Ciarán Murphy: It may be time to start taking Cork seriously again

I had a chance to attend my first ever Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachta last weekend, in Cill na Martra in north Cork. It was an exceptional weekend of football, craic and Irish culture, celebrating as it does every year the best Gaeltacht football teams from around the country.

And if there was a point approaching midnight on Saturday night when I thought I’d be channelling Hunter S Thompson by submitting 8,000 stream-of-consciousness words to The Irish Times entitled “The Comórtas Peile is Decadent And Depraved”, the reality was far, far more good-natured and easy-going than any Kentucky Derby.

Hosting an event of this kind takes years of preparation, and it requires a club to combine easy cordiality with ruthless, Germanic efficiency. From the second you arrived, you realised that Cill na Martra had pulled it off with aplomb. Their grounds were immaculate, the marquee was serving food all day, the pubs were packed and hopping from the early afternoon, and the football was high quality.

I had to head away on Sunday, and I would have given you any odds you wanted that night that Cill Chartha from Donegal would not keep it kicked out to Naomh Anna Leitir Móir in the senior final on Monday, after they had to go to extra-time to beat the home team in a classic semi-final. That they were able to win the final so convincingly, against a team who had hammered (an admittedly understrength) Daingean Uí Chúis from Kerry in their semi-final was a testament to their fitness, the depth of their squad, and their character.

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The two teams in the final, in particular, had taken the entire weekend deadly seriously, and put the lie to the idea in my head that the social side of things is at least on a par with the football – but there’s no doubt that having fun is a key motivating factor too. It’s the sort of weekend every GAA person should try to experience at least once in their lives.

It was also a very interesting weekend to be in the heart of Cork football country. Their win against Donegal, with the radio commentary blaring out in the marquee in the village from 3pm, has blown open that group. It has given Cork a fantastic chance to finish top and to finally get themselves back towards the top eight teams in the country.

The history of Cork football for the last 50 years is easily enough told through the prism of Billy Morgan and Larry Tompkins. Morgan was the goalkeeper and captain in 1973, they were manager and captain together throughout the 80s, and then handed the job over and back to each other again – either one or the other managed the Cork football team for 21 consecutive years.

They are responsible, in a lot of ways, for how Cork football sees itself. They were such stubborn, relentless, contrary men that the absence of those characteristics in Cork teams now seems like an easy stick to beat them with. Every team needs a bit of that, but that doesn’t have to dominate the entire ecosystem.

To people like Nollaig Ó Laoire, Cill na Martra’s most beloved son, the bible of Tompkins was one they could follow to the letter. And what team wouldn’t want a man like Nollaig in their dressingroom? To hear him speak at the weekend about Tompkins, and his influence on him, was to get an insight into the making of the footballer. And to know that you can look out from his home place, across the Derrynasaggart and Shehy mountains towards Kerry, is to know why beating them became such an obsession.

That was the obsession that drove Morgan in 1987, when they finally took down Mick O’Dwyer’s team. Then Meath became their white whale. They lost to them in the All-Ireland finals of 1987 and 1988, before they won their All-Ireland against Mayo in 1989.

But when Cork lost a league semi-final to Meath in April 1990, Morgan got down on his knees in the dressingroom in Croke Park and prayed that Meath would qualify for that year’s All-Ireland final. That streak of contrariness is not something you can teach.

Tompkins went straight from playing to managing Cork in 1996, and when he left the job in 2003, Morgan took over from him again. In doing so, both men gave many of the team that won Cork’s last All-Ireland their debuts. They were still hugely formative characters in Cork football, even if it was Conor Counihan who was in charge in 2010.

That Cork team might have loved to have beaten Kerry in that All-Ireland final, and tied up all accounts as they had done in 1990 with Meath, but they owed no one anything. There were powerful underage teams coming through at that time, but loyalty to that older brigade, in its way, might have contributed to the years in the wilderness that Cork has suffered through in the last decade.

Their win on Saturday against Donegal represents a huge step forward. John Cleary is not Larry Tompkins or Billy Morgan. He’s not a Messiah. But he’s building a different kind of team, not just one in his own image, and Tyrone are not playing well enough right now to put the fear of God into anyone. Qualify as group winners, and people will have to start taking Cork seriously again.