Walsh experiment paying off for Cork

THE FINAL day of the football league throws up an array of winners and losers. As fortunes see-saw and scoring difference tilts outcomes, the smallest fluctuations can have dramatic consequences. Last year Meath saved their Division Two status in injury-time against Tyrone.

This year there was no late redemption and the county drops into Division Three for the first time in more than three decades.

Kildare came within a whisker of losing out yet again on promotion until an injury-time penalty gave them the draw that stopped Galway achieving a swift return to the top tier.

But in the midst of all of these micro-dramas, Cork footballers were maintaining a remarkable sequence in reaching a fourth successive knock-out stage in the league.

Even allowing for the easier access of this year and the reintroduction of Division One semi-finals, enabling half of the teams to progress, Cork finished for the third year running in the top two of the division. In 2009, Conor Counihan’s first full season in charge, the county won the Division Two title.

There is a certain restlessness in the county with the predictability of some of the team’s play and on Sunday the crab-like lateral movement was less than exhilarating to watch although, to be fair to the management, the decisive score came through the agency of one of the experiments implemented during the season.

Aidan Walsh became a teenage All Star after his first season with the county seniors culminated in a first All-Ireland success for Cork in 20 years. His performances at centrefield in both the league and All-Ireland finals were outstanding.

This season Counihan has used Walsh as an occasional full forward to give the team the sort of outlet Kerry have exploited so successfully through the deployment of Kieran Donaghy.

On Sunday, a route one delivery went in to the Dublin net off Walsh and proved the difference between the teams. Asked about how he’s found the new position, Walsh points out he hasn’t had fully to adapt because of the team’s revolving attack.

“It’s not too bad. The way we play we’re rotating around so no one spends too long in at full forward. I’m learning every game and I’m starting to enjoy it more after every game.

“It’s about learning how to be patient, how to time your runs. I don’t know where I’ll end up. I don’t know is it a good thing or a bad thing because they can’t find a proper position for me!

“I had played there with the club [Kanturk] during the year. We won a divisional county. It was something that was different. I had played there a few times and I wasn’t really too pushed as long as I was on the pitch, really.

“The league is there for experimentation and that is what we have been doing. It is starting to come right now towards the business end of the league. Hopefully now we might get into the final. We won the league each of the last two years so it would be nice to get a third one.”

He’s looking forward to returning to Croke Park next weekend for the semi-finals. “It is probably the best field in the country. It would be nice to play there again. The big open pitch probably suits us a bit better.”

The GAA yesterday confirmed the Kerry-Mayo and Cork-Down semi-finals would be played at the headquarters venue at 2pm and 4pm respectively.

A Croke Park source said should Kerry and Cork win through to the final, a decision would have to be taken on whether the final should go ahead as scheduled in Dublin, given a match between neighbouring Munster counties.

The last time the counties contested a league final was 15 years ago and the match was played in Cork’s Páirc Uí­ Chaoimh. Should a decision be made to move the final, the likely venue would be Killarney’s Fitzgerald Stadium.

Since 1997 the football league final has been played outside Croke Park on just four occasions – three of them faintly controversial: in 1999 Cork exercised their right under an old alternating agreement with Dublin to stage the final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh; in 2006 when Kerry played Galway with a tea-time throw-in to avoid a clash with the Munster-Leinster European Cup rugby semi-final and in 2008 when Kerry and Derry played in Dublin’s Parnell Park.

The other occasion, coincidentally, featured counties from the same province, Cavan and Tyrone, and the match was played in Clones, as the reconstruction work in Croke Park was ongoing and had earlier necessitated the playing of the club finals in Thurles.