Thinking Things Over

It’s only human nature to look back, to try and read the past so you can try and predict the future. For the past week, when thinking about Cork, and by definition, thinking about Clare, it’s impossible not to think of everything that the sides have drawn out of one another over the past 11 years. It’s impossible to think about anything else.

You think about it so much that you can’t think at all. At some point, the thin red line between rational thought and all-consuming obsession blurs, and when the manic part of your psyche completely takes over, you can only hope that your outer facade is doing enough to mask your inner madness.

And you do look at everything, think about everything. How many wins? How many losses? How many draws? What’s due? How has the personnel changed? Who would be happier? The age profile. Who has the better balance of the young and the old, the brave and the bold? Clare has 9 players 30 or over starting, Cork has 2. Does youth trump experience? Time will tell.

The matchups, the potential for curveballs, the referee, the famine, the bench. The game down the Páirc. What did we learn from that? Will it be enough? The two semi-finals. The quality. The difference in quality. The likelihood of a repeat performance, of repeat performances. Are you better off to be going in on a wave of euphoria, like Cork? Or is it better to be going in with plenty of room for improvement, like Clare? And that’s just for starters.

It’s a complete waste of time, of course, but it’s hard to turn it off. Would you even do it if you could? Because the hardest place of all to live is in the present. Thankfully, that’s something the players seem well able to do. It’s a constant in every interview coming up to the game. Perhaps Sunday will hinge on what team manages to stay in the present for longer, on what team stays that little bit cooler when the ferocity of the occasion reaches its highest. For us in the stands, it was easy enough to stay present in the aftermath of the Limerick game, both Limerick games. But now, there is just too much at stake. When the dust settled on all of that, it was Clare. It had to be, really, didn’t it?

Because Cork and Clare have defined one another since 2013. We all remember what happened then, and when Cork took a modicum of revenge a year later, we thought we were on our way again. We weren’t.

Then, after an awful start to 2015, beating Clare in Thurles felt like it might have been a catalyst for something better. It wasn’t.

After the back-to-back Munster Finals of 2017 and 2018 it seemed as if Cork were getting ever closer to smashing down the walls that have imprisoned us for the last 20 odd years. They weren’t.

Clare must have been sick of the sight of us by then. But they have 2013. They often speak of their Munster drought, but they have 2013. They will always have it. We don’t. What would you prefer? 3 Munsters or 1 major? 

The 2018 Round Robin game was probably the most sedate game the teams have played in this period but 2019, in Ennis, was a horrible reminder of what Cork lacked. Clare won, we went through, but it didn’t really matter.

2021 was a sweet win destroyed by what would come in the All-Ireland Final and 2022 was a horrible day. It felt like we were hammered, and yet there was only 2 points in it. A point last year, one of those that got away from us. Ditto this year. How many has there been now?

Cork and Clare’s record against Limerick in the Round Robin even tells a story. A draw each, and the only teams to have beaten Limerick more than once, one home, one away, and 2 losses.
It all tells us what we know in our hearts, that Sunday is your classic 50/50 encounter. A game of inches. A toss of a coin. A game that will ebb and flow, one that will go down to the wire. Torturous.

There is so much to fear, but so much to be excited about too. If Tony Kelly rocks up at centre forward, á la 2013, one would hope that he isn’t followed at the cost of leaving our centre as open as the proverbial barn door, as it was then. Who picks up Shane O’Donnell? What is to be done about Mark Rodgers? Can Cork turn John Conlon? Will the forwards click? What if Clare can’t miss? Will the centre hold to prevent a second coming?

2018 has been bubbling under the surface, again. No, not the All-Ireland semi-final, the All-Ireland u21 final that Cork blew against Tipp, only a few weeks after the Limerick game. Pat Ryan is famous for winning his 2 U20 All-Irelands, but in 2017 he helped embed another star crop of underage players in the Cork set up; Mark Coleman, Darragh Fitzgibbon, and Shane Kingston. 5 of the team that lost to Tipp will start on Sunday, there are another 4 on the bench and one more on the extended panel. That day was meant to be redemptive, in the end it was excruciating.

They have been through a lot. A highly rated minor team that didn’t get it done. A superb U21 team that fell, catastrophically, at the final hurdle. A team that was meant to bring us out of the wilderness. A group that has that harrowing experience from 2021 in the hurt locker. A group that are in their prime. Throw in the angst that must drive Horgan, Harnedy, and Lehane, no matter what they say, and you have a group that is under no illusions about the minuteness of the margins in elite level sport. They know, more than anybody, that sport gives you what you earn, not what people think you deserve.

This is the chance, however, to change the narrative, to break the narrative that has dogged us for far too long. This is a chance to become one of the most loved Cork teams there has ever been, like the men of ’66 and ’99.

Can they grasp it? They must.

Corcaigh abú.

John Coleman