CURRENT CLARE COACH and former Cork All-Ireland winner.
Donal Óg Cusack’s involvement was an interesting subplot to last Sunday’s Munster hurling final showdown in Thurles.
Electric Ireland Minor Star Award ambassador Dónal Óg Cusack Seb Daly / SPORTSFILE
Seb Daly / SPORTSFILE / SPORTSFILE
He’s now gearing up for an All-Ireland quarter-final against Tipperary and chatted today with The42 about facing his native county last weekend, being involved with Clare, his relationship with Davy Fitzgerald, the promotion of hurling and the role of punditry.
*****************************
How was last weekend for you?
“We’re desperately disappointed. We would have felt going into the game that we had a great opportunity of winning.
“You can always point to moments, both teams can, in terms of maybe if things had gone differently, that’s only normal. I think in the first half we hit the post. Cathal (Malone) got on the end of a good ball from Shane and hit the post. We got a point after that, but Cork went down the field and got a goal.
“And then I think there was a period before half-time where Cork got five unanswered points and we probably didn’t close the gap after that even though at the start of the second half we had four wides, dropped two balls into Anthony Nash’s hands.
“When you speak about leading up to it, I know there was a certain amount made of the fact that I was involved and being from Cork and my connections obviously with Sully and so on.
“But I just wouldn’t have the capacity to get involved in that. When you’re a player you’re focused on your own performance and I always encourage players to be selfish. As a player you have to be that in high-level sport.
“But when you’re a coach it’s different. You have a whole broader set of inputs that you’re conscious of. Anything other than that, I just wouldn’t have the mental capacity or space to be giving energy to.”
The pre-match parade in Semple Stadium Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Was it a bit strange to see Diarmuid O’Sullivan in opposition on the sideline?
“I know that would be the more interesting answer, maybe I’m a boring bastard. It wouldn’t enter my brain.
“I’m part of that Clare group and absolutely committed to them. I’m working as hard as I can for them and with them. If you stopped to think and said, ‘There’s Sully up along the line’.
“Now, it’s still the GAA right, and I remember there was a Cork supporter with about 10 or 15 minutes, and I can’t think of his name but I knew his face, and he walked past the dug-out.
“He almost stopped to talk to me as if we were after meeting each other down in Midleton. It’s still the GAA, right, and it’s still unique.
“But other than that, no, I had all the usual emotions anyone would have. That desperate feeling when you wake up first thing on a Monday morning at 4 o’clock and the thing that pops straight into your mind is the game and you start replaying it all over in your mind again.”
Diarmuid O'Sullivan was a selector on the winning Cork side Cathal Noonan / INPHO
Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO
Is it good now to have only a fortnight break before the All-Ireland quarter-final?
“Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s a general point as well in terms of the gaps between inter-county games, they’re huge.
“Our guys are training since October and not training handy, training at a very serious, demanding level.
“You kind of go through the phoney war of the League and then you play one game against Limerick, then you play in the Munster final.
“A lot of teams are even out at this stage, so that gap is a challenging gap and I think players, coaches, everyone prefers to be playing games on a more regular basis because that’s why we train, you know?
“The playing-training ratio in the GAA is crazy really.”
Clare hurler Shane O'Donnell arriving at Semple Stadium with his team-mates Cathal Noonan / INPHO
Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO
Have you been in to check out the redeveloped Páirc Uí Chaoimh?
“I haven’t, no. An alarm might go off in the place if I was within a kilometre!
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“But, no, on a serious level, a good few years ago I saw the plans when I was captain of Cork and was invited down to take a look at it with Graham Canty at the time.
“I think it’s great for the area. That whole docklands, I’m involved in industry myself in Cork and would be conscious of the need for that side of the world to push on and would always have seen that whole docklands area as a sleeping giant.
“I was talking to Davy Fitz last night and he told me he was in the stadium yesterday and that it was beautiful.
“I think it’ll be a great day for Cork to have a new stadium like that opening up. It’s great to have two big hurling games there now. There needed to be a new stadium, absolutely, in Cork.
“Whether, you know, other aspects of it, time will tell. I don’t really want to go back into that conversation, it’s well documented, unless you want to be bored out of your brain for the next few minutes.”
Clare-Tipperary will be the first senior game in the redeveloped stadium Gary Carr / INPHO
Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
What’s the buzz like about hurling at the moment in Cork on the back of a Munster winning campaign?
“Cork is a fierce sporting place. You look at the hurling team, you look at Cork City (with) big attendances (and) a lot of Cork people would follow Munster.
“Cork people will follow a winning team, that’s the reality. The team needs to be performing. There’s an affinity building with this team, it appears. The way they’re playing the game and the excitement.
“Cork is a big place. I’d always make the point that there’s more clubs in Cork than the entirety of Connacht. It’s a pretty big machine if it can get the gears together, that if it does start rolling, it will take stopping.”
Davy Fitzgerald brought you on board with Clare but you only got to work with him for a season. Was your working relationship with Donal Moloney key to staying on?
“Davy asked me to join him last year. I didn’t have to think long about it. I went and met with him a few times. I knew I was going to do it, I was honoured when he asked me.
“When Davy was leaving this year, there was a fair chance I was going to go to Wexford with him. Donal got involved, I worked with Donal.
“To be fair to Davy, if Davy put a gun to my head and said, ‘You’re coming to Wexford,’ I would have gone to Wexford.
“He was really mature about the whole process. He knew I’d only been in Clare for one year. I just didn’t like the idea that I’d be one year in Clare and then move again. It was very mature between Donal Moloney and Davy Fitz.”
Clare joint hurling manager Donal Moloney Tommy Dickson / INPHO
Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO
Have you been surprised by the job Davy has done in Wexford?
“No, but I’ve been delighted with it. I know that a lot was made about it during our playing careers that we wouldn’t have been best friends and that we would have sparked off each other a couple of times.
“It didn’t reflect well on both of us the way those sparks happened at times but I was very confident that I’d get on with Davy. Everything that I saw about him, whilst there are a lot of differences in our character, we’ve had a lot of shared experiences as well.
“I actually got very close to Davy last year and I’d consider him my friend now. I’m delighted for him. Watching any of the Wexford games, I would have been shouting for him.
Davy Fitzgerald with Donal Óg Cusack during last year's Munster semi-final against Waterford. Ken Sutton / INPHO
Ken Sutton / INPHO / INPHO
“The thing that I say to people when I talk about Davy is that one of the biggest problems that the GAA has is selling our games.
“Even being player myself, I could be accused of that myself. I had a bit of a Road to Damascus journey. Inter-county now is like North Korea. I’m a bit embarrassed in terms of how secret it is. If we had a successful missile launch, we’d do our best to cover it up.
“I definitely think that we need to go out there and sell our games. I was listening to the news on RTÉ One a couple of weeks and Des Cahill, who’s a good GAA guy, read out the news.
“There was no mention of the GAA. I sent him a text afterwards and I said, ‘It was a big GAA weekend… Why was there no [GAA]?’ He never came back to me, but, you know, he knew where I was coming from.
“The next news that I saw was on RTE and the heading was ‘Lions’. Whatever the Lions is and whatever that means, best of luck to them. The Lions were beaten, Ireland were playing Japan – that’s a challenge game that they were playing out in Japan. The next headline was that ‘Scotland shock Australia’ – no mention of GAA.
“I said to myself, I don’t give a f**k if Scotland are after shocking Australia in a challenge game. Where’s the GAA coverage?
“I think it’s something that us, as a GAA community, need to get better at. I think social media’s done a great job in terms of exposing that avenue.
“I hear the whole Sky debate. To me, we’re a bit bipolar. We’ve no problem paying to watch the Lions.
“I think it’s a good thing. I worked for RTÉ and RTÉ are very important to the coverage of our games but I would have said this when I was working for them, I thought the Sky deal made absolute sense.
“You need to have competition in the market. It’s wasn’t as if every GAA game was on RTE because it wasn’t. Those are the facts of the matter.”
Donal Óg Cusack and Donal O'Grady at the 2014 All-Ireland senior final James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Do you think hurling pundits have tended to be more positive than Gaelic football?
“In my view, hurling is as much of an expression of being an Irish person as any other. We’ve got our song, we’ve got no problem exporting that.
“We’re famous for exporting our dance and showing it off. We’re famous for our poetry. All those arts, hurling fits into that. It’s something that should celebrated.
“When I was a pundit, if I’d a choice if I was going to blow the game up or put the game down, I’d always err on the side of (blowing the game up). I don’t think that’s common though.
“I remember thinking, there’s actually beauty in some of the Gaelic football that’s going on there but it appears to me as if a lot of the tone within some of the football pundits is to ensure that they put those guys down to make themselves look better.
“I always thought that was a bit disrespectful towards the viewers. I think the viewers like seeing the detail and there’s a beauty in the detail of our game of hurling.”
Donal Óg Cusack became a pundit with The Sunday Game in 2013
Are you concerned that average fans don’t know the top inter-county hurlers any more?
“It’s a shame. It’s a huge issue for hurling. I know there was a couple of guys gave us stick in the Super 11′s a couple of years ago but I was making the point that you can go in to some parts of Ireland and they will tell you about everything about every game of hurling.
“But they could be sitting next to the guy that they’re talking about. They just wouldn’t know them. The game needs characters and I would throw it out there that if you’re looking at big characters in the GAA, call them out to me?
“When I was with Cork, my worst job when I was captain of Cork – one of the duties that landed on the captain that time - was to try and get lads to talk to the media. Leading up to a game, lads would say to me, ‘why do I want to do it?’
“Fellas were worried that you’d say something and it would be carried in a certain way. I think you guys (the media) bear a responsibility for that as well because I’ve seen it in my own career, you say a certain length of things in two different aspects, when you add this one and this one, the output is totally different.
“You have admit that happens in your world as well and I think that spooks players. I would always give out about an nterview straight after the game because the point I would make is this player has come out of a combat territory.
“Most of the hundreds of thousands of people that are watching it, are after sitting down after having their Sunday lunch. In terms of the paradigm that both people are in, there’s a fair distance between that.
“It’s very hard for the person who’s sitting down having their cup of tea after their lunch, to not form an opinion of the guy who seems very excitable in front of them.
“I would encourage guys to be smart. I would say if you think this is good for your profile, go out and give it the absolute most out of it.
“I would encourage lads that there’s nothing to be afraid of but also would understand fully the argument, and it’s a valid point to make, ‘I don’t want to do it’.”
Kieran Kingston with his Cork players after the Munster final Cathal Noonan / INPHO
Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO
Finally are you surprised by Cork’s rate of progress within the last year?
“I think they deserve great credit. I think the management deserve great credit. I think Kieran (Kingston), is a fantastic person, he’s a great man.
“I played underneath Kieran. Obviously I played with Sully, Pat Hartnett again, Pat Ryan really good coach, Declan O’Sullivan, I think they’ve a really good management team and they deserve great praise.
“I just think they deserve huge credit and congratulations.”
***************
Electric Ireland Minor Star Award ambassador Dónal Óg Cusack is calling on the public to log on to the Electric Ireland Facebook page and get involved in the Player of the Week voting as the final stages of the GAA Minor season begin.
The Electric Ireland GAA Minor Star Awards, which will take place in Croke Park on the 7th October 2017, aim to recognise the achievements and accolades of Minor GAA players.
The42 is on Instagram! Tap the button below on your phone to follow us!
Donal Óg Cusack - coaching Clare, praise for Cork, hurling punditry and Davy in Wexford
CURRENT CLARE COACH and former Cork All-Ireland winner.
Donal Óg Cusack’s involvement was an interesting subplot to last Sunday’s Munster hurling final showdown in Thurles.
He’s now gearing up for an All-Ireland quarter-final against Tipperary and chatted today with The42 about facing his native county last weekend, being involved with Clare, his relationship with Davy Fitzgerald, the promotion of hurling and the role of punditry.
*****************************
How was last weekend for you?
“We’re desperately disappointed. We would have felt going into the game that we had a great opportunity of winning.
“You can always point to moments, both teams can, in terms of maybe if things had gone differently, that’s only normal. I think in the first half we hit the post. Cathal (Malone) got on the end of a good ball from Shane and hit the post. We got a point after that, but Cork went down the field and got a goal.
“And then I think there was a period before half-time where Cork got five unanswered points and we probably didn’t close the gap after that even though at the start of the second half we had four wides, dropped two balls into Anthony Nash’s hands.
“When you speak about leading up to it, I know there was a certain amount made of the fact that I was involved and being from Cork and my connections obviously with Sully and so on.
“But I just wouldn’t have the capacity to get involved in that. When you’re a player you’re focused on your own performance and I always encourage players to be selfish. As a player you have to be that in high-level sport.
“But when you’re a coach it’s different. You have a whole broader set of inputs that you’re conscious of. Anything other than that, I just wouldn’t have the mental capacity or space to be giving energy to.”
Was it a bit strange to see Diarmuid O’Sullivan in opposition on the sideline?
“I know that would be the more interesting answer, maybe I’m a boring bastard. It wouldn’t enter my brain.
“I’m part of that Clare group and absolutely committed to them. I’m working as hard as I can for them and with them. If you stopped to think and said, ‘There’s Sully up along the line’.
“Now, it’s still the GAA right, and I remember there was a Cork supporter with about 10 or 15 minutes, and I can’t think of his name but I knew his face, and he walked past the dug-out.
“He almost stopped to talk to me as if we were after meeting each other down in Midleton. It’s still the GAA, right, and it’s still unique.
“But other than that, no, I had all the usual emotions anyone would have. That desperate feeling when you wake up first thing on a Monday morning at 4 o’clock and the thing that pops straight into your mind is the game and you start replaying it all over in your mind again.”
Is it good now to have only a fortnight break before the All-Ireland quarter-final?
“Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s a general point as well in terms of the gaps between inter-county games, they’re huge.
“Our guys are training since October and not training handy, training at a very serious, demanding level.
“You kind of go through the phoney war of the League and then you play one game against Limerick, then you play in the Munster final.
“A lot of teams are even out at this stage, so that gap is a challenging gap and I think players, coaches, everyone prefers to be playing games on a more regular basis because that’s why we train, you know?
“The playing-training ratio in the GAA is crazy really.”
Have you been in to check out the redeveloped Páirc Uí Chaoimh?
“I haven’t, no. An alarm might go off in the place if I was within a kilometre!
“But, no, on a serious level, a good few years ago I saw the plans when I was captain of Cork and was invited down to take a look at it with Graham Canty at the time.
“I think it’s great for the area. That whole docklands, I’m involved in industry myself in Cork and would be conscious of the need for that side of the world to push on and would always have seen that whole docklands area as a sleeping giant.
“I was talking to Davy Fitz last night and he told me he was in the stadium yesterday and that it was beautiful.
“I think it’ll be a great day for Cork to have a new stadium like that opening up. It’s great to have two big hurling games there now. There needed to be a new stadium, absolutely, in Cork.
“Whether, you know, other aspects of it, time will tell. I don’t really want to go back into that conversation, it’s well documented, unless you want to be bored out of your brain for the next few minutes.”
What’s the buzz like about hurling at the moment in Cork on the back of a Munster winning campaign?
“Cork is a fierce sporting place. You look at the hurling team, you look at Cork City (with) big attendances (and) a lot of Cork people would follow Munster.
“Cork people will follow a winning team, that’s the reality. The team needs to be performing. There’s an affinity building with this team, it appears. The way they’re playing the game and the excitement.
“Cork is a big place. I’d always make the point that there’s more clubs in Cork than the entirety of Connacht. It’s a pretty big machine if it can get the gears together, that if it does start rolling, it will take stopping.”
Davy Fitzgerald brought you on board with Clare but you only got to work with him for a season. Was your working relationship with Donal Moloney key to staying on?
“Davy asked me to join him last year. I didn’t have to think long about it. I went and met with him a few times. I knew I was going to do it, I was honoured when he asked me.
“When Davy was leaving this year, there was a fair chance I was going to go to Wexford with him. Donal got involved, I worked with Donal.
“To be fair to Davy, if Davy put a gun to my head and said, ‘You’re coming to Wexford,’ I would have gone to Wexford.
“He was really mature about the whole process. He knew I’d only been in Clare for one year. I just didn’t like the idea that I’d be one year in Clare and then move again. It was very mature between Donal Moloney and Davy Fitz.”
Have you been surprised by the job Davy has done in Wexford?
“No, but I’ve been delighted with it. I know that a lot was made about it during our playing careers that we wouldn’t have been best friends and that we would have sparked off each other a couple of times.
“It didn’t reflect well on both of us the way those sparks happened at times but I was very confident that I’d get on with Davy. Everything that I saw about him, whilst there are a lot of differences in our character, we’ve had a lot of shared experiences as well.
“I actually got very close to Davy last year and I’d consider him my friend now. I’m delighted for him. Watching any of the Wexford games, I would have been shouting for him.
“The thing that I say to people when I talk about Davy is that one of the biggest problems that the GAA has is selling our games.
“Even being player myself, I could be accused of that myself. I had a bit of a Road to Damascus journey. Inter-county now is like North Korea. I’m a bit embarrassed in terms of how secret it is. If we had a successful missile launch, we’d do our best to cover it up.
“I definitely think that we need to go out there and sell our games. I was listening to the news on RTÉ One a couple of weeks and Des Cahill, who’s a good GAA guy, read out the news.
“There was no mention of the GAA. I sent him a text afterwards and I said, ‘It was a big GAA weekend… Why was there no [GAA]?’ He never came back to me, but, you know, he knew where I was coming from.
“The next news that I saw was on RTE and the heading was ‘Lions’. Whatever the Lions is and whatever that means, best of luck to them. The Lions were beaten, Ireland were playing Japan – that’s a challenge game that they were playing out in Japan. The next headline was that ‘Scotland shock Australia’ – no mention of GAA.
“I said to myself, I don’t give a f**k if Scotland are after shocking Australia in a challenge game. Where’s the GAA coverage?
“I think it’s something that us, as a GAA community, need to get better at. I think social media’s done a great job in terms of exposing that avenue.
“I hear the whole Sky debate. To me, we’re a bit bipolar. We’ve no problem paying to watch the Lions.
“I think it’s a good thing. I worked for RTÉ and RTÉ are very important to the coverage of our games but I would have said this when I was working for them, I thought the Sky deal made absolute sense.
“You need to have competition in the market. It’s wasn’t as if every GAA game was on RTE because it wasn’t. Those are the facts of the matter.”
Do you think hurling pundits have tended to be more positive than Gaelic football?
“In my view, hurling is as much of an expression of being an Irish person as any other. We’ve got our song, we’ve got no problem exporting that.
“We’re famous for exporting our dance and showing it off. We’re famous for our poetry. All those arts, hurling fits into that. It’s something that should celebrated.
“When I was a pundit, if I’d a choice if I was going to blow the game up or put the game down, I’d always err on the side of (blowing the game up). I don’t think that’s common though.
“I remember thinking, there’s actually beauty in some of the Gaelic football that’s going on there but it appears to me as if a lot of the tone within some of the football pundits is to ensure that they put those guys down to make themselves look better.
“I always thought that was a bit disrespectful towards the viewers. I think the viewers like seeing the detail and there’s a beauty in the detail of our game of hurling.”
Are you concerned that average fans don’t know the top inter-county hurlers any more?
“It’s a shame. It’s a huge issue for hurling. I know there was a couple of guys gave us stick in the Super 11′s a couple of years ago but I was making the point that you can go in to some parts of Ireland and they will tell you about everything about every game of hurling.
“But they could be sitting next to the guy that they’re talking about. They just wouldn’t know them. The game needs characters and I would throw it out there that if you’re looking at big characters in the GAA, call them out to me?
“When I was with Cork, my worst job when I was captain of Cork – one of the duties that landed on the captain that time - was to try and get lads to talk to the media. Leading up to a game, lads would say to me, ‘why do I want to do it?’
“Fellas were worried that you’d say something and it would be carried in a certain way. I think you guys (the media) bear a responsibility for that as well because I’ve seen it in my own career, you say a certain length of things in two different aspects, when you add this one and this one, the output is totally different.
“You have admit that happens in your world as well and I think that spooks players. I would always give out about an nterview straight after the game because the point I would make is this player has come out of a combat territory.
“Most of the hundreds of thousands of people that are watching it, are after sitting down after having their Sunday lunch. In terms of the paradigm that both people are in, there’s a fair distance between that.
“It’s very hard for the person who’s sitting down having their cup of tea after their lunch, to not form an opinion of the guy who seems very excitable in front of them.
“I would encourage guys to be smart. I would say if you think this is good for your profile, go out and give it the absolute most out of it.
“I would encourage lads that there’s nothing to be afraid of but also would understand fully the argument, and it’s a valid point to make, ‘I don’t want to do it’.”
Finally are you surprised by Cork’s rate of progress within the last year?
“I think they deserve great credit. I think the management deserve great credit. I think Kieran (Kingston), is a fantastic person, he’s a great man.
“I played underneath Kieran. Obviously I played with Sully, Pat Hartnett again, Pat Ryan really good coach, Declan O’Sullivan, I think they’ve a really good management team and they deserve great praise.
“I just think they deserve huge credit and congratulations.”
***************
Electric Ireland Minor Star Award ambassador Dónal Óg Cusack is calling on the public to log on to the Electric Ireland Facebook page and get involved in the Player of the Week voting as the final stages of the GAA Minor season begin.
The Electric Ireland GAA Minor Star Awards, which will take place in Croke Park on the 7th October 2017, aim to recognise the achievements and accolades of Minor GAA players.
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clash of the ash Munster SHC Hurling Clare Cork