Reading time: 13 mins

The devil is, as usual, in the detail. I’ve always had huge admiration for Brian Corcoran. A class act, and humble to go with it. The quintessential modern-day Quiet Man. Not even that confident, never mind arrogant. Very un-Cork-like even.

However, no sooner had he hung up his hurl than his autobiography seemed to reveal an unlikely layer of condescension. Though that’s only if you take everything the Sunday Independent tells you at face value.

Some people think the Sindo broke some sort of story with Eamon Sweeney’s ‘trash talker’ critique of Corcoran’s book on the back page of Sunday’s sports section.

Indeed, when I got a text that morning saying Corcoran was fanning the flames of derision down Déise way, I wondered what the hell was he after saying.

Then I found it was merely a hostile reaction to exclusive extracts splashed across two pages in the previous Sunday’s Tribune. (That there was more reaction to Sweeney’s polemic than the initial spread tells a lot maybe about the Tribune’s circulation compared to the Sindo’s.)

Sligo-born but Cork-based, Sweeney had a savage cut off Corcoran, pouring scorn on Cork hurlers’ pop sports psychology – much of it at Waterford’s expense.

Sweeney, a columnist, critic and novelist, has also written a number of well-regarded GAA books. Corcoran’s collaborator Kieran Shannon is the journalist who ‘ghosted’ Justin McCarthy’s Hooked – a tome that, though a fine read, wouldn’t win any prizes for humility.

Corcoran, however, is entitled as anyone to his say – and, with four All-Ireland medals and two Hurler of the Year awards, even more so than others. Other, multi-millionaire sportsmen with nothing to enlighten humanity with routinely “write” books – usually in big letters, to take up space – that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.

Controversy never did book sales any harm of course and clearly published with the Christmas market in mind, it’s no coincidence that the Tribune’s “taster” – splashed across two pages – concentrated on what’s probably the most ‘risque’ content within its covers: Cork’s impression of Waterford.

‘GAVE UP’

But before I go any further, best perhaps to look at precisely what was previously divulged in the Tribune, specifically in relation to the build-up to this year’s All-Ireland semi-final. Here’s what Corcoran had to say, and how his collaborator expertly couched it:

‘Tuesday, 25 July 2006. Dónal Óg Cusack rings me at work. He’s concerned. We need to raise our game, otherwise we won’t beat Waterford… [A group meeting is arranged] I say that what brought us two All Irelands isn’t going to bring us a third; we need to do something different. Ger Cunningham [selector who Corcoran felt should have been invited to take over from John Allen] noticed how on Sunday night after the draw was made all the commentators were saying that Waterford must be happy they got us rather than Kilkenny. We’re seen as the softer touch, as a team that perhaps is getting tired, that doesn’t have the old hunger… I suggest that we start Friday’s meeting by showing the last five minutes of the 2004 Munster final. There’s nothing like a dose of reality to stir the fire within…

‘Friday 28 July: [Pairc Ui Chaoimh] … We all sit around in a large circle. John starts the DVD of the final minutes of the 2004 Munster final. (Seamus) Prendergast’s point. (Ken) McGrath’s catch. The final whistle. Their crowd flooding onto the pitch. John presses the stop button, then asks me to speak. “I don’t know about the rest of ye,” I say, “but it sickens me to relive that. I don’t want to have to relive it on Sunday week. “John got some stick after the Clare game for saying something publicly that I have said many times within this group. The only team that will beat us is ourselves… In coaching, they talk about ‘deserving victory’. You have to feel that you deserve to win. I have no doubt that Waterford believe they deserve to win. Why do they think that? Maybe it’s because some of their players have been around for a long time and haven’t won an All Ireland. Maybe it’s because they believe that they are better than us. The reality is that they have had plenty of chances and haven’t taken them. Now, why do I believe that we deserve to win? No other team has made more sacrifices than us. No other team has been as professional as us. No other team has our team spirit. We are going for three in a row, four finals in a row, and we still haven’t got the credit for it. People say that we are lucky. Luck doesn’t win 12 championship games in a row.

[He tells them:] “Waterford hate our guts. They are sick of losing to us. They would love to stop us. We can’t let that happen; we can’t give them that satisfaction. Last year, in the quarter-final, with about 10 minutes to go, Tony Browne won a free. He jumped up into the air clenching his fist, turned around and eyeballed me and roared, ‘You can f**k off back to Cork, Corcoran! We have ye today!’ I scored the goal a couple of minutes later, and, as I was running out, I looked over at Browne. He was bent down, with his head in his hands. I want to see him like that again on Sunday week. The thing is, when that goal was scored, there were still six minutes left and only three points in it. They gave up. We wouldn’t do that. We fight to the end”’.

[Afterwards] ‘… Donal Óg talks about not underestimating the opposition, not underestimating the prize at stake and not underestimating the calibre of individual that we have going into battle with us… you can just feel the energy within the group”.

‘… Waterford are a serious outfit, one of only two teams in the country who really believe they’re better than us. But we see them as a bunch of individuals, while we’re a team. You pick up the Examiner on a Monday morning in September or October and there always seems to be a melee in some club game between Mount Sion, Ballygunner or Lismore. This past week, John and the selectors have been consulting John Carey, the performance coach, to help with the mental preparation, and now there are more pictures and slogans on the wall.

‘There’s a photo of Justin McCarthy and Tony Browne embracing each other after their win up in Croker against Tipp, with the headline below it, “Bring On Da Rebels!” We have a poster, which reads:

• OUR WORLD
  Winning
  Discipline
  Professionalism
  Team spirit
  Unity
  Positivity
  Performance
  Taking responsibility
  Setting standards
• THEIR WORLD
  Losing
  Fighting
  Blaming others
  Playing for oneself, not the team
  Relying on luck
  Bringing others down to their level
  ‘Which world do you want to live in? Now is the time to fight for it’.

‘Sunday, 6 August: Three hours to the biggest battle of our hurling lives; it all comes down to today… During the week, a lot of people have said to me that we won’t be able to match Waterford’s hunger. I don’t accept that. What is hunger? Hunger is a state of mind. You choose your hunger. It’s about the future, not about the past… Waterford are playing for greatness within their own county. We are playing for greatness within the history of the game of hurling. Our goal is greater’.

‘… Half-time and it’s level, eight points apiece… It was always going to go down to the wire… We go back out and the first thing they do is run at us. Eoin McGrath shoots, Dónal Óg saves, but Eoin Kelly buries the rebound. Then Prendergast scorches through for a point. But it’s like the Munster final; it’s like last year’s game against them. Four down with over half an hour to go is surmountable. We’re making little inroads into that lead, though. They’re not pushing on, but they’re not giving way either. We need someone to do something. Timmy McCarthy steps up… We’re still in this. We need something more now. Ronan Curran and Sean Og are hurling up a storm at the other end, but so is Browne in front of me.

‘Then John Allen finds that extra something and unleashes it. When play stops for a John Gardiner free, Cathal Naughton comes on… And then we’re in the lead… [soon after] Again he does the right thing and the ball is in the net.

‘But this time Waterford don’t hold their heads in their hands; this time they don’t give up. They sweep downfield and score a point. We come back up, then they go back down again and the gap’s back to one point.
‘We’re in injury time and when a ball breaks around their 65, the referee awards them a free. I don’t know why… McGrath is standing over the ball. It’s 90 yards out, but that’s within his range. He bends down, lifts, strikes and the ball sails through the air. Is it going wide? Is it going over? Shit, it’s going over. It’s going over by a good two feet. And then Donal Og puts up his hurley.

‘… the difference is the difference between day and night. Just look around. John Mullane’s on his knees, his face staring down at the ground. I exchange a handshake and a small hug with Prendergast, like you would in front of a coffin. Because that’s what it’s like. No one has died, but a dream has, and it’s real and it hurts.

‘…We needed every little thing today. I’ve said some things about Waterford here but, while I’m still glad it was them, not us, who lost today, I do feel for them, especially Ken McGrath. I see him now and I see myself as I once was. I genuinely hope some day he finds what he’s looking for… just not in my time, not on our beat.

‘I’ll say another thing about Waterford. Ever since this rivalry with them started with that league final in ’98, it’s always been a battle, it’s always been epic and it’s always been a game of ball. It comes down to this. We believe we’re a better team than they are, and they believe they’re a better team than us, so when we meet it’s a case of let’s just play and show who’s the better hurling team. The odd time, they win. Most of the time, we win. Always, hurling wins. If we’re Ali, then they’re our Frazier’.

INSULTING

There’s no doubt but that the original feature in the Tribune (Shannon’s employers) was portrayed in such a way as to emphasise the Rebels’ take on the Cork-Waterford rivalry. Certainly therein one could deduce plenty evidence to suggest that the famed Cork superior complex – ‘Irish by birth, Cork by the grace of God’ and all that jazz – is alive and well on Leeside.

Many’s the miracle how some Cork hurlers over the years ever managed to fit a helmet on their heads. And the current crop, with their egocentric, ultra-‘professional’ self-regard would give any all-time cocksure Cork selection a run for its money. (And they do like their money.)

However, the worry for Waterford is in how much of what Corcoran revealed about Cork’s general attitude to their neighbours is present and correct? The reality is that while he was helping Erin’s Own advance to the Munster final last Sunday (pity Mount Sion didn’t make it; now that’d have been interesting), Eoin Kelly, one of the top five hurlers in the country on his day, was – for whatever reason – missing in action. Again. Is it just that the truth hurts? Or is there nothing more patronising than a Corkman with a clutch of All-Ireland medals paying you back-handed compliments?

The crime, as it is, is seen as Corcoran’s willingness to betray dressing-room secrets – basically bad-mouthing opponents – to sell a book. Let’s be honest here. How many Waterford team will have taken to the field with the refrain, ‘Let’s show these cocky Cork c****!’ or some such variation of the theme ringing in their ears? There’s nothing shocking in what he’s said. Waterford people knew that’s what Cork thought of us already. We just never thought one of them would admit it in black and white.

This is what Sweeney finds objectionable about Corcoran’s candour: how it has crossed into the “tabloid-driven bad-mouthing culture of soccer” and severed the traditional mutual respect among players, whereby, even when they’re after tearing lumps out of one another, they’ve “nothing but praise for each other when they leave the pitch”.

Assuming a customarily-modest character like Corcoran must have been “affected by the prevailing philosophy of a Cork side which, in recent years, became the most self-aggrandising outfit in the history of Gaelic games”, Sweeney submits that the public disparagement of Waterford, is “probably the most insulting thing to be written about one group of hurlers by another”.

Seeing the rose-tinted Cork view as “actually a distortion of reality which gravely traduces a team which has given much to hurling over the last decade”, he would contend, with some justification, that “the best game of hurling in recent years was the 2004 Munster final when Waterford actually brought hurling up to a level that Cork could not match”.

Finding “this idea that Cork do everything right and Waterford do everything wrong is bizarre in the extreme”, Sweeney noted – and here’s the obvious point – that “Cork have enormous resources of population to call on, much greater than that of any other hurling county… Waterford, by contrast, have had little success at under-age level and have nothing like Cork’s pick. In the circumstances Justin McCarthy’s two Munster titles may be just as impressive a feat as the two All-Irelands Donal O’Grady and John Allen steered Cork to”, he argues.

In that case, demographically-speaking, Kilkenny’s roll of honour is greater still. It’s a point Sweeney, the son of a hurling-mad Kilkenny man, couldn’t resist making. “Though Corcoran claims that, ‘no other team has been as professional as us, no other team has our team spirit, no other team has made the sacrifices we have,’ it is Kilkenny who have been the best team of the contemporary era. Without (one suspects) Brian Cody having recourse to posters denigrating the opposition, the Cats have done just fine”.

He might have added that Corcoran’s ultra-professional assertion assertion also proves that so-called ‘professionalism’ only works up to a point.

KNIFE GUYS

Since Donal O’Grady took charge, the walls of the Cork hurlers’ dressing/meeting rooms have been described as ‘a gallery of pictures communicating subliminal messages and catchphrases designed to create an atmosphere of heightened awareness and passion’.

I’ve no doubt that Cork have employed similar motivational techniques before facing Kilkenny, but it would be unwise in the extreme to reveal those now that the three-in-a-row has gone by the wayside.

Dónal Óg Cusack revealed their ill-feeling towards Kilkenny in the run-up to the 2004 All-Ireland final against Kilkenny, who’d beaten them in the previous year’s decider.

Cork’s grievance was encapsulated in a cutting O’Grady pinned above Óg Cusack’s hanger at training, containing quotes by Cats’ captain Peter Barry after the 2002 National League final, when they narrowly beat the Rebels.

The game was largely remembered for the Cork ‘socks down’ protest during the pre-match parade – a gesture Kilkenny players had also signed up to at a GPA emergency meeting just over a week earlier. Captain Andy Comerford was the only Kilkenny player who did. “The players have never forgotten Kilkenny for it. Especially Cusack”, wrote Christy O’Connor in his superb book about hurling goalkeepers, ‘Last Man Standing’.

“That went against everything we stand for”, Cusack told O’Connor. “We stood up for all the players in Ireland and they didn’t… That was their choice but we’ll never forget the way Peter Barry spoke after the game. We were hanging ourselves out to dry in the protest and we knew that beforehand as well because we’re not fools. We knew that it was serious dodgy territory and he came out afterwards and said all he cared about was wearing the jersey. The media in Cork and the people who were on our case had a field day with that statement. He should have realised that if they didn’t want to support us, don’t support us, but don’t stick the fucking knife in our backs when we’re on the ground.”

But, he added, “Even though they are our enemies because of what happened… I respect them… you know that if a lot of those guys were on your side, including Cody, you would have great time for them. I know Cody was definitely not on our side back in 2002 but I still shook his hand after the All-Ireland final last year [2003]”.

Anyhow, Corcoran’s inside-view – which Gerald McCarthy, a man still with a soft spot for Waterford will have mixed views about I’m sure; not least for providing his former troops with fresh incentive – definitely provides Justin McCarthy with motive, and hopefully opportunity.

With Michael Ryan bringing his inspiration to the Decies cause next year, if there’s any posters needed for the Waterford dressing-room wall I’ve a copy of last week’s Tribune going cheap…

BIG SPENDERS

It’s worth pointing out that the Cork GAA County Board spent over €1.2 million on its teams in 2005. Easily the biggest spenders of any county in the country, Cork’s team costs rose by 290% over the four years from the 2001 players’ strike. Waterford, by comparison, were one of only 5 counties to come in under the €300,000 mark.

This year’s figures will be tallied shortly and should make for interesting reading. Former GAA President Peter Quinn, who works as a financial consultant, says the massive outlay by some counties is “pure madness”.

New Cork hurling manager Gerald McCarthy may well have to bear the brunt of any cost-cutting Frank Murphy has in mind, with Brian Corcoran fearing the penny-pinching days of old could return unless the players “stay strong”. And you know what that means in the GPA capital.