We should all be hoping Colin Corkery scores a gross tomorrow. Not because he is a decent guy - so are the rest of the participants in the Munster football showpiece. Not out of any Cork bias - when, after all, do non-Corkonians ever find themselves tending to pro-Rebel leanings? Not because he needs a break - the man has enjoyed more success than most athletes of his stature.
But maybe we should be quietly rooting for Corkery precisely because of his stature. In old Ireland, Colin Corkery would have been the ubiquitous 'big man' and in the modern GAA climate, that is almost a sin. Leanness, strength and speed are the great obsessions in Gaelic games today. Players and trainers alike talk in ceaseless amazement about the rigours they inflict upon themselves during the secretive months of winter.
Pushing cars and scaling summits are no longer de rigueur. We require more imaginative punishments to assure ourselves that the teams are striving for the necessary burnishing of the soul. We like to think of an average intercounty session as an episode of Survivor, but with O'Neill's gear and sandwiches afterwards.
A myth has been perpetuated about Corkery through all of this. We have been subtly invited to think of the natural marksman as a reluctant participant in the collective suffering. There is a tendency to imagine Corkery languidly floating a few frees at his leisure before retiring to a deck chair to sip on sodas and observe his team-mates running excruciating sprints and drills until they drop. And in the background Larry Tompkins, the sinewy high priest of total fitness, looking at his work-shy attacker in quiet heartbreak. It is, of course, all nonsense.
"Some people say certain things about me. That is up to them, it doesn't really concern me. Training is set out, I never miss any of the sessions and I do the same drills as the other players. Fitness has never been an issue for me, I feel as if I am as fit now as I have been at any time in my career," he said this week.
When Corkery was dropped for Cork's Munster semi-final against Clare, there was inevitable speculation about his physical state. Although he had enjoyed a central role in Nemo Rangers' run to the All-Ireland final, runhis training schedule was interrupted by an irregular heartbeat which was detected just before Christmas. and After he was eventually cleared to play on by cardiologists, injury curtailed his input to Cork's championship build-up. So being benched from Clare was not exactly a bolt from the blue.
"That decision was not all that surprising - my fitness levels had dropped because of injury and I accepted that. I worked hard in the meantime to make up the deficit and I am pleased to have made it back on to the side for this match." Few would contest that Corkery has myriad gifts and in Cork, there was some fearfulness about the decision to sideline him. Niall Cahalane, himself coloured with an addictive streak towards physical exactitude during his own playing career, commented that playing sans Corkery could cost the team up to eight points. As it was, Corkery was drafted in late against Clare and whistled over two steadying frees.
His presence attracted comments. If the average Gaelic football frame is 5 ft 11ins and 12 stone of mostly muscle mass, Corkery runs against the against the grain. He is a generous 6 ft 4 ins, big-boned and long-limbed and that he carries a reserve of weight is evident. But he still has the cut of an athlete, the balance and lightness of movement that attracted the Aussie Rules scouts when he was just out of school. In 1993, when he was noted as the discovery of the year, he weighed 15 stone. Now, his bulk is more ample.
Some of the comments were barbed - on television in particular - as if his ability to have an impact at the cutting edge of the game was somehow an affront. There was hurtfulness about the casual words thrown at Corkery. "Some people - one in particular - tend to fixate about this. He played in a different generation, in different situations. People tend to forget that this is still an amateur game, despite the high standard. The people you will see playing tomorrow are back at work on Sunday Monday morning. You can only be so fit. I am satisfied that I put in the work at this level. What others think is up to them."
Corkery is a true stylist, imbued with a casualness of form that is deceptive; he is one of those footballers who appear to do without trying. People always expect more. So bright was his first season - he starred on the side that lost the All-Ireland final to Derry and finished with an All Star - that it has been argued that he failed to deliver on his potential.
More accurately, he came through at the waning end of Cork's period of dominance. He appeared to have quit intercounty football altogether by the end of the 1990s and took little part in the 1999 All-Ireland run but the consistency of his club performances have facilitated a rebirth.
He is a scoring machine. 0-7 against Carbery in the Cork county final, seven frees against O'Hanrahans in the club semi-final, 1-6 against Crossmolina in the All-Ireland final. That match seemed to illustrate both the mesmerising and static elements of the Nemo man's game. "Ah, we were a bit flat. A few things went wrong. The extra time in the first game didn't help and we couldn't really lift it until the end and time just ran out on us. Fair play to Crossmolina, they took it to us."
Although Corkery drifted in and out of that game, it cannot be said that fatigue spent him. It was his goal that revived the city team's dimming aspirations and also he took the late pot-shot from distance in an attempt to force an equaliser. The shot went wide but it was a solid effort, it had a chance. It was not the feeble effort of a man gasping for air.
Free-kicks, though, are his true speciality. He is a sweet, effortless striker of the ball, one of the few remaining advocates of place -kicking from the ground, sending deft, unfailing arcs regardless of angle and distance. "I'd spend a couple of hours a week practising. I suppose I felt it was something I could do when I was about 12 or 13. I found that I began suffering from nerves a bit when I was a minor, in Munster finals, things like that, but I managed to push that to once one side and it's going fairly OK okay now," he says.
Many encouraging comments have been whispered to Corkery in the wake of the less than flattering remarks he has been subject subjected to. The attacker comes up against Seamus Moynihan, generally regarded as the most gifted defensive player of his generation, tomorrow.
"He is a fine player, obviously but I won't be too worried, the backs have their jobs to do and it's up to us to get the ball into our forwards to see how it goes from there. "Corkery will not be the most conventional looking full forward on view this summer. He is not modern in every way. Some might see a nod to Jimmy Keaveney, Joe McNally, big Geoffrey McGonigle, in his bulkiness, the GAA's last bon vivant, still playing Gaelic on television. Others might see just a regular footballer that who inclines, despite the endless hours, towards heftiness. Either way, it is tempting to hope that he has a field day in the Park, that he silences the mockers.
Not that he would rub their faces in it. Colin Corkery is bigger than that.
