yesterday’s All-Ireland minor A ladies football final victory for Cork that he will take a few days to decide whether or not he will let his name go forward for the vacant senior football post.
At the time, he was not aware of the bombshell that had exploded in various media inboxes up and down the country.
After studying the Cork statement and examining the fallout, he may well decide that following in Cuthbert’s footsteps is more hassle than it’s worth.
In truth, who could blame him? Cork weren’t too far away from Kerry, that much is true, but the abject nature of the team’s collapse against Kildare in the qualifiers is proof positive that Cork need a more long-term approach to cure their ills.
Good leadership shouldn’t have to start at the bottom, however, as is currently the case with the merited Rebel Óg initiative.
No, it must being at the top and in this regard, Cork officials are failing their stakeholders at the present time.
