Rivalry between Munster's big two continues to fascinate

ON GAELIC GAMES:Due to the current standing of both counties, this local quarrel with big national connotations remains compelling, writes SEÁN MORAN

AFTER A familiar faltering start to the championship, things became interesting at the weekend. The weather wasn’t universally kind but there was a holiday sense of enjoyment and the football season swung into action with a string of unexpected results.

The eternal rivalry between Cork and Kerry provided the main focus of the weekend and, despite the dizzying number of occasions on which the counties meet in big games, there was a great atmosphere in Killarney. An air of something being at stake was present despite whatever erosion of the competitive psyche has taken place in the era of the qualifiers.

It helps, of course, that the counties are at the very top of the game at present and, with Kerry holding the upper hand on everyone with five of the last 10 All-Irelands, the main focus is on whether Cork can exhibit any signs they are ready to translate recent successes over their neighbours in Munster on to the All-Ireland stage.

The sequence has become a circular torture for Cork. Beat Kerry in the province and it only draws further attention to the fact they never beat them in Croke Park. Lose and it becomes an existential crisis, a sign of slippage. For Kerry it plays either way.

This year the word went out Kerry would be serious. The reason why that needs stating is the All-Ireland champions have taken two of their past five titles through the qualifiers and could be forgiven for not caring too much how things pan out in June.

But the argument ran this year that the team had been on the road too long to want to run up needless mileage. Still, nothing had changed. Cork looked a good bit more accomplished but couldn’t make it count and extended the Killarney record to at least 16 years without a win (assuming the weekend’s replay in Cork finishes the matter for this provincial season).

Kerry had lost a third of last year’s team whereas Cork were furiously blooding new players to help further loosen any inhibitions they may have been gathering over the past five seasons, each of which has ended in All-Ireland defeat by Kerry.

So although the losers would survive, the fascination of this local rivalry with big national connotations continues. Maybe it would have been like this throughout GAA history had the qualifiers been the competitive structure of choice from the very beginning.

Certainly Mick O’Dwyer’s words – that used to irritate the vanquished Munster finalists in the 1970s – about Cork being the second-best team in the country might have been realised in a less comfortable reality for the great Kerry team of 30 years ago.

This is the most common fixture in GAA inter-county championship history. Sunday’s replay will be approximately (depending on how you classify the occasional abandonment in early encounters) the 108th meeting of the counties. To put that in context the hurling equivalent, Cork and Tipp, have chalked up 80. In the past decade alone, Cork and Kerry will have met on at least 20 occasions – and the 2010 All-Ireland series is yet to come.

Yet for whatever reason, the integrity of the quarrel endures. It is frequently remarked on that Cork supporters prefer to come to Killarney to watch this fixture than to head to the unprepossessing confines of their own venue in Páirc Uí­ Chaoimh. And the attendance figures indicate as much.

Such was the interest on Sunday however that Fitzgerald Stadium drew its biggest crowd for the fixture in 10 years.

If the draw could be categorised as the most predictable outcome (it was the fourth time in the past six meetings in Killarney) it made the fixture unusual in the context of a weekend when favourites crashed like old laptops.

The last time there was a truly surprising outcome in Killarney was 19 years ago when Cork, on the first outing of a three-in-a-row All-Ireland bid for the only time in the county’s football history and a year after dismantling Kerry by 15 points, came unstuck.

To the great euphoria in Fitzgerald Stadium that afternoon was added a touch of schadenfreude, as news came through that in his very first Leinster championship adventure, Mick O’Dwyer’s Kildare had come unstuck in Drogheda.

It wasn’t simultaneous timing but last Saturday, on the eve of the Killarney match, Louth repeated the dose against the 2010 Lilywhites, giving a stunning exhibition of shooting as they did so. Kieran McGeeney thus became the third high-profile Kildare manager – after O’Dwyer and Dermot Earley – in the past 20 years to come a cropper when faced with Louth.

Of all the counties in Leinster only Kilkenny, who don’t compete, Wicklow and Carlow haven’t been in a provincial final more recently than Louth, who this year mark the 50th anniversary of their last appearance, a narrow defeat by Offaly.

For whatever reason, the music died after that. Now they are one match against Westmeath from breaking that sequence. It’s no reason for complacency – in 1991 a straightforward semi-final against Laois ended in disappointment amidst pantomime misbehaviour – but it’s an opportunity for Louth to make unexpected history in 2010.

On a final note, Waterford hurler John Mullane attracted a good bit of attention last week when criticising what he clearly saw as the excessive admission prices for championship matches. No one becomes unpopular criticising the cost of commodities but there are issues here.

Croke Park is touchy about this subject because of the immediacy of the connection with the GAA membership and in its defence can point to a range of arguments: no price hikes since 2006, the comparatively low cost of football and hurling admission prices, a range of promotional discounts and the transparent trickle-down of funds to various units of the association.

With other sources of funding drying up, the GAA has to strike a balance between the costs of maintaining its activities and maintaining admission prices.

There are counter-arguments. The economic collapse brought with it a spell of deflation, which meant that even by freezing ticket prices the GAA was taking in more real income. Secondly the rise in the numbers out of work has created additional volunteers with time on their hands and clubs have benefited from that. Maybe, in recognition of this situation, Croke Park and the provinces could offer those unemployed followers discounts similar to those available to students and senior citizens in all matches where there is a spare capacity in the ground.