Serving the county with a quiet wisdom

All-Ireland SHC Final: Tom Humphries talks to former goalkeeping legend Ger Cunningham, now serving Cork as a full-blown selector.

There is a theme of tenuousness which runs through Last Man Standing, Christy O'Connor's wonderful new book on the lonely art of being a hurling goalkeeper.

Subtract all the horrors of facing Shefflin or Hayes coming at you until they could write graffiti on the whites of your eyes, forget about being able to hear every dissolute loudmouth on the terrace behind you, never mind about the exquisite humiliation of seeing a whickering sliotar go past you before you have had a chance to move, just imagine the slender thread upon which goalkeeping lives hang.

All of O'Connor's characters are dangling men in one shape or another. Goalies are the least lauded and the easiest damned of the games practitioners. If the great ones have a longevity which seems unlikely given what the game does to the nerves, it is because greatness under the spires is a rare thing. You might discard a slowing corner forward. You hang on to a good goalie.

Ger Cunningham ran and ran. He was there before they invented Duracell bunnies and he was there long after. To find him at Cork training sessions still, first as a goalkeeping coach and now as a full-blown selector, is scarcely surprising.

His presence is typical, too, of the quiet wisdom which serves the current Cork set-up. If you wanted a database of knowledge about the game as it has been played over these last few decades, a man who watched them all from the Cork goalline would be the first item you would install. He says he doesn't specifically watch the Cork goal anymore but the grain of conversation suggests a man who by reflex looks for who is to blame for goals rather than who is to bless. Enthralled as we all were with Galway's semi-final against Kilkenny, a nine-goal semi-final is the sort of event which leaves old goalies needing chicken broth and strong tea.

"From the defensive point of view, Noel Hickey was a tremendous loss to Kilkenny. Will it happen to us? Our most consistent line this year has been our full-back line. We'll be looking for our full-back line to be a lot tighter and not give the Galway forwards the opportunities they got against Kilkenny."

He notes by way or reassurance for himself that the Galway game was a good deal more open and swashbuckling than its counterpart the week before. Cork and Clare were tighter and more physical.

"We have to close down their six forwards a lot quicker. We know Galway have no baggage coming to Croke Park. They're a new team. If we let them into the game they'll show you what they are capable of.

"My experience is that I'd swap a win for a performance. The win is all that matters."

He is perplexed slightly at Cork's patchy performances in games this year and concedes that the localised nature of all their clashes hasn't helped.

"Local rivals might respect you but they don't fear you. That brings its own pressures and takes away freedoms. Maybe we could have been subconsciously waiting for Kilkenny in the final. Maybe there was that there somewhere while we thought but we were looking after our own end: concentrating on our own performances."

Towards the end of Cunningham's career it became the custom for the people who judged such things to examine every emerging young goalkeeper in the county and wonder if he might be the next numero uno.

Cunningham himself remembers having a bit of grub in Páirc Uí Rinn after a training session in the mid-90s. "There was a skinny little lad in goal. I asked who he was. That's Donal Óg Cusack from Cloyne."

Quite literally Cunningham hasn't a bad word to say about his successor.

"Nothing is ever a problem for him. His enthusiasm is fantastic. He wants to be the best but everything is done with the team interest."

That Cusack, just over half a decade into his own tenure , doesn't live under the shadow of Cunningham but harvests his wisdom nonetheless is a tribute to both men.

Cork have built from the back, wisely and well.