THAT RASPING SOUND you are hearing is a nostalgia file being taken to reshape the good/bad old days.
On Sunday, Cork and Meath clash in Croke Park for the first time in almost two decades, which may invite yet another wearisome bout of rubbernecking back to a time when no one quite managed familiarity or contempt like they did.
Four All-Ireland finals in as many years turned a football rivalry into a fight club in the late 80s and allowed enmity to simmer in full public view before perspective replaced familiarity, and contempt gave way to reconciliation at the funeral of the late and great John Kerins.
That last Croke Park meeting in the 2007 All-Ireland semi-final had nothing to do with what preceded it, although Noel O’Leary’s first-half strike to the face of Graham Geraghty felt almost like a nod to a time when Colm O’Neill was chinning Mick Lyons for rather dubious and dangerous fun.
For most of the last two decades, each time they got to dance together every preview – and we hold our own hands up for this – could not resist the observation of how the billing that once sold out Madison Square Gardens was reduced to being a kids’-glove show in a backstreet gym.
It is an observation that has thankfully died its long overdue death.
There may be some still tempted to drag at the corpse given that Sunday’s Division 2 final is on the kind of undercard which Cork, in particular, have long grown weary of playing support on but the sense this is about new beginnings rather than old war stories has never felt more real.
There are all kinds of reasons for that and the bones of half a century of time past are only half of it.
While these two teams will bring their own version of shuddering physicality on Sunday, not least in a mouth-watering battle around the middle where Cork’s feted pairing of Colm O’Callaghan and Ian Maguire go head-to-head with Brian Menton and Jack Flynn, it is panache rather than power that has provided both with an edge.
It is fair to say, given their relative lack of stature that Chris Óg Jones and Jordan Morris welded together would barely scratch Lyons’ nose, yet their capacity to menace and hurt may be much greater.
Jordan Morris in action for Meath against Tyrone. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
Skill Over Size
We are going down another well trodden path here, but one of the wonders of football’s new rules, which has placed an increased emphasis on man to man face-offs, is that it has empowered skill over size.
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The timing for Cork and Meath, and in particular Jones and Morris, could hardly be better.
We are painting with broad strokes here, but close your eyes and think of a stereotypical Cork forward in modern times and most likely you will see a player who comes to the job with a toolbox rather than with the promise of opening a magic one.
There may be the power plays of a Brian Hurley, or the surgical kicking skills of a Stephen Sherlock but when it came to a forward going off the radar, sensing an opening, and having the craft and instinct to exploit it, Cork have not really had that kind of presence to prise backsides from seats.
Jones is fast becoming that, he possesses the speed and the balance to ghost into the kind of spaces that have become more common in the game, and it is not for show.
He has rapidly become a forward of substance, with a finisher’s instinct. In his first full season in 2023, he averaged less than 1.5 points per game, but last year he almost tripled that return to an average of four points, a return which he has maintained this spring.
Old-Fashioned Predator
You might think the inflationary nature of scoring rates under the new rules has been primarily responsible for that, but Jones is more of an old-fashioned predator whose instincts are honed to sniff out a chance closer to the square than the scoring arc.
He did not manage a two pointer until he kicked two of them in a 1-9 haul against Kildare in round five, but it is how the game has been allowed to breathe that has allowed him to thrive.
In the aftermath of hitting Westmeath for a hat-trick last spring, Jones sounded like the unshackled forward he has become.
“Last year, you might get it out wide. You can’t take a man on because if you beat one, you’d have two more coming but this year, you can turn and take him on,’ he explained.
Former footballer of the year James O’Donoghue was recently moved to compare him to Filippo Inzaghi, the legendary Italian striker, who turned goal poaching into an art form, and you can see why.
His goal against Kildare was his 10th time finding the back of the net in 20 games, and a goal every other game is the kind of consistency that strike forwards pine for.
Chris Óg Jones celebrates his goal for Cork against Meath. James Lawlor / INPHO
James Lawlor / INPHO / INPHO
Box Of Tricks
Morris is cut from the same cloth, another with a box of tricks but not just for show.
It is not everyone that marks their championship debut with a hat-trick, which is just what the Kingscourt clubman – he is Cavan by club and Meath by the grace of having moved to Nobber in his youth – managed against Wicklow in 2020.
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His star quality was always evident but, just like Jones, it has taken the game going back to a better future, to ensure that he has become a player of substance.
Meath would probably have to go back a generation to Ollie Murphy for a player who normalised the unexpected and weaponised it to full effect.
But Murphy played in a less suffocating environment to the one which Morris started out in.
Despite that bright start, there was a time when it almost felt like his future was behind him.
When Meath made the 2024 group stages, in what would mark the end of Colm O’Rourke’s reign, he failed to register a single score against Louth, Kerry and Monaghan, coming from the bench in the first two of those games.
Steel
A combination of Robbie Brennan’s arrival and the game’s radical culture change was transformative last season, but it was also under pinned by the kind of steely old values which Meath measure their footballers by.
In a league game against Louth, he fractured his tibia and sustained a grade two tear to his ACL, the kind of prognosis usually inscribed on the tombstone of a player’s season.
Seven weeks later, he came off the bench to score a point against the same opposition in the Leinster final, and seven weeks after that he produced one of the stand-out individual performances to stun Galway in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
In the process, he shredded Johnny McGrath’s reputation as one of the best man-markers in the country, taking him for 1-6, with his goal sourced in a pickpocket movement, turning McGrath over in a perfectly executed steal, one of three touches he managed inside five seconds to flick the ball to the net.
It was another reminder that Meath, just like Cork, get their blood stirred these days by a capacity to draw it with less thunder and more lightning.
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The scoring stars firing Cork and Meath towards Croke Park final showdown
THAT RASPING SOUND you are hearing is a nostalgia file being taken to reshape the good/bad old days.
On Sunday, Cork and Meath clash in Croke Park for the first time in almost two decades, which may invite yet another wearisome bout of rubbernecking back to a time when no one quite managed familiarity or contempt like they did.
Four All-Ireland finals in as many years turned a football rivalry into a fight club in the late 80s and allowed enmity to simmer in full public view before perspective replaced familiarity, and contempt gave way to reconciliation at the funeral of the late and great John Kerins.
That last Croke Park meeting in the 2007 All-Ireland semi-final had nothing to do with what preceded it, although Noel O’Leary’s first-half strike to the face of Graham Geraghty felt almost like a nod to a time when Colm O’Neill was chinning Mick Lyons for rather dubious and dangerous fun.
For most of the last two decades, each time they got to dance together every preview – and we hold our own hands up for this – could not resist the observation of how the billing that once sold out Madison Square Gardens was reduced to being a kids’-glove show in a backstreet gym.
It is an observation that has thankfully died its long overdue death.
There may be some still tempted to drag at the corpse given that Sunday’s Division 2 final is on the kind of undercard which Cork, in particular, have long grown weary of playing support on but the sense this is about new beginnings rather than old war stories has never felt more real.
There are all kinds of reasons for that and the bones of half a century of time past are only half of it.
While these two teams will bring their own version of shuddering physicality on Sunday, not least in a mouth-watering battle around the middle where Cork’s feted pairing of Colm O’Callaghan and Ian Maguire go head-to-head with Brian Menton and Jack Flynn, it is panache rather than power that has provided both with an edge.
It is fair to say, given their relative lack of stature that Chris Óg Jones and Jordan Morris welded together would barely scratch Lyons’ nose, yet their capacity to menace and hurt may be much greater.
Skill Over Size
We are going down another well trodden path here, but one of the wonders of football’s new rules, which has placed an increased emphasis on man to man face-offs, is that it has empowered skill over size.
The timing for Cork and Meath, and in particular Jones and Morris, could hardly be better.
We are painting with broad strokes here, but close your eyes and think of a stereotypical Cork forward in modern times and most likely you will see a player who comes to the job with a toolbox rather than with the promise of opening a magic one.
There may be the power plays of a Brian Hurley, or the surgical kicking skills of a Stephen Sherlock but when it came to a forward going off the radar, sensing an opening, and having the craft and instinct to exploit it, Cork have not really had that kind of presence to prise backsides from seats.
Jones is fast becoming that, he possesses the speed and the balance to ghost into the kind of spaces that have become more common in the game, and it is not for show.
He has rapidly become a forward of substance, with a finisher’s instinct. In his first full season in 2023, he averaged less than 1.5 points per game, but last year he almost tripled that return to an average of four points, a return which he has maintained this spring.
Old-Fashioned Predator
You might think the inflationary nature of scoring rates under the new rules has been primarily responsible for that, but Jones is more of an old-fashioned predator whose instincts are honed to sniff out a chance closer to the square than the scoring arc.
He did not manage a two pointer until he kicked two of them in a 1-9 haul against Kildare in round five, but it is how the game has been allowed to breathe that has allowed him to thrive.
In the aftermath of hitting Westmeath for a hat-trick last spring, Jones sounded like the unshackled forward he has become.
“Last year, you might get it out wide. You can’t take a man on because if you beat one, you’d have two more coming but this year, you can turn and take him on,’ he explained.
Former footballer of the year James O’Donoghue was recently moved to compare him to Filippo Inzaghi, the legendary Italian striker, who turned goal poaching into an art form, and you can see why.
His goal against Kildare was his 10th time finding the back of the net in 20 games, and a goal every other game is the kind of consistency that strike forwards pine for.
Box Of Tricks
Morris is cut from the same cloth, another with a box of tricks but not just for show.
It is not everyone that marks their championship debut with a hat-trick, which is just what the Kingscourt clubman – he is Cavan by club and Meath by the grace of having moved to Nobber in his youth – managed against Wicklow in 2020.
His star quality was always evident but, just like Jones, it has taken the game going back to a better future, to ensure that he has become a player of substance.
Meath would probably have to go back a generation to Ollie Murphy for a player who normalised the unexpected and weaponised it to full effect.
But Murphy played in a less suffocating environment to the one which Morris started out in.
Despite that bright start, there was a time when it almost felt like his future was behind him.
When Meath made the 2024 group stages, in what would mark the end of Colm O’Rourke’s reign, he failed to register a single score against Louth, Kerry and Monaghan, coming from the bench in the first two of those games.
Steel
A combination of Robbie Brennan’s arrival and the game’s radical culture change was transformative last season, but it was also under pinned by the kind of steely old values which Meath measure their footballers by.
In a league game against Louth, he fractured his tibia and sustained a grade two tear to his ACL, the kind of prognosis usually inscribed on the tombstone of a player’s season.
Seven weeks later, he came off the bench to score a point against the same opposition in the Leinster final, and seven weeks after that he produced one of the stand-out individual performances to stun Galway in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
In the process, he shredded Johnny McGrath’s reputation as one of the best man-markers in the country, taking him for 1-6, with his goal sourced in a pickpocket movement, turning McGrath over in a perfectly executed steal, one of three touches he managed inside five seconds to flick the ball to the net.
It was another reminder that Meath, just like Cork, get their blood stirred these days by a capacity to draw it with less thunder and more lightning.
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Chris Óg Jones Cork Croke Park Final GAA JORDAN MORRIS Key Forwards League Meath