Jimmy Barry-Murphy looks to future with Cork

“I don’t look back. I don’t believe in it,” confirms Jimmy Barry-Murphy, the reluctant holder of a power to evoke in others that very compulsion: to look back in ardour; the man whose mere initials, in fact, can cause even the flintiest of Corkonians to sigh and instantly recall a bullet-headed city kid who played Gaelic games with an impossibly offhand elegance.

Even when he jinked and glided his way through defences in both hurling and football to concoct some marvel of a score, JBM rarely made a fuss. The more extravagant the scores, the less he seemed to celebrate and he has remained frankly uncomfortable at the notion of discussing the glory days. Last July, after successfully managing Cork to a first Munster title since 2006, he declined to pay homage to the fact that they were seeing out the last hurling day at the old Páirc Uí Chaoimh with a victory.

“I think there is an awful lot of old rubbish about nostalgia and that type of thing,” he nods now. “You are laughing now but . . . I hate talking about my own career. I think it is irrelevant. Of course, I look back on my career and it is nice when people remember what you did and all that. I am not playing that down. But regarding Cork hurling, it is about the future. And the stadium and the Munster final . . . that stuff doesn’t interest me. I’ve no interest. Honestly, no I don’t. I have other things to worry about in my life than whether Páirc Uí Chaoimh is redeveloped.”

Striding up the street

It is a perishing day by the Lee and JBM comes striding up the street with his collar wrapped around him. No matter how many times you see the man, it is always a surprise to rediscover how tall he is. He looks the same as ever too: boyish, amused, lively.

Later, he will go and watch some college hurling and for all of this week, his mind is fixed on old colours and new fixtures. Cork host the All-Ireland champions Kilkenny in the old Flower Lodge tonight. Brian Cody will – still – be there to survey the field, still Kilkenny’s constant gardener. Jimmy Barry-Murphy will stand a few yards down in front of the Cork dug-out. The pair have shadowed one another on the field through more winter slogs and summer derbies than either man can probably recall.

As it happened, it was at Cody’s expense that Barry-Murphy enjoyed what he still considers his finest hour with Cork on a rainy day in 1999, when the Rebel County won a low-key instalment of the classic final by 0-13 to 0-12. He was incandescent with joy that afternoon, uninhibited in his delight. His opinion that that was his best moment with Cork still holds true.

“It does, really, because when I took on that job . . . I was naive, I took on the minors and didn’t realise how hard it was going to be. It is only when you’re in it that you could see what it would take and how far Cork has fallen. And it took a huge effort to come back and win something. So I was delighted for those players, not for myself. And I am seeing the same now: that when you slip down the rankings, how difficult it is to climb back up. When you are playing and in Munster finals every year, it was afterwards I realised how lucky I was.

“So I was shocked when I took over in 1996 just how far the other counties had gone past us. I was shocked, in my naivety. I didn’t see it like that, how far Clare and other counties had gone ahead of us. Before that, I wasn’t pushed because I wasn’t involved. I thought: we have won a minor and we will be fine again. It wasn’t like that – and it isn’t that now.”

What is it like now? One of the many subplots of the coming hurling season – the 128th All-Ireland championship year – will concern Cork’s ability to insinuate themselves again into the conversation. JBM and Cork came within seconds of completing an audacious All-Ireland raid in 2013, when Donal O’Donovan’s last-gasp deathless point earned Clare that exceptional Saturday evening replay, which yielded eight goals and a fourth Banner All-Ireland.

Chasing the game

“They were fantastic games, from the public point of view,” Barry-Murphy acknowledges. “Would have been a lovely one to win but when you are chasing the game, it can be difficult. It hurt us badly. Because we felt time was up. We had it.”

Still, the closeness of it seemed to reaffirm Barry-Murphy’s qualities as a shaman: to make things come good for Cork. Last summer’s Munster title duly followed but Cork’s most recent experience of championship hurling was that sharp semi-final exit against Tipperary on a score of 1-11 to 2-18. Cork had had five weeks to idle by between their provincial win and that match, a period in which it may have been won and lost.

“It wouldn’t change my mind about winning Munster but . . . I made plenty of mistakes but a big one was keeping the players together for that period. I would let them away to the clubs for a fortnight and then come back. Did it contribute to the defeat? I am not sure. But if I am looking for a reason, it could have been a contributory factor.”

In 1996, Limerick’s 3-18 to 1-08 excoriation of Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh left Barry-Murphy vulnerable to a degree of criticism that was alien to him as a player. It shook him but he constructed a formidable and strong-willed squad which delivered the 1999 title. He stepped down in 2000 but that team came within one match of completing a three-in-a-row by the closing day of the 2006 championship. His fingerprints were everywhere.

He returned for the 2012 championship to try to reshape Cork in an era when the general obsession with tactical articulacy and game analysis had taken a grip of Gaelic games. He is fascinated by the methodology that informs contemporary football and remains a huge fan of the game.

“Hurling has changed a bit in terms of formations and defensive tactics. Football is extraordinary now. I can’t get my head around it sometimes. I love it. I am not big into tactics myself . . . I am not a fool about them either, by the way. But I do think the defensive tactics are predicated on being ahead. I felt the Donegal-Dublin game was incredible to watch. Couldn’t see it. If Dublin got those goals early on, it would have been a different scenario. That is the key. Even in hurling now. Get ahead! Get ahead! Force the others to come out and play.

“But you can talk about it til the cows come home . . . you think of Mayo against Kerry last year . . . the wing back went through, a great, great young player and had he tapped the ball over the bar, they were four up in Croke Park. And it went wide. Then Donaghy comes into it. How things can swing. I do believe that hurling games can take on a life of their own; that spontaneity remains a huge part of the game.

“I do think some people feel I am not into the tactical side of things enough. That is a matter of opinion. It doesn’t bother me. I do the job the best I can. I pick the best players I can and give instructions as I see fit. Over the past few years, we haven’t been too bad. Haven’t won an All-Ireland but came close. Won a Munster title. It is not the be all and end all but it is an achievement. Our players hadn’t won anything underage with Cork and I was thrilled for them.”

Ring sat down

Barry-Murphy was a substitute for Cork in 1976 when Christy Ring sat down beside him in the dressing room to review the first half of a match in which they had been underwhelming against Tipperary. “To think I left my holidays for this,” the Cloyne man murmured to him.

Steadfast as his gaze on the future is, Barry-Murphy accepts that you can’t escape the past: his uncle Dinny Barry-Murphy was a selector when Ring was an omnipotent force and he enjoyed studying the way in Ring’s involvement with the mid 1970s team drew him out, so much so that by the summer of 1977, he delivered an oratory at half-time of a match when Cork were struggling badly against Clare.

“Ring would never use bad language. But he took the dressing room at half-time. I know other players don’t entirely agree with what I have said. That is fair enough. But I remember it distinctly. He was an inspiration and he did take control of the dressing room and lift sagging spirits a bit. It was extraordinary, I found. So by the time we were playing Kilkenny in 1978, he was a huge figure in our lives. It is hard to put words on what he had. He was an intimidating figure.”

Figures in his imagination

The point is that he does believe in the principal of inheritance and of the oblique influence of successive generations. Ring and Mick Mackey as actual players were shadow figures in his imagination and Jack Lynch an immaculate national figure who made appearances at the homecoming receptions.

Billy Morgan’s fiery ambition for Cork football made a more immediate impression on him. Barry-Murphy quit Cork football in 1978, disheartened by the variety of ways in which Kerry teams took pleasure in beating them. He is unabashed in his admiration of that Kerry team and he regrets now not persevering with football for another few seasons.

“I do, regret it yeah, I can say that now. Billy Morgan was a huge person in my life and I felt when I packed it in that I let Billy down. But it was getting hard. And it was a bit selfish of me to opt for hurling because yeah, I looked at which was the better prospect. It was a killer. And I don’t want to exaggerate because it’s not life or death. But a generation of Cork footballers suffered at the hands of a great team. 1976 . . . I did feel that an entire generation of Cork players lost and we suffered afterwards. Kerry were ferocious. They were tough and hard. I got to know a few of them while we were playing. I won the All-Ireland in 1973, won a Munster in 1974 and never saw Croke Park afterwards. Getting hammered. Year after year. It was draining.

“They were an extraordinary bunch of characters. They were ruthless at the back, where they had to be. I am not afraid to say that. No shame in saying they were brilliant, brilliant footballers. And I think I was getting a bit shellshocked from those hammerings. It was hard to see the light. But the day Tadhgie Murphy got the goal [in 1983 to beat Kerry in the Munster final], I would have loved to be there. Although it would have been a fair wait.”

That period of oppression helped to slant county affections towards the Cork hurlers. “It still irritates me when I hear people knocking the footballers. That championship . . . it is difficult to win.”

In his spectator years from 2000-2012, when he watched Brian Cody’s metamorphosis from the reticent manager to the inscrutable figurehead of Kilkenny, and as he watched Kilkenny streak into uncharted hurling country after 2006, falling one afternoon short of five unbroken years of championship domination, JBM did not know if he would be back. “I had time on my hands,” he says simply, when asked why he did return. “And I was asked by the board to consider it. I said I would, straight away. Sometimes I think I am mad but that is the way it is.”

Terrace hero

If he shares an obvious trait with Cody, it is that impatience with the idea of looking back. Cody’s philosophy is rooted in the present: always in the season ahead. Secured glories don’t interest him. So it is with JBM. He can’t really help it if people still see in him the wraith of the suede-head teenager who casually struck two goals against Galway in the All-Ireland of ’73 or the full-blown terrace hero who is still a bit bemused by the praise lavished on that double against Galway in the hurling semi-final a full decade later.

He was gone at 32, after helping Cork claim the 1986 All-Ireland hurling title, the last of an absurdly accomplished haul. Someone recently told him that he shared with John Doyle the record of 10 Munster titles. It was news to him and a surprise that Ring, as mischievous a presence in hurling records as on any field, hadn’t managed to trump everyone as usual. Barry-Murphy was never much into medals and records but was surprised to find himself delighted by hearing that. In part, it came from having met Doyle and liking the Holycross man immensely: the fact that he never took himself too seriously. “He was good fun about it all.” But those run of Munster titles – habitual, they became – have made him certain of one thing. “The era of Cork cruising to Munster titles is over and we won’t be seeing it again.”

As for himself, what can he say? He just played the game the way he felt was natural and it all went right at a very young age.

“I suppose I don’t want to go into it to deeply but I prefer to leave it to other people to judge what I did,” he says finally.

“When I look at what Henry Shefflin has achieved, I feel like small fry at times. I had a fantastic career but I don’t like to dwell on it because it could be boring and I would hate to become a bore. I have made a policy of never, ever mentioning my career to the players because there is nothing more boring than people banging on about what they did themselves. It is totally irrelevant. And some of the lads involved now weren’t even born when I was playing. I don’t know what they think of me sometimes.”

And then JBM walks into the chill afternoon, melting back into Cork city.