Winning league title ‘not a priority’ for Cork despite 24-year drought

In the 24 years since Cork last won the league, seven of the other hurling counties have done so. Truth be told, most of them didn’t set out with any more or less intent to lift the bit of tin than Cork did most years. And yet there they were at the end of it all, hoisting the Dr Croke Cup above their shoulders and heading into the summer with their tails up.

Cork, not so much. Galway and Kilkenny shared last year’s plague-era league. Of the others since Cork were last champions, Kilkenny have won nine, Galway four, with two each for Tipperary, Limerick and Waterford and one apiece for Dublin and Clare. If only by the law of averages, they ought to have at least fallen backwards into a league title somewhere along the way. But no, they sit stuck on 14 titles, the same they had the day B*Witched went to the top of the charts.

You wouldn’t say it’s a stain on the past quarter-century, exactly. More a bit of a curio. It’s not as though Cork have disappeared from view. In that space of time, they gathered up three more All-Irelands. They’ve won eight Munster titles. They’ve been in four league finals. They just haven’t won any of them.

“It might not be too complicated,” says Seánie McGrath, scorer of 0-3 in that ‘98 final and selector with the last two Cork teams to make the decider. “I would say most years, we just haven’t been good enough. You can say nobody gets too upset about the league and that’s fine. You can say some teams need it more than others and that’s fine too.

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“But I’d say there’s a fair correlation between the teams who have been good enough to win All-Irelands and the teams who have been good enough to win leagues. A lot of those leagues, it usually came down to the fact that other teams were better than us at the time.”

Which is true, up to a point. In that 24-year period, the league/All-Ireland double was done nine times. Beyond those, the league runners-up made the All-Ireland final four times, with Kilkenny winning twice and Tipperary losing twice. At various different times, Kilkenny, Galway and Limerick have been the no-quibble best team in the land and they’ve had no qualms using the league to say so.

Initial skirmishes

Even when Cork were at their peak, that wasn’t their style. Back when they won their All-Irelands in 2004 and 2005, the league structure of the time was to have a second group stage after the initial skirmishes. They were unbeaten in their opening five games both times, before going winless and pointless the rest of the way. You could infer but one message – we’ve got what we wanted out of the league, thanks. We’ll leave the winning of it to someone else.

Otherwise, McGrath is on the money. In the years since that peak, Cork haven’t always had a lot of say in the matter. Plenty of those league campaigns faltered before they ever got going, others looked promising initially only for them to run into a buzzsaw in the latter stages. In 2015, they were the top scorers in the group stage, they had the best points difference of anyone and they put Wexford and Dublin away in the knockout rounds. But Waterford torched them in the final.

Anthony Nash made his debut in the Cork goals in the 2006 league and retired at the end of 2020. Through a decade and a half of league campaigns, he saw every colour and stripe. He has been a sub, a starter, a spectator and now an analyst for The42 and Sky. He doesn’t think there’s any big mystery to it – the drought is down to a combination of not always being good enough and not always being overly pushed.

“I think the 24 years possibly sounds worse than it is,” says Nash. “I don’t think we went out any year to try not to win the league. As a player, it comes back to that old cliche – you’re trying to win every game and you’re not looking too far ahead. But at the back of it, you’ll take a win in the championship over a league medal every time.

“Ultimately, the league is about finding new players, it’s about getting minutes into the players you have, it’s about prep for championship. I loved playing in it and I wanted to win every game I played in it. But the disappointment of losing a league game – even losing a league final – it never compared to the disappointment of losing a championship game.”

Some of it comes down to intent, some of it comes down to identity. For better or worse, Cork have always known who they are and how they want to play. They have tested out strategies and styles along the way, of course they have. But ultimately, they’ve been about moving the ball quickly, snappy striking, top of the ground hurling. Winter conditions have never been helpful in that regard.

“I remember we played Waterford in Fraher Field one year under Jimmy [Barry-Murphy],” Nash chuckles. “We had Pa Cronin playing centre-back and the weather was so horrendous that he was competing for puck-outs from both goalkeepers. Seriously! I could barely get the ball out as far as him into the wind and Stephen O’Keeffe was nearly bypassing him coming the other way.

“People know all over the country how Cork play in general. We like dry, hard ground. Look at the current crop of Cork players and how they responded when they got to play on a good surface in the Páirc. They beat Clare, Galway and Kilkenny and put up big scores each time. All of a sudden, when they’re on a fantastic surface without too much rain or wind, the Cork gameplan can click into gear.”

‘Baby steps’

Under JBM, Cork made league finals in 2012 and 2015, only to be heavily beaten both times. Oddly enough, when they went all the way to the All-Ireland final in 2013, it was a summer that came on the back of relegation from Division 1A.

“Jimmy always put a huge emphasis on the league,” says McGrath. “He knew we needed it in 1998. We were young, it was all baby steps at the time but we knew coming away from it that we had what it took to step up. And then 1999 All-Ireland flowed from that.

“He was great at postmortems after leagues. That’s one of the things he was brilliant at. After the 2012 league final, he just said, ‘Look, we’re after getting blown away physically here. We need to up it massively when it comes to physicality, fitness and everything else.’

“After the 2013 league when we actually got relegated, he sat down with Dave Matthews and we put in a huge block of S&C [strength and conditioning] ahead of the championship. We worked a lot on fitness and really going after speed in training. That turned out to be our best championship and we came very close to winning the All-Ireland. The gameplan never really changed, it was always really off-the-cuff hurling, fast-paced and everything else. But we always learned major lessons from the league.”

In the end, regardless of who you are, that’s what the league is for. Nash expects a lights-flashing, cymbals-crashing racket in Thurles tonight because a final is a final and once you’re there, you may as well make your presence felt. But championship is a fortnight away. As long as everyone stays the trip and comes home safe, there won’t be too many tears shed if 24 turns into 25.

“It’s a bit of a shame really,” says Nash. “My uncles would have played for Cork in the 1990s and they always said they loved the league and loved really going out to try and win it. So I’m a bit old-fashioned and you’d love if there was that much emphasis still put on it. but back then, you only had one championship match guaranteed so the league meant a lot more.

“It will never be like that again. You plan your season now for championship and you use the league to get ready for it. Every player will want to win and every one of them will go out to win. But it isn’t a priority. Limerick in two weeks is a priority.”

They’ll end the drought some day, maybe even today. But you wouldn’t say they’re gasping. Not for this drink at any rate.