Putting a cork in Kerry may be just the start

ON GAELIC GAMES:There is no reason to believe that Cork cannot repeat their impressive display last Saturday at the business end of this year's championship, writes SEÁN MORAN.

"IT LOOKS like every time we come with a good team Kerry's in the road. We came in the '70s and Kerry was in our road. We came with a good team in the '80s and Kerry was in our road and we've come with a good team in the 2000s and Kerry's in our road, but the reality is that Kerry's in everybody's road."

... - Séamus McEnaney, August 2008

THE UNDERLYING truth of the Monaghan manager's reaction to last year's qualifier defeat, couched in that characteristically curious blend of the blunt and lyrical, won't have escaped Cork football, but even if there is plenty of good reason not to get carried away by the events of last weekend, the slow evolution of an increasingly credible All-Ireland challenge is unmistakeable.

The county's credentials aren't straightforward, as the relationship with Kerry obscures nearly everything. During a decade in which the county has been eliminated by its neighbour in seven of the past nine seasons, and in the era of the qualifiers, it's been hard to measure Cork against the rest of the football elite. But only Kerry have been in more All-Ireland semi-finals.

During a bleak interlude in 2003 and '04, the county was sent packing from the qualifiers by Roscommon and Fermanagh, but otherwise the end of the championship road has always been signalled by Kerry.

Jack O'Connor's team was too below-par for a definitive judgment on what sort of a state they're likely to be in when the serious contenders start going up through the gears come August. But balances of power don't last forever and a shift has been due in Munster for a couple of years.

Twice in the last three years Cork have been All-Ireland under-21 champions and they were finalists the two years before that; that's four finals in five years and two titles.

Twenty years ago, the county was in the middle of its golden age. Billy Morgan's appointment in late 1986 was the beginning of the end for Mick O'Dwyer's great Kerry team. Fuelled by three successive under-21 All-Irelands, 1984-86, and a previous pair in 1980-81 (teams which provided the preponderance of the successful senior sides to come), Cork won back-to-back Sam Maguire trophies for the first time.

Nineteen years ago was the high point. Amidst the hype of the county closing in on a football and hurling senior double, it's easy in retrospect to forget that Cork gave Kerry an unmerciful, 15-point beating in that year's Munster final.

That was the day of the much-repeated heckle as visiting supporters began to slip out of Páirc Uí­ Chaoimh: "Lock the gates and make da f***ers watch."

Such exultation was never going to become the norm and, although the 10 years of Morgan's first spell in charge were historically unparalleled, Kerry eventually re-emerged.

Cork footballers have always occupied an anomalous space. Until two years ago the most successful county in hurling since the foundation of the association, it would without that status be regarded as a pretty strong football unit. But football is a minority taste.

Hurling may be similarly off the screen in strong football counties, but none of them have six senior All-Irelands in the weaker code nor do they have 10 titles at under-21, a total that puts Cork top of the roll of honour.

They remain a beleaguered community, constantly bristling against the slights - perceived and real - of life in a county whose full attention they never seem to have.

"I don't think it bothers us any more," said Derek Kavanagh reflectively before the county's first All-Ireland final in eight years two seasons ago. "We're just a close-knit bunch and we're well used to walking out into a half-empty stadium. It doesn't bother us; we're playing for ourselves. It might sound selfish, but we're not trying to play for the supporters. We're playing for ourselves and we want to win for ourselves. Simple as that."

Even outside of the county, Cork's footballers have struggled for esteem. In the 1980s, after their breakthrough in Munster, the failure against what was seen as Meath's harder-edged team crystallised in the 1988 replay defeat when Seán Boylan's team played nearly the entire match a man short after Gerry McEntee's sending-off.

Typically, when the team avenged that two years later with such perfect symmetry the whole thing might have been scripted - down a man after Colm O'Neill's early dismissal - the unalloyed grimness of the final against Meath, a low-scoring, foul-fest that with 69 nearly broke the free-a-minute barrier, served just to throw into relief the hurlers' joyously free-scoring ambush of Galway in their final.

They mightn't have let the county down by failing to secure the double, but they had done so with a lack of style, anathema to the hurling cognoscenti. This was a bitter irony, as the taunts dismissively tossed at Cork footballers was that they lacked bottle and were too fond of pretty but insubstantial football.

One of the players who didn't fit that particular stereotype was Conor Counihan, now the team manager. A hard and combative centre back, he deserves great credit for what has been achieved in the past 16 months since he took over in the chaotic circumstances of Teddy Holland's departure and another strike.

Last Saturday was Counihan's fifth championship encounter with Kerry in the short space of time he's been in charge and already the balance sheet is promising - two wins, two draws and one defeat, albeit in the biggest match, the '08 All-Ireland semi-final.

He has incorporated the emerging talent into his panel and created a genuine 20-player effort. His bench is strong and he's not afraid to use it. Physical strength, pace, awareness and a cutting edge up front were all visible - Kerry haven't been taken for such a big score since the 2001 meltdown against Meath.

Injuries healed and re-energised by the qualifiers, Kerry will still be in the road in August, as will other opponents, but this is a big, fast vehicle powering up from the south.