Now or never again for Cork

ALL-IRELAND SFC SEMI-FINAL REPLAY CORK v KERRY Keith Dugganon how everything is on the line for the Cork footballers against Kerry tomorrow and after getting out of jail they will come out firing

IT IS APT that as the Kerry football team rattles inexorably down the line toward greatness, Cork should be the team threatening to leave blood on the tracks. Kerry against Cork has rarely been a sporting rivalry to grip the nation and recent versions of the southern power struggle have been emphatically onesided in Croke Park.

The crowd of 35,000 that showed up for last Sunday's semi-final was pitifully small, yet another substantiation of the old belief that Kerry fans have the luxury of waiting until September to travel to Croke Park, while in Cork, the football team are rarely treated to the shows of public faith their hurling brothers regularly command.

And for over an hour of that game, the fare was dismayingly predictable. Cork had managed just one point in the 30 minutes since the second-half throw-in and the lone annoyance for Kerry was the dismissal of their senior man and cult hero, Darragh Ó Sé.

When Tomás, the middle of the Ó Sé brothers, cantered forward to deliver one of his trademark killer points with seven minutes remaining, Kerry had won the match. If you studied Ó Sé's face, you could see it. Ó Sé is too much of a team man and too respectful of his opposition to ever allow his expression to fully betray his thoughts but there was just the faintest trace of a suggestion that he believed that score marked the end of business.

Perhaps the fate of his brother crossed his mind in those moments: the anticipated Kerry victory would rule Darragh out of the September final, a miserable and cruel twist at the closing of what may be the last gargantuan career in Gaelic games (unless Tomás takes it upon himself to outlast the brother).

Then came those hallucinatory last four minutes and the sight of befuddled Kerrymen all over the field as John Hayes stepped up to kick the penalty that would put Cork back on equal terms.

In the clamorous excitement afterwards, it was all but forgotten that Hayes, under absurd pressure, executed a penalty of supreme grace and poise. Nobody paused to think about how it would have been for Hayes if he had missed. But he nailed it with a confidence reminiscent of the penalty by the German Andreas Möller that crushed England in the 1996 European Championship semi-final in Wembley. It was a telling moment which illuminated that Cork football possesses its own brand of audacity.

So much of the story of Cork football seems locked into the last five crazy minutes of last week's comeback and into that kick in particular. Because Cork footballers have traditionally been defined by how they fare against Kerry, they have so often been accustomed to playing with the courage and desperation of underdogs, a trait that disguises the quality and nature of their own game. That is particularly true of this team.

Even after their revolution in the rain last July in Killarney, when they stunned Kerry with that 13-point turnaround, their celebrations were tempered by the nagging fact that the Kingdom, the champions, would in all likelihood be waiting down the line to exact retribution.

Although Cork can push Kerry close in Munster, their experiences in Croke Park have been nightmarish, none more so than last September's All-Ireland final, a black note to close the latest and perhaps last chapter of Billy Morgan's long and inspirational period as torch bearer for Cork football.

All of those frustrations and angers fed the bravery and abandon with which the Cork players chased a dead cause last week and made it live again. They resurrected not only their own championship but also general interest in a shadow rivalry.

Surprise is an emotion you rarely see on the faces of Kerry football people and that is what made the closure of last week's semi-final so thrilling. For the second time in the summer, Cork had got their superiors in a flap. It was like watching a film star on the red carpet about to escape the last wasp of summer. Beaten for all but the entirety of the match, this Cork team would not disappear without leaving its sting. It did not quit.

"They had to dig very, very deep personally over the winter against a lot of odds," says Mickey Ned O'Sullivan, whose Limerick team was the first to feel the full hurt of Cork's liking for last-second goal raids.

"That had some kind of a profound effect on them, they stuck together when the authorities and the establishment tried to divide and conquer. That brought them closer. And it probably also taught them how important the game was to them. And so when the chips are down they are able to dig deeper and not accept defeat. Most teams would have thrown the towel in at eight points down with six minutes to go. But you could see they made a conscious effort to go after the game. I observed that as well when they were playing Limerick. The time was up and they came after the game. For a team to do that collectively, there must be a very strong spirit there.

"I do think it goes back to what they have been through with the All-Ireland last year. That was a very humiliating experience for them. And they appreciate the opportunities they are getting now. They didn't play well [ last Sunday]. And I don't think they can play as badly again. They had 44 per cent of possession for the whole game and Kerry were dominant. I feel it will be much closer the next day. Cork will take more positives than Kerry will."

For older followers of the Cork-Kerry rivalry, the pure drama of last week's match must have carried echoes from the distant days of 1983 when Tadhg Murphy unforgettably fired a shot that went in off Charlie Nelligan's left post to put Cork in front at the death in the Munster final, 3-10 to 3-9. Kerry had been four points to the good with six minutes left.

And this, of course, was the Kerry team whose reputation stands as vividly as any of the great Egyptian pyramids, the Kerry team with whose legend the current generation of players may yet draw comparison. Kerry had not lost a Munster championship for the previous eight years, and in the turmoil afterwards, as the victorious Cork men made their way to lift the cup, it could not be found. A replacement was hastily discovered and although the Kerry officials sounded genuinely mortified afterwards, their Cork counterparts were too happy to care all that much.

That match gave Cork football room to breathe but it is interesting to ponder how the local and national landscape might have looked but for Murphy's famous goal. Kerry bounced back to win the All-Irelands of 1984, 1985 and 1986. But for Murphy's intervention - and the immortal goal by Séamus Derby of Offaly at the close of the 1982 All-Ireland final - Kerry might well have been All-Ireland champions from 1975 to 1986.

It took Billy Morgan until 1989 to craft a team capable of successfully challenging for the All-Ireland, and once there, his team set a standard, winning, in 1990, the elusive back-to-back All-Irelands no team replicated until Kerry did so last year. That 1990 meeting between Cork and Kerry in the Munster final marked perhaps the sweetest day for Rebel football, as the Cork men gave an imperious display against Kerry, winning 2-23 to 1-11.

"It's a good job they didn't bring their full team," a Clare man told Paddy Downey, the Gaelic games correspondent for this newspaper, afterwards. Cork had lined out without regular starters Barry Coffey and Tony Davis. It was unfortunate - though perhaps faithful to the fact Cork football has had to fight hard for any scrap of recognition - that their grandest hour was eclipsed by the arrival home from the ItaliaWorld Cup of Ireland's soccer team. Half a million people were lining the streets of Dublin after a festival of nailbiting drama and internationalism that made the Gaelic summer seem, in the smallest sense, provincial.

After Cork had edged Meath in a granite and claustrophobic All-Ireland final, they had confirmed their place as one of the finest teams of the modern era. But it was to that sumptuous show against Kerry that Billy Morgan returned when reporters surrounded him asking him if this was Cork's finest hour.

"I suppose so," he said then, "but we played our best football in the Munster final."

Back then, that was the beauty for Cork. Explode against Kerry on the blazing field in Killarney or in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and you were free. For many counties, playing a summer football match against Kerry is the ultimate accolade, a rare chance to measure themselves against the best. For Cork, playing Kerry is a life sentence. And now, beating Kerry in Munster provides a temporary sense of triumph but also carries the hazardous consequence of a later meeting with a Kingdom team nursing a grievance. The recent semi-final meetings between Cork and Kerry have not been popular box-office draws and have also been characterised by increasing testiness from both teams. That was never as much in evidence as last week.

"When I played with Kerry, we only met Cork once a year but familiarity seems to breed contempt now," Mickey Ned O'Sullivan reflects.

"There was a meanness of spirit in that game I didn't like. This is not typical of Kerry or Cork teams. I think it is because they meet so often now, probably three times a year. And also it is because Cork have been on the receiving end of embarrassing defeats so many times. This is hard to take. And I am not saying Cork are at fault - it takes two to tango. But they are meeting often and the stakes are so high."

Tomorrow, they are at their highest. If Kerry are to reach their seventh All-Ireland final of the decade, they must do so with Darragh Ó Sé as a reluctant spectator. That will surely provide added inspiration but it remains to be seen how the younger players cope with his absence in a game of this magnitude.

A tilt at the three-in-a-row (and possibly against Tyrone, the Grim Reaper of the Kerry subconscious) awaits them.

But for Cork, the implications are subtle and perhaps deeper. Cork football has been nothing if not extreme throughout the decade, and the deep unrest of midwinter, with the players' strike and the slow resolution and the appointment of Conor Counihan, the steady man during Cork's bright years of 1989/1990, was indicative of that. They have been outrageously lucky this year, against Limerick, particularly, and perhaps even last week. But they have been equally courageous. And deep down there is a feeling among Cork people this team has an All-Ireland in them . . . if they could but escape Kerry. And so they meet again tomorrow.

"Each year it is said to be a defining match," O'Sullivan observes. "At this stage, Kerry have proven they are the team of the decade. But yes, it is a defining match for players like Anthony Lynch, Graham Canty, Nicholas Murphy. These are proud guys and they don't want to go out having been beaten by Kerry in all the important championship matches. That is why I couldn't believe they played as poorly as they did for so long the last day.

"I think they will come at the game positively from the word go the next day. If Kerry go ahead this time, there is no way they will take their foot off the pedal. So I think Cork will go for it. Everything - their whole pride, their existence, everything they stood for the whole year and last year - is at stake here. They will come out guns blazing."

For this Cork team, it is now or never, a last chance to land a win that would never be forgotten.