Pat Ryan’s quest crystal clear as Cork return to first principles

Ten years later the scene from the All-Ireland final is still preserved for forensics.

Cork were in front, the ball went dead, stoppage time had elapsed, play continued; Domhnall O’Donovan arrived from outer space, unmarked. When the ball reached the Clare corner-back inside the Cork 45 he was faced with the gunslinger’s imperative from the old Westerns: one shot, do-or-die.

“They would deserve a draw,” roared Ger Canning in commentary, as the ball sailed towards the Cork posts. “They get a draw!”

On the other side of the equaliser was a team that nearly robbed an All-Ireland. For 104 of the final 114 seconds Cork held the lead for the only time in the game. Just then, they needed the street smarts of an alley cat; they weren’t that kind of animal.

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“It showed a lack of leadership on the pitch,” says Stephen McDonnell now. “You needed a couple of leaders to take control of the situation and slow it down, go down with an injury, die the game down.”

“Maybe it was just youthful exuberance,” says Tom Kenny.

“The structure of the defence had gone, as such. Nobody had picked up the man running up the field. The point that Clare got, 99 times out of a 100 it drops short, or goes wide, or someone gets a block, or a hook. And here we are, still talking about it.”

Around that time Cork thought they were in a hole. It was eight years since their last All-Ireland. On the 2013 panel were just two players who had experienced winning an All-Ireland final on the field of play: Brian Murphy at wing-back and Kenny on the bench. Both of them were in their final season. Clare won the replay.

In the 10 years that followed, Cork hurling lurched from one agony to the next. Being close; being a million miles away. Over and over they were hounded by the same questions: If not now, why? If not now, when?

The critical time that Cork lost when they were in denial about development squads has been thrashed out many times. In 2013 a series of measures designed to transform how Cork managed its player pathways were adopted, and years after their main rivals had left the start line, Cork joined the race.

On a parallel track, the senior team suffered. Bad outcomes mounted up. Since 2013, Cork have played 39 championship matches with a win rate of just over 50%. Their best winning sequences in that time ran aground after three matches. The native confidence that had long been associated with Cork teams for generations came under siege.

Christy O’Connor, the journalist and coach, was part of the Cork management team for 2020 and 2021, during Kieran Kingston’s second term as manager. He came with an outsider’s eye, cold and fresh.

“I thought they would be more confident,” he says. “I thought they’d be mentally a bit stronger. Growing up, watching Cork, you’d always have seen them as thoroughbreds. I remember playing against Cork under-age teams and they’d turn up in a fleet of taxis – black Mercedes. You were thinking, ‘This crowd are from another planet’.

“I kept saying to them, ‘I can’t understand why you’re not sticking your chests out a bit more’. I couldn’t understand why Cork weren’t playing with more of that old swagger. Deep down, I said to them, everyone is afraid of their lives of Cork if they play with that swagger. I was taken aback, to be honest.”

McDonnell retired at the end of the 2020 championship after a decade in the jersey. In the middle of his intercounty career he captained the team in 2016 and 2017, two years that captured the snakes and ladders of Cork’s modern existence; in 2016, they were destroyed by Tipperary and lost to Wexford for the first time in 60 years; a year later they won a brilliant Munster championship.

“There was definitely a lack of belief there,” says McDonnell. “You know, there’s that mentality that Cork should be winning. The 2013 All-Ireland final, and not winning it, and going through some tough periods later on would have just cemented further the lack of belief that was there.

“A lot of the time it was the elephant in the room. And then not having the leaders at times as well to drive on and get stuck into something like that and have the conversations that we needed to have. The further it went in terms of us losing, the harder it was to turn it back around.”

McDonnell says that 2017 was the most satisfying season of his career. It felt like they were on solid ground. Gary Keegan, who has been instrumental in the Irish rugby team’s success under Andy Farrell, and was a key influence in the All-Irelands that Dublin won under Jim Gavin, was on board with Cork that year as a performance coach. In a short time, his impact was transformative.

I would have heard I don’t know how many times in my time playing with Cork, ‘We have the best hurlers in the country’. No we don’t. That narrative to me was a load of bullshit . . .

“Gary was brilliant,” says McDonnell. “He gave us a platform where we could have the necessary conversations – to move beyond the shit and start believing in ourselves. To build the culture that we needed to win and win consistently. And we did. He gave us a door to walk through and we walked through it.

“Over the years, though, momentum and consistency was a huge part of it. When things aren’t going well people close in on themselves. I notice even in the work I do with organisations and CEOs with my own company [LiveUnbound], people close in and take care of their own patch. When that happens, it’s very easy for the other team to beat a team of individuals. That happened a lot with Cork over the years when things weren’t going well. There was a mentality of, ‘okay, I’ve got to make sure I’m doing alright.’”

In 2017, Cork lost in the All-Ireland semi-final after they had a man sent off; a year later they lost the All-Ireland semi-final to Limerick after they led by six points inside the last 10 minutes.

It was Cork’s fifth All-Ireland semi-final defeat in six appearances over the previous decade. Before that Cork had lost just four All-Ireland semi-finals in their history. What did Cork’s glorious past matter anymore? What use was it?

The modern game had its own metrics and certainties. When Cork were hammered in the 2021 All-Ireland final they made just over 20 tackles in the first half; Limerick made nearly 60. Until that changed, nothing could change. That deficiency wasn’t new. Successive Cork managements fought that battle with the players.

“I would have heard I don’t know how many times in my time playing with Cork, ‘We have the best hurlers in the country,’” says McDonnell.

“No we don’t. That narrative to me was a load of bullshit and it facilitated more bullshit. We can’t keep saying that because what happens is fellas get a bit arrogant and a bit cocky and when the game is there to be won and lost fellas are thinking, ‘Our hurlers will get us over the line’.

“Like, we had good hurlers, but every other team had good hurlers as well. There’s exceptional hurlers everywhere. If we think that makes us different, it doesn’t.

“I think that mentality took away from a championship-winning mentality which was that we need to fight and work like dogs. It was like, ‘We don’t need to work and fight like dogs because our hurlers will get us over the line – we have the best hurlers in the country’. That was seeping into fellas’ mentalities. It just didn’t help.”

After he finished playing, Kenny gave his time to Cork development squads and in recent years to UCC. He is convinced that the “pillars and foundations” are in place. In every age-grade competition Cork are a massive force again. Ten years ago, that wasn’t the case.

In McDonnell’s two years as Cork captain, the new Cork manager Pat Ryan was one of Kieran Kingston’s coaches. Like all the other Cork players, he adored Ryan. He was good with people, he was practical, his sessions were sharp.

At every opportunity over the last few months, Ryan has spoken about looking for players with “character”. As a first principle he was searching for more physicality, more hardness, more aggression.

He knew what was missing. That wasn’t a secret. How soon will it all come together? Having waited this long, the most important thing for Cork now is patience.