Great to see Cork finally shake off shackles

GAA: THE MIDDLE THIRD:If you were a manager and you were given your pick of squads in the country right now and told to bring it home from here, I think you'd have to go with either Kerry, Cork or Tyrone

I KNOW Cork people get annoyed very easily because they feel they don’t get enough credit for last year’s All-Ireland, so I have to mind where I step here. But while I was watching them play Down on Saturday, I got the feeling this was the best I’d seen them play since 2009.

They reminded me of the Cork team that blew through Tyrone in the All-Ireland semi-final that year and put Kerry on their ass in the first 20 minutes of the final. They had pace and power and composure and finally looked like All-Ireland winners.

I’m not saying they didn’t deserve their All-Ireland last year. Nobody’s saying that. You can win an All-Ireland without hitting the absolute heights. In fact, it’s a sign of how good they are that they can win an All-Ireland that way. But a big part of people’s frustration with this Cork team is the fact they can win so much possession around the middle of the field and still not be putting teams away.

They win oodles of ball between the 45s, enough to win two games most days. And yet they still find themselves having to dig out wins against teams that aren’t in the same league as them.

That’s what happened on the way to the All-Ireland final last year, where they were lucky to get past Limerick after extra-time in the qualifier, where they were behind in the second half against Roscommon and behind every step of the way against Dublin until the last minute of the game.

Even in the final itself, they needed a massive second half to come back from three points behind Down and they still only won by a point in the end.

Honestly, I think the defeat against Kerry in the Munster final woke them up a bit. You can get into a rut as a team, where you know that just doing enough will get you the win.

Cork were able to come through all those games last year just because they’re a big, powerful side who will get a run on most teams at some point. But the way they played against Down last Saturday, it looked to me like they had decided to throw caution to the wind. They weren’t half as guarded as they can be, they played an open brand of football and basically went for Down and put them out of sight.

I genuinely thought they could have done that in last year’s All-Ireland final and I doubt I was the only one. That’s the reason why people have taken their time to be convinced by Cork. There’s such potential there for them to be a really serious team and we’ve had to wait until now to see them show it.

Down were what I thought they might be before last year’s final. I worried for them then they might be annihilated if Cork turned up. As it was, they did very well in that final but you couldn’t be sure how much of that was down to them and how much was down to Cork. The big difference last Saturday was they lost their discipline and concentration and as a result, they got hosed.

One incident really stood out for me. It came straight after the incident where Barry O’Driscoll, unfortunately, broke his jaw. I actually didn’t think Conor Garvey’s tackle was too bad at the time, even though you could probably argue it should have been a penalty.

But there was nothing cynical about it. If you’re a corner forward coming in so close to goal at that speed you’re fair game, to a certain extent. Not for anything dirty, just for a strong, tough challenge. That’s what O’Driscoll got when Garvey stood his ground. The broken jaw was unlucky but there was no way you could say the Down corner back went to do him.

But what came in the two seconds that followed was brainless. The ball came out of O’Driscoll’s hands on to the ground where Down midfielder Anton McArdle failed to pick it up. A very basic skill of the game, probably the first thing he was ever taught, he couldn’t do it when it mattered. But he’s a young player and you couldn’t hold one mistake against him and he might even have got away with it if it hadn’t been for what came next.

Dan Gordon is one of Down’s best and most experienced players. When the ball squirted loose out of McArdle’s hands it came to Aidan Walsh. The thing for Gordon to do was to bottle him up, shepherd away from goal and try not to foul. Whatever you do, if you’re going to foul, don’t make it a blatant foul. Don’t make up the referee’s mind for him. But what did Gordon do? He drew a boot right across Walsh as he was bending down to pick up the ball. And then he looked at the referee as if to ask what was wrong!

That was just a no-brainer and it summed Down up for me on the day. They didn’t think their way through the game well enough and so Cork gave them a trimming. The game took on a life of its own and now Down are finished for the year and Cork are serious contenders playing their best football in two seasons. They are very dangerous now, even with the few injuries they have.

Their experience of having won an All-Ireland will do them no end of good. Experience will get you through games you shouldn’t win. We did it often enough with Kerry and Tyrone are just kicking into gear at the right time now because they have enough fellas on their panel who have done it before. Okay, the stand-out players in their last two games have been the new breed but it can only be doing that new breed a power of good to have the old guard there along with them.

That old guard came through an All-Ireland in 2008 that wasn’t a million miles away from the sort of All-Ireland Cork won last year. They got beaten early on by Down and people wrote them off. They scraped through qualifier wins against Westmeath and Mayo. They put in a huge performance against Dublin in the quarter-final and from there on they played with confidence and won their All-Ireland.

I have to say, Tyrone look in the form for it again now. I wouldn’t have said that even just three weeks ago but right now, I would rate them higher than both Dublin and Kildare. When you’ve been there before, it makes an enormous difference. Confidence won’t be an issue and neither will fitness. Mickey Harte is using the older players in a very clever way – if he takes Brian McGuigan off the field, he makes sure Brian Dooher is on it. It’s not flushing out the old lads to make way for the new, it’s more intelligent than that.

I know Dublin work hard and have the Brogans and I know that Kildare are seriously fit and have been outstanding in the qualifiers but even so, I think Tyrone are ahead of them now. Put it this way – if you were a manager at a loose end and you were given your pick of squads in the country right now and told to bring it home from here, I think you’d have to go with either Kerry, Cork or Tyrone. You’d have to go with the players who have done it before.

You look ahead to this weekend’s games and can you see either of those three losing? I can’t. Kerry will have too much for Limerick, just as Cork will have too much for Mayo and Tyrone will take Roscommon. With all due respect to Roscommon, I’ll be watching that game very closely to see how Tyrone will shape up against Dublin the following week. But I would definitely be worried about Tyrone if I was with any of the other teams now.

As for the closest game of the weekend, I would back Kildare to come through it – but only just. I get the feeling Kieran McGeeney would have rathered a game against Kerry or Mayo. For one thing, Donegal are too similar to them for him to be comfortable facing them. For another, Jim McGuinness won’t be going in thinking Donegal are in bonus territory here.

They could just as easily go out in the first round of Ulster next year because that’s the nature of their championship up there so they’ll be mad for road in this one. I expect Kildare to take it though.

I can’t let the week pass without a word about what happened at the end of the Limerick v Wexford match on Saturday night. This is all getting beyond a joke now. I really think this might be the summer where things finally change for the better because there have just been so many incidents that have had a serious effect on matches and results. To be fair to the GAA, they’re out there on the ground. I see Páraic Duffy in the crowd at matches so you can’t say they’re sitting above in Croke Park pretending nothing is happening. But this was just about as farcical as you could get.

It was actually quite funny to watch if you weren’t from Wexford. First of all, the earlier point that the umpire didn’t give straight away was a joke all by itself. The ball went over the bar and he had it waved wide not once but twice when he looked up to see these two Limerick fellas running towards him. You could see him think, “Jesus, I could get a slap here”. So he reached for the flag as if nothing had happened!

I’ve given out to umpires before. I’ve played with goalkeepers who’ve roared, “Wide ball! Wide ball!” when the thing has nearly gone over the black spot. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen an umpire so rattled that he’s put up his flag after waving a ball wide twice. And then he was the one who came across and got involved with the point that decided the game!

For a fella who had been so wishy-washy on a point that had basically gone over the bar a couple of feet away from his head, he was damn certain about this one. If it wasn’t so serious that it finished a team’s championship, it would actually be pretty comical.

But I have to say, this was another mistake in a game refereed by Derek Fahy. He’s trying his best, nobody can dispute that. But it’s hard to argue that his best is good enough at this level. This isn’t the first time he’s been involved in controversy and a high-profile mistake. Back in 2008, he had not one but two red cards rescinded over the course of the championship – one for Marc Ó Sé (not nepotism, just fact!) and one for Dan Gordon. Yet here he is, still influencing games in the business end of the season.

I really think this summer might be the tipping point. At the end of every championship, everybody involved sits down to take stock of how the year went. I don’t just mean teams and managers here. I mean the lads on TV and people in the papers and on radio – everybody has to look at where they did well and where they made mistakes. The referees can’t deny there have been some awful ones this year.

People say a referee shouldn’t be the star of the show but I think that’s nonsense. I have no problem with a referee being a stand-out performer once he produces the goods. We’ve seen it so often this summer where a referee can make or break a game and we owe it to them to make their job easier so that they can get these decisions right. I really believe that if ever there was a good time and a right atmosphere to start giving them some help, be it Hawkeye, a video ref or whatever, this is it.