SEVEN WEEKS AGO, Kieran Kingston named a Cork senior hurling team that included five championship debutants for a Munster quarter-final against the All-Ireland champions that few people outside the camp gave them any chance of winning.
Yet on Sunday, the same Cork team looks set to start for their third Thurles outing of the summer, in which the Rebels will be aiming to win their first provincial title since 2014 at the expense of a Clare side intent on ending a 19-year wait.
Kingston and his management team put their faith in youth, and the newcomers have delivered. Luke Meade (aged 20), Shane Kingston (19), Darragh Fitzgibbon (20), Mark Coleman (19) and Colm Spillane (24) are the five players experiencing their first championship season.
Victories over Tipperary and Waterford have justified Cork’s decision to give the youngsters an opportunity. Kingston had been impressed by them earlier in the year, but he knew it was a policy that could potentially have backfired once championship hurling began.
“There’s always a risk, irrespective of how the Munster League and the National League went,” says Kingston, whose side won the Munster Hurling League in January before defeating Clare, Waterford and Tipp en route to the quarter-finals of the Allianz League.
“There’s always a risk when you go out in your first championship match against the All-Ireland champions at home, as total underdogs, having thrown in five debutants. So that was always going to be a huge risk. But we felt confident in their ability from what we had seen of them in training and games.
“Their form was good, they brought a freshness to it and brought competition to the panel. Then it’s about going out and playing with freedom. They’re not trying to complicate it. We don’t complicate it with them. They play it as they see it and that gives a great balance to the team as well because they don’t do tactics. They just go out and play it as they see it.”
As manager, Kingston adds, he felt he had a responsibility to take the risk for the good of Cork hurling: “That’s the risk you take and that’s why you’re in the job. You’re in the job to make decisions that you feel are in the best interests of Cork hurling — now and into the future.
“It’s not about me, it’s not about the young lads, it’s not about the older fellas, it’s about Cork hurling. You happen to be a player, you have the jersey for a while and you hand it on to the next guy. You happen to be a manager, you have it for a while and you hand on the franchise to someone else.
“You try to make decisions in the best interest of Cork hurling for now and into the future. That’s purely the way we looked at it, and we felt at the time that was the right thing to do.”
Much has been made of Cork’s recent lack of success at underage level. The Rebels haven’t been All-Ireland minor champions since 2001, while a title at U21 level has eluded the county since 1998.
In spite of that, Kingston feels that Cork continues to produce senior hurlers who are capable of competing for honours. He also points out that their positive championship campaign so far in 2017 hasn’t been entirely down to the impact of the youngsters.
“We felt that just because Cork hadn’t won a minor in 16 years, an U21 in 19 years or a senior in 12 years, it doesn’t mean there aren’t good players coming through and they’re not capable of stepping up and playing at senior level. We gave them the opportunity and they took it,” explains Kingston.
“But I don’t want to focus on the young lads, [because] the more senior players have been fantastic for us this year. They have led the line because they have to lead. The young fellas will follow. Young fellas don’t lead, they follow the older fellas. And the older guys are the important people in our team. And when I say ‘older’, I mean the more experienced guys.
“We can’t expect younger fellas to lead, they’ll follow the more experienced guys, and our experienced players have been fantastic in the last two games. That’s most important. That’s way more important.”
The early indications have been positive for this new-look Cork team but the reality is that, for now at least, they’ve won nothing more than two championship matches. A third will bring them a Munster title, but easier said than done, as Kingston was keen to point out.
“I want to stress that we are only starting out on the journey. We’ve done nothing,” said Kingston, who was an All-Ireland winner as a player with Cork in 1986, after they had beaten Clare in the Munster final earlier that year.
“We’ve a game on Sunday against Clare and the happiest people leaving Thurles the last day after we beat Waterford were the Clare management and the Clare players. And that would have been the same when we beat Tipperary.
“Clare played us in a challenge game before we played Tipperary on the basis that they wouldn’t be seeing us in the Munster championship. You can totally understand that, we were rank outsiders. They gave us a lesson.
“We’ve a massive game on Sunday. We are well aware of that. Clare will obviously be favourites within their own camp and they will certainly be favourites in our camp. They’ll be much happier playing us than playing Tipperary or Waterford.”
Backboned by their U21 sides who were All-Ireland champions on four occasions between 2009 and ’14, Clare overcame Limerick to reach Sunday’s final. They may have won a senior All-Ireland in 2013, but not since 1998 have the Banner County been Munster champions. Kingston sees them as favourites to rectify that.
The Cork boss said: “At the start of the year if you sat 10 people down, a lot of people would pick Clare as their All-Ireland favourites. That’s based on what they’ve done at U21 level, National League and All-Ireland.
“Those players are in their peak now. We weren’t even in the reckoning. Of the 10 teams, we wouldn’t be even in the top five. They are miles ahead of us in terms of their development and where they are at. We are just trying to catch up.”
Amid talk of approximately 30,000 supporters making the journey from the Rebel County to Thurles on Sunday, the buzz is back in Cork. With a Munster final to focus on, however, Kingston isn’t paying attention.
“When you look at the start of the year and where we started out from, the only time we have been favourites this year has been for relegation. It was not ‘would Tipperary beat us?’ but ‘how much by?’ And then we’d be the handy draw and we’d be finished again by the end of June,” he said.
“Off the back of two games, many have written that we caught Tipperary on the hop and Waterford were rusty because they had so long off. We’re not buying into any of the hype as to where we are or the house being finished. This is step-by-step and in my view — and the team’s view — we haven’t earned the right to go beyond that in our thinking.”
Whether it’s hype or merely hope, the risk taken by Kieran Kingston and his management team has got the Cork public believing in its hurling team again.
