Even with shiny new branding over the door, some stubborn old habits remain. The punters were streaming down the aisles and out the exits before the game had even started. They’d come to SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh for the hurling. Whatever the footballers were selling, they’d no interest in buying.
The official attendance for the triple header on the first Saturday of March was 22,193 – with a raucous crowd roaring on the Cork hurlers to victory over Kilkenny in the 5pm match. In the first of the three games on the bill, Cork women’s footballers beat Roscommon.
But by the time Cork men’s footballers jogged out for their Division Two league clash against Roscommon at 7pm, the air had been sucked out of the occasion. Long before the end, discarded confectionery wrappers and empty crisp bags were as detectable around the stands as bums on seats.
“As soon as the hurling was over, there were people racing towards the exits – it was like a bomb scare,” says All-Ireland under-21 winning former Cork manager and ex-senior selector John Fintan Daly.
The Cork footballers entered the contest in joint fourth place and just two points adrift of the promotion spots. But they lost to Roscommon by 14 points and their entire outlook changed that evening from staging a promotion charge to digging in for survival.
Depending on who you ask, the estimated figure for the crowd there when the final whistle went varies, but most agree it was somewhere in the region of only 5,000-8,000.
It is hard to tell what impact the emptying of the stadium had on the team’s morale, but it’s fair to assume it wasn’t helpful.
Then again, a lack of local love for the footballers is not a new phenomenon on Leeside. Give the people a team they believe can put manners on the noisy neighbours, yerra, and they’ll come out. But give them heavy home defeats and shaky form and, well, never mind getting them out, they’ll not even stay when they are there.
Cork play their final home league game of the season on Sunday – a low-key build-up to a match that just might be the most important fixture of their season.
[ One thing clear amid Tailteann Cup muddle is loss to Louth would hurt CorkOpens in new window ]
If the Rebels lose to Louth, not only will they continue to hover over the relegation trapdoor, but the potential of playing Tailteann Cup football this summer becomes very real.
They have diced with these scenarios all too regularly in recent years – they lost their first three league games in 2024, while in 2022 they needed wins in their final two matches to avoid relegation. This playing with fire business, it doesn’t seem like the soundest long-term strategy.
“They have been here before,” adds Daly, who has seen more of Cork than most in recent years because of his analysis work with C103.
“We escaped last year, thanks largely to a very fortuitous goal deep in injury-time against Fermanagh. That kind of turned our season and we survived comfortably enough but had we lost to Fermanagh then we were facing the Tailteann Cup. Now, 12 months on, here we are back again.”
Daly, who managed Milltown-Castlemaine to All-Ireland intermediate glory in 2012, is currently managing his native Knocknagree in Cork. He guided them to an All-Ireland junior club title in 2018 and there are three Knocknagree players on the current Cork panel – Patrick Doyle, Eoghan McSweeney and team captain Daniel O’Mahony.
But even before the season started, there were some worrying noises emanating from the Cork camp as eight players stepped away from the panel. Thomas Clancy, Killian O’Hanlon and John O’Rourke all retired, Jack Cahalane threw his lot in with the hurlers, Kevin Flahive has gone travelling while Steven Sherlock, Damien Gore and Fionn Herlihy opted out for 2025.
Some key players have also been hampered by injury at different stages this season – including Brian Hurley, Ian Maguire, Luke Fahy and Seán Meehan.
More than anything though, an unfortunate judgment is developing around this Cork team – a sense that you just can’t depend on them. Inconsistency is their only consistency.
Their rollercoaster record so far this season reads: won, lost, won, lost, lost.
“Some players left before the season started and then you’ve had a lot of injuries, so that has been a problem,” says Daly. “It wasn’t the fault of the management, but they were forced to use players and throwing them in at this level very early in their development was always going to be a challenge.”
Cork were 10 points up against Down in round two but managed to ultimately leave Newry as the vanquished team. Those remain the only points Down have managed to pick up so far in the league.
Yet Cork beat Meath in the first round – and that remains the only defeat the Royals have shipped in 2025. It all kind of sums up Cork’s wavering form.
The Rebels beat Donegal in last year’s championship, inflicting a first competitive defeat of the season on the Ulster champions. Cork harnessed that standout victory and used the momentum to subsequently lose two on the bounce, against Tyrone and Louth. There ended Cork’s summer.
There is a multitude of permutations as to how the rest of their 2025 season might play out, but defeat to Louth on Sunday means the very real possibility that Cork’s only way of avoiding the Tailteann Cup is by progressing to the Munster final – which means beating both Limerick and Kerry.
“Looking at the combinations, coming sixth in Division Two could still see you end up in the Tailteann Cup. It’s a dire enough situation,” adds Daly.
Cork-Louth has become an unlikely rivalry. This will be their sixth meeting since 2022 – with the Wee County having won three of the last five.
Cork’s last game is away to Cavan while Louth will play Meath in Inniskeen.
In Sam Mulroy Louth boast not only the top scorer in Division Two but his 1-41 tally makes him the leading marksman across the four divisions. However, he is Louth’s only inclusion in the top 10 scorers in Division Two. Cork have two – Mark Cronin on 1-31 and Chris Óg Jones with 5-11.
Louth’s second-highest scorer is Ryan Burns with 1-8, so if John Cleary’s men can curtail Mulroy’s influence on the scoreboard they will have gone a long way to eking out a victory.
But with regards to scoring difference, Cork’s seven-point loss to Monaghan and 14-point defeat to Roscommon have been damaging.
“It has been my hobby horse for years; the fact is Cork should not be in a situation where they are getting a hiding from Monaghan or Roscommon – that shouldn’t happen,” says Daly.
[ Louth second-half revival not enough to get past MonaghanOpens in new window ]
“Cork has over 200 clubs, more clubs than any other in the country.
“Hurling [dual county issue] has been mentioned as a possible reason for the footballers not being successful on a consistent basis, but I think that’s a red herring. I think it’s more of a mentality thing.”
Cork’s immediate ambitions now are to retain their Division Two status and avoid the Tailteann Cup.
“The table doesn’t lie, we are where we are,” commented Cleary in the aftermath of the Roscommon defeat. “We just have to brush ourselves down and go again against Louth.”
Following that loss, the Cork football squad flew out to Portugal for a warm-weather training camp. The heat is now on them this weekend.
The sight of thousands of their own people filing out of Páirc Uí Chaoimh two weeks ago will have done little to convince the football squad the locals actually care.
Commentator Finbarr McCarthy was working for Cork’s 96FM at the venue a fortnight ago.
“We were going to conduct interviews after the hurling match and it was hard to get down because of the crowds. The amount of people leaving the ground was incredible; the place emptied out. It looked terrible,” he recalls.
Playing Tailteann Cup football this summer wouldn’t be a great look for the biggest county in Ireland either.
On Sunday, against the smallest county, Cork get to test out that old chestnut of being too big to fail.
