WHEN SEAN POWTER’S involvement with Cork minor football teams ended, he emerged to the adult grades as a recognised defender.
Two season spent as an U18 corner-back seemed to suggest the inter-county pathway ahead. If there was any attacking dimension to his Cork career at that stage, it was in hurling. Corner-forward in a 2015 Munster minor semi-final loss to Limerick, Mark Coleman and Darragh Fitzgibbon amongst his team-mates, Kyle Hayes and Peter Casey amongst his opponents.
Powter’s potential was apparent to Sean Hayes. When the Cork U21 football manager was assembling his panel for 2016, he was conscious of the county’s minor captain he had spotted in a Munster semi-final the year before in Tralee.
“I knew of him but I didn’t know him personally,” recalls Hayes.
“I met him and we’d trials and I said, ‘Seanie, what’s your best position?’
“He said, ‘You won’t believe this, I love being centre-forward.’
“That kind of triggered with me to have a cut off him centre-forward at the time.
“And I must say he was a revelation.”
Cork reached an All-Ireland final that year. Powter shone on different occasions in an offensive sense, a well-taken goal against Kerry in a Munster decider, ransacking the Monaghan defence for three points in an All-Ireland semi-final.
That summer Powter started out on the senior road with Cork, a Leaving Cert student juggling exams with a inter-county championship campaign. Cork were stunned that year in a Munster semi-final by Tipperary, Powter thrown in during the second half of a chaotic game where the momentum ebbed and flowed.
Seven seasons on, he’s integral to Cork’s football aspirations after a spring where attacking responsibilities have surfaced once more. He’s been named at number 13 on Cork’s team for a trip to Ennis. Midweek selection announcements are untrustworthy and positioning is a fluid concept in modern Gaelic football but the league saw him bed down in a half-forward role.
It was there he flourished. Cork were the joint top goalscorers across the four divisions, amassing 14 to match Westmeath and Laois. They failed to convert 18 clearcut chances as well, manager John Cleary pointing to that stat this week, yet the numbers were reflective of a targeted approach in their play. Utilising Powter’s blend of power and pace was key in punching holes in rearguards. He found the net four times, a figure that matched the entire league total of five county teams this year and bettered four more.
For Sean Hayes the critical element is the timing of Powter’s running. He had a front-row view at U21 manager and later senior selector of that ability, watching Cork’s games this year confirms it.
Against Kildare in Newbridge, Powter punched a pass in to Brian Hurley in the 15th minute. He stopped still, almost looking disinterested in the move developing as Kildare had plenty bodies back, but then injected the pace as Hurley came in along the left endline and when the pass was squared, the Douglas man palmed home ahead of a despairing late Kildare challenge.
Nine minutes in to March’s league meeting with Clare, an Eoghan McSweeney punt pass in was gathered by Hurley. With the Clare defence well populated, he looked likely to be crowded out but Power’s acceleration and receiving of the offload saw him prise apart the backline and finish clinically to the net.
“What I love about him is he comes in late,” says Hayes.
“If you’ve a fella that will feed him then and sees his runs, that’s where he’s going to get goals. That’s why you can’t just fit in a player like him at centre-forward without practicing it, because the other players have to see the runs, he might come late. He’s that kind of impactful player at centre-forward.”
With Powter, the talent was never questioned, having a proper chance at unleashing it was the central issue. Injury has been a persistent and well-documented theme in his career. A Young Footballer of the Year nominee in 2017, a season where he cracked home a terrific goal in a qualifier against Mayo after running from deep, he was an All-Star defensive nomination last autumn.
The time in between has been wrecked by injuries, torn hamstrings derailing his development. January 2018 was the start of his misfortune, a league game with Tipperary in Páirc Uí Chaoimh the first of six tears (four right and two left) over the next two years.
When his hamstring popped in last year’s Sigerson Cup final when he was in UL colours, that unwanted number had swelled to 11.
When he was available he shone, man-of-the-match when Cork upset Kerry in November 2020 but a setback generally lurked around the corner as he missed the Munster final a fortnight later. His approach never wavered.
“Really when you’re involved with him, now I haven’t been for two years, – but up to then, like, his attitude, his application and doing what he’s told and trying to get right is unbelievable,” recalls Hayes.
“The problem was he’d keep coming back and he’d get a different setback. But he just carried on. It did bother him but it didn’t make him say this isn’t for me. He always said he’d make it, there was always a goal there to make it.”
2023 has brought a sustained run of gametime, his role tweaked from deep-lying defender carrying the ball from further out to a location nearer to goal as Cork seek to break defensive cover.
Tomorrow is an awkward assignment against a Clare team that have consistently emerged superior in recent league meetings and reached the same national last eight stage last year.
Using Powter will be a crucial part of Cork’s designs on success.
“It’s great to see it, he gives Cork an extra dimension,” says Hayes.
“Himself and (Brian) Hurley have come back from horrible injuries and still are trying to do everything. It is a fair testament to the guys, to their attitude and their football.”
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