THE GAME WAS, AS far as anyone could see, fine for the last 120 years. Who did these pygmies from Newtownshandrum think they were by tinkering with the time-honoured traditions of hurling.
Get the ball, lash it on. Catch the ball, lash it on. If it drops on the carpet, take a lash at it. Take the other fellas toes if need be. Take them anyway.
Which is why that scene in an almost long-forgotten club championship match of Newtownshandrum against Killeagh, above in Kilworth just outside Fermoy, must have appeared like a damn of resentment opening.
Under Bernie O’Connor, and with his two sons Ben and Jerry the epitome of neat and tidy hurlers, if a little diminutive, Newtown dispensed with traditional values.
What was the point of lorrying ball down on top of opponents that towered over them? When you looked at the tale of the tape, they could outjump and outreach them. When ash was flying, their hurleys were three inches longer.
With these nippy wee yokes tipping and tapping the ball around and out of the reach of the big units, Killeagh’s Mark Landers, Cork’s All Ireland winning captain of 1999, grew frustrated.
We know this because of the recent Laochra Gael episode on the O’Connor twins. Ben was the one taking up the story.
“I’ll name him straight out. Mark Landers,” Ben said.
“We were playing Killeagh above in Kilworth in championship one night.
Mark Landers was playing for Killeagh and he ran down the sideline and he roared out at my father, ‘you’re after ruining Cork hurling.’”
Looking back now, with the kind of personality the ebullient Landers has, you’d imagine he himself has taken plenty of slagging since.
But changing the nature of a game can provoke deep feelings. How Gaelic football has evolved or regressed, depending on your viewpoint, has taken the establishment of a special teams unit and torpedoed the integrity of an entire league campaign to rescue it from its’ own self-cannibalisation.
For those in the Newtown team, the short-passing, possession-based game was a means of self-preservation. Their slingshot in David’s hand as they sized up Goliath.
“We stuck up for something that we thought was worth sticking up for,” said Ben.
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“It was us against everyone else. There was a load of people giving out that this wasn’t hurling.
“That ye were ruining the game and everything else. But that for me, that drove me on.”
Jerry felt the same things.
“It was a possession based game basically,” he said.
“The ball was a rare commodity to get your hands on it so when you did, you’d look after it.
“You tried to give it to a man in a better position or use it properly. Everything has to evolve, if everything stayed the same, we’d all be living in a cave.”
In time, Cork manager Donal O’Grady took it on board for the county hurlers. Far from it being a philosophical shift, it was a move that also had pragmatism at its heart.
Cork were stocked with many hurlers that this suited. Tom Kenny, Timmy McCarthy, Niall McCarthy, Seán Óg hAilpín all were quite fine with taking a ball, bouncing off a couple of challenges and laying it off with a handpass.
The short puckouts as patented by Donal Óg Cusack weren’t some avant-garde experiment. They were in place because Cork weren’t teeming with high-ball winners, although Niall and Timmy McCarthy were viable targets.
Joe Deane: Nobody's idea of a puckout target. Donall Farmer / INPHO
Donall Farmer / INPHO / INPHO
But change comes. Twenty years ago, John Allen had succeeded O’Grady as manager. By then, Brian Corcoran was coming into his second season back after his self-imposed retirement. And it was felt his talents would have been better utilised playing close to the opposition goal rather than his own.
Coming into the All-Ireland final against Galway, some subtle changes were affected. They would let it fly more often.
While battles for possession weren’t usually a thing when you played Cork back then, for this game a war broke out for breaking ball.
Ben and Jerry O’Connor and Tom Kenny romped home in that particular battle. Cusack’s puckouts went long. It wasn’t a perfect performance from Cork. It didn’t need to be.
Twenty years later and the entire career of Patrick Horgan has followed and still no Liam MacCarthy seen on Leeside since. An unimaginable state of affairs two decades ago, right up to this point, where Cork face Galway on Saturday night needing a win to reach the league final.
Even now, discussions of style dominate the conversation around Cork.
When Pat Ryan took charge of the senior team, he wanted something in line with his own style as a player. A regal midfielder, his job was to get the ball in his paw, size up the options and let off a fast strike. Send the ball on.
In the meantime over the past twenty years, and we have the broad brush out here, Limerick took the principles of the Cork game and made it their own. Working the ball through the lines, treasuring possession. Tip-tap-tip-tap and over the bar.
Cork manager Pat Ryan with Michael Mullins. Bryan Keane / INPHO
Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO
Cork’s two wins over Limerick last year, in the Munster championship and the All Ireland semi-final, ran contrary to the accepted approach required to beat them; to guard the ball, be patient and hurl sharper.
Instead, goalkeeper Patrick Collins went long. Mega-long in fact, and got the vast majority of his puckouts away within ten seconds of the ball going dead.
Over both days, they scored 4-26 off their own restart and 3-19 coming directly from the puckout.
However, that policy came unstuck against Clare’s back six in the All Ireland final. Across 100 minutes of hurling, they managed just 0-6 from the same tactic.
Food for thought for the summer. In the meantime . . .
The hurling league is – if you can even picture this – even more pointless than the football league. Even in a year when the football league has gone through multiple rule changes within and without the actual schedule of the league and with games flung on top of each other.
There’s still something there for Cork. The example of Clare last year in winning a league title is clear. What they choose to take out the outcome this weekend will be entirely driven by the result they achieve.
But they haven’t won a league title since 1998.
They cannot afford to turn their nose up at it. Figuring out a style is one thing. Figuring out how to land trophies is another.
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Cork's style council still deliberating 20 years on from Galway final win
THE GAME WAS, AS far as anyone could see, fine for the last 120 years. Who did these pygmies from Newtownshandrum think they were by tinkering with the time-honoured traditions of hurling.
Get the ball, lash it on. Catch the ball, lash it on. If it drops on the carpet, take a lash at it. Take the other fellas toes if need be. Take them anyway.
Which is why that scene in an almost long-forgotten club championship match of Newtownshandrum against Killeagh, above in Kilworth just outside Fermoy, must have appeared like a damn of resentment opening.
Under Bernie O’Connor, and with his two sons Ben and Jerry the epitome of neat and tidy hurlers, if a little diminutive, Newtown dispensed with traditional values.
What was the point of lorrying ball down on top of opponents that towered over them? When you looked at the tale of the tape, they could outjump and outreach them. When ash was flying, their hurleys were three inches longer.
With these nippy wee yokes tipping and tapping the ball around and out of the reach of the big units, Killeagh’s Mark Landers, Cork’s All Ireland winning captain of 1999, grew frustrated.
We know this because of the recent Laochra Gael episode on the O’Connor twins. Ben was the one taking up the story.
“I’ll name him straight out. Mark Landers,” Ben said.
“We were playing Killeagh above in Kilworth in championship one night.
Looking back now, with the kind of personality the ebullient Landers has, you’d imagine he himself has taken plenty of slagging since.
But changing the nature of a game can provoke deep feelings. How Gaelic football has evolved or regressed, depending on your viewpoint, has taken the establishment of a special teams unit and torpedoed the integrity of an entire league campaign to rescue it from its’ own self-cannibalisation.
For those in the Newtown team, the short-passing, possession-based game was a means of self-preservation. Their slingshot in David’s hand as they sized up Goliath.
“We stuck up for something that we thought was worth sticking up for,” said Ben.
“It was us against everyone else. There was a load of people giving out that this wasn’t hurling.
“That ye were ruining the game and everything else. But that for me, that drove me on.”
Jerry felt the same things.
“It was a possession based game basically,” he said.
“The ball was a rare commodity to get your hands on it so when you did, you’d look after it.
“You tried to give it to a man in a better position or use it properly. Everything has to evolve, if everything stayed the same, we’d all be living in a cave.”
In time, Cork manager Donal O’Grady took it on board for the county hurlers. Far from it being a philosophical shift, it was a move that also had pragmatism at its heart.
Cork were stocked with many hurlers that this suited. Tom Kenny, Timmy McCarthy, Niall McCarthy, Seán Óg hAilpín all were quite fine with taking a ball, bouncing off a couple of challenges and laying it off with a handpass.
The short puckouts as patented by Donal Óg Cusack weren’t some avant-garde experiment. They were in place because Cork weren’t teeming with high-ball winners, although Niall and Timmy McCarthy were viable targets.
But change comes. Twenty years ago, John Allen had succeeded O’Grady as manager. By then, Brian Corcoran was coming into his second season back after his self-imposed retirement. And it was felt his talents would have been better utilised playing close to the opposition goal rather than his own.
Coming into the All-Ireland final against Galway, some subtle changes were affected. They would let it fly more often.
While battles for possession weren’t usually a thing when you played Cork back then, for this game a war broke out for breaking ball.
Ben and Jerry O’Connor and Tom Kenny romped home in that particular battle. Cusack’s puckouts went long. It wasn’t a perfect performance from Cork. It didn’t need to be.
Twenty years later and the entire career of Patrick Horgan has followed and still no Liam MacCarthy seen on Leeside since. An unimaginable state of affairs two decades ago, right up to this point, where Cork face Galway on Saturday night needing a win to reach the league final.
Even now, discussions of style dominate the conversation around Cork.
In the meantime over the past twenty years, and we have the broad brush out here, Limerick took the principles of the Cork game and made it their own. Working the ball through the lines, treasuring possession. Tip-tap-tip-tap and over the bar.
Cork’s two wins over Limerick last year, in the Munster championship and the All Ireland semi-final, ran contrary to the accepted approach required to beat them; to guard the ball, be patient and hurl sharper.
Instead, goalkeeper Patrick Collins went long. Mega-long in fact, and got the vast majority of his puckouts away within ten seconds of the ball going dead.
Over both days, they scored 4-26 off their own restart and 3-19 coming directly from the puckout.
However, that policy came unstuck against Clare’s back six in the All Ireland final. Across 100 minutes of hurling, they managed just 0-6 from the same tactic.
Food for thought for the summer. In the meantime . . .
The hurling league is – if you can even picture this – even more pointless than the football league. Even in a year when the football league has gone through multiple rule changes within and without the actual schedule of the league and with games flung on top of each other.
There’s still something there for Cork. The example of Clare last year in winning a league title is clear. What they choose to take out the outcome this weekend will be entirely driven by the result they achieve.
But they haven’t won a league title since 1998.
They cannot afford to turn their nose up at it. Figuring out a style is one thing. Figuring out how to land trophies is another.
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Cork GAA Galway Horses for Courses Hurling League showdown