In 1970 at St Andrew’s, Doug Sanders stood three feet from golfing immortality. He missed, and the following day he lost the eighteen-hole playoff to Jack Nicklaus by a single shot. Over the course of his professional career, Sanders managed to finish second in a major tournament on four occasions without getting over the line. Clearly, Sanders had a talent that 99% of us mortals could barely even dream of – he won 20 events on the PGA Tour – but when his chances came around in the Big Ones, he wasn’t able to take them.
Often, I wonder what type of influence events like that can have on the psyche. Do you ever really get over something like that? Rory McIlroy had a similar moment last year, and even though he has won nearly all that there is to win, that particular moment will almost certainly live somewhere deep within him, forever. Famously, Sanders quipped that, sometimes, that infamous putt doesn’t cross his mind for a full five minutes. He seemed to be the type of gregarious character who could carry the disappointment lightly, who could just brush all of that disappointment off, but that quip has always suggested to me an endless ocean of angst just beyond those twinkling eyes.
It’s been just the 187 days since the All-Ireland Final. How often have you thought about it? In 2023 the world was rocked by the fact that men of a certain vintage think about the Roman Empire three times a day. Imagine the reaction if somebody was brave enough to say how often they really think about last July, or how much of their day is really lost to fantasies of the great days of yore and the imagined days to come?
Sigmund Freud may never have actually written that the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, but had he ever sat down with a manically obsessed Cork hurling fan who craves one thing and one thing only, he might have put the rest of his research into the fire, or lost himself more deeply in his own extracurricular activities.
When something like last July happens, you just try to block it all out for a while, enforce a self-imposed media blackout, for example. But it’s impossible to, really. It comes at you in fits and starts, in flashes, and despite doing your best to twist those memories from what they are into what you had imagined they would be, you can’t. I think the worst point was when I had to drive to Hospital a couple of weeks after the final. I was hit with a deep sense of unease as I approached Ballylanders, an unease that gave way to an incandescent rage when I saw the giant poster wishing the village’s most famous son the best of luck on the big day. How quaint.
In a way it still feels very fresh, very raw but there was a point that I can’t quite put my finger on where the thoughts of what had passed were gradually replaced by the hopes and fears of what’s to come. The visceral disappointment of July slowly gave way to that most nefarious of characters, hope. And if you can’t hope in January, then what’s the point at all?
Maybe this year will be the year. Maybe this year won’t be the year. The relentless reading of the tealeaves has already begun. The team selections for the Waterford and UCC games have been chewed over ad nauseum. The Fitzgibbon results and fixtures have taken on even a greater meaning with the preseason competitions consigned to the bin, or history, depending on your outlook.
The additions to the panel have begged the question of who will be departing the squad over the coming weeks. It’s no easy task. That is a good thing. For the trip to Wexford Park tomorrow, Cork can pick a panel of 26 players of whom only two played Fitz during the week. That hasn’t been the way for a while. After Saturday, thoughts will immediately turn to the visit of the great Limerick team that we know so well the following weekend. There is so much to look forward to. So much to be worried about. So much to think about.
When speaking to Cork’s new captain, Robert Downey, while recording a season review for the podcast, it was striking how he discussed Glen Rovers relegation in 2023, and how the worst part about it was having to wait so long to put it right, having that game as the last game you played for such a long time. Most teams’ years end in disappointment, but the level of that disappointment is relative, obviously.
The bigger the disaster, the deeper the depression. The black dog brought on by the horror of relegation and the dismay of losing an All-Ireland Final by a point after extra-time are very different, but you’d imagine that the sheer length of the wait to try and put things right brings on a similar sense of defiance, an indelible hurt, and a lot of steel.
And it’s that steel as much as anything else that we’ll want to see this year. Anything else? Plenty. Can the full back line become tighter, meaner? Can the half back line become more solid? What is going to happen with the frees? Can Cork beat Limerick again? Will Cork ever beat Clare again? Could it happen in Ennis? Can Cork get out of Munster again?
And, of course, the biggest question of all; If the chance does come around again, will Cork be able to take it?
John Coleman
The Little All-Ireland 