IAN O'RIORDANhears the Cork manager reflect on how his side should have learned more from last year's ultimately fortuitous league final victory
IT TAKES a rare honesty in football managers these days to admit it was a league title they didn’t deserve, and they’re not particularly well positioned right now to go about defending it.
He could, of course, be trying to deflect some of the pressure as Cork begin the quest for a third Allianz Football League title in succession, yet there is a definite truth in the way Conor Counihan first reflects on last year’s final victory over Dublin, then looks forward to Sunday’s opening game against Armagh.
Indeed it was a resurrection of sorts when Cork beat Dublin in the Division One final in Croke Park last Easter Sunday, coming from eight points down to secure a one-point victory, 0-21 to 2-14. Counihan puts his hands up and says yes, that was a game Cork deserved to lose.
“Sure, eight points down, that was a game we shouldn’t have won,” he says. “On the day, Dublin had several opportunities to put that game away and should have.
“And you’ve got to evaluate victories as you would defeats. Sometimes we over-analyse defeats, and we don’t analyse the quality of the victory. Dublin certainly evaluated that and to be fair, they became all the stronger for it.”
The flip side of that, he also admits, is Cork failed to properly analyse their victory, and might have been better served by a defeat.
“Strange as it may seem, it might have been. You would have said, ‘How did we get ourselves into that position?’ But you kind of say, ‘Ah, sure look, we got away with it, and we can move on from it’. But there’s nothing that hurts more than losing, and when you do lose you do tend to analyse it that bit better.”
Whatever deceptions that result might have presented, Counihan doesn’t blame them for Cork’s subsequent championship exit at the hands of Mayo: nor does he accept it was down to the inevitable wall every team hits after such a long, sustained campaign in both the league and championship.
“I don’t know. Is anything inevitable? On the day, we weren’t good enough, obviously, and were without a few players, that sort of thing, but it still shouldn’t be beyond you. People say this sort of thing can’t be done, but that doesn’t wash with me.
“I suppose we had more time to reflect now. We were out of the championship by August. You like to feel that there’s a bit more there, and the only way to find out is to get stuck in and work away.”
Which helps explain why Counihan barely hesitated before recommitting to a fifth season in charge – although he hasn’t been tempted to mimic Dublin’s 6am training sessions as a way of perhaps working that bit harder.
“No, and we need to have a serious word with Pat Gilroy about that, at the next managers’ forum, so we will. It’s a bit early for me. But then I wouldn’t rule anything out, and I can understand where some people are coming from. And I suppose it might be easier to get fellas together in the city at that hour than it would be other places.”
No county has won three football league titles in succession since the 1970s, when Kerry actually won four in a row, 1971-74. Cork did claim the Division Two title in 2009, which means they’ve won three titles on the trot already, but that’s not what’s driving Counihan into 2012.
“I wouldn’t be thinking of three-in-a-row or anything like that. I’d be thinking of one game in a row, and that’s Armagh on Sunday, to try [to] get something out of that.”
He has no issue with the reintroduction of Division One semi-finals either. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. I suppose from a revenue point of view it’ll probably help the GAA. The extra game won’t do teams any harm either.
“We’re looking forward to this league, and we’d certainly love to win it again.”
No doubt at all he’s being honest about that.
