IN THE SPACE of 12 days, Cork’s senior, U21 and minor hurlers made their exits from the 2016 championship.
Even if you dig a little bit deeper into the intermediate ranks, a notable statistic sticks out a mile.
When Cork beat Tipperary in the 2014 Munster final, 13 points separated the counties at Páirc Uí Rinn. When they met again in this year’s provincial quarter-final, Tipp won by 11 points.
We realise of course that panels evolve and fluctuate, particularly at intermediate level, but a 24-point turnaround in the space of two years shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
Of course, the majority of attention devoted to Cork teams from the county’s loyal supporters focuses on the senior, U21 and minor teams.
And in that regard, the past couple of weeks have been a massive letdown.
There was some fight and character in the senior team when they beat Dublin in a Páirc Uí Rinn qualifier but the Dubs played much of that game with 14 men.
Against Wexford on Saturday, Cork were abject. No real plan, an absence of leaders and by all accounts, a pre-match attitude that suggested all they had to do was turn up.
“They’re lacking some of the basics in hurling,” said former Kilkenny player Eddie Brennan on The Sunday Game.
“I don’t take satisfaction in saying it but Cork are in a very, very poor state of affairs at the moment.
“There were numerous incidents where they were hitting the ball out to areas that are not dangerous in the full-forward line.
“As a forward, I don’t want to be going out trying to pick a ball off the sideline and then go into the goal.
“They’re not hurling off instinct, they’re trying to be a Waterford or a Clare.
“Look at the defending alone – even (selector) Diarmuid O’Sullivan, he was togged out in shorts and socks there (and) to be honest, I still think he would have been better at full-back.
“They really have to get back to the basics, their touch was poor, their catching.”
Brennan revealed that he watched the entire Cork-Wexford game again on Sunday morning.
I looked at it right through from start to finish. While there was only three points in it at the end, it doesn’t make for good viewing for Cork on the very basics of winning clean ball, lifting the ball uncontested.”
Fellow pundit and former Galway boss Cyril Farrell believes that Cork have lost their traditional aura.
“You used to have Cork, Tipp and Kilkenny. Cork are gone out of that equation.
“The tradition in Cork was that if you were playing Cork, you’d be wary of them but that wariness is going. They’ve gone very weak. They’re down and out now.
“They have to look at everything from the very bottom and work their way up.”
In his very first column for The42, our hurling analyst Tommy Dunne explained how Cork were trying to play a system that’s essentially alien to them, a theme touched on by Brennan last night.
A fundamental sea-change takes time to implement, of course, but with the talent at their disposal, they should still be doing much better.
The question now is whether manager Kieran Kingston is retained for a second year but surely he deserves time to put things right?
Going on this year’s evidence, he needs a lot more from the players at his disposal too.
In an era where the buck stops with the manager, players need to take some responsibility on their shoulders but how county board officials react to this latest failure will decide Kingston’s fate.
Leeside top brass must also shoulder their share of blame for how fortunes have plummeted and looking back, one of the finest achievements of recent times was Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s work in 2013 when he took the seniors to within a hair’s breadth of All-Ireland glory.
The three years since, however, have taught us that JBM was merely papering over the cracks as deeper-rooted issues are at play.
How Cork resolve them, or otherwise, will determine whether Cork hurling has reached rock bottom – or if it has the potential to go even lower.
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