There’s a scene in Brexit: The Uncivil War where Benedict Cumberbatch, in the role of Dominic Cummings, lies with his ear to the ground and hears distressed noises from a land uneasy at being a member of a large trading bloc.
This, to Cummings, was an unhappy piece of earth. It is not the only one. If ever a place needed to take back control and get it done and live forever more in the sunlit uplands, it is Cork.
You can confirm this if you are west of Youghal Bridge, east of Dursey Island and south of Charleville. Get down, put your head to the floor and listen. You’ll hear an eerie, ambient noise, with some groaning. Then it goes quiet before the ground clears its throat and says: “Where the fuck is Liam MacCarthy?”
Huh?
“You heard what I said, boy. Liam MacCarthy is the one thing I ask of all of ye walking around up there every year. And where is it every year? Somewhere else! Not here! Liam MacCarthy hasn’t been here since-”
At that point you’ll want to jump to your feet. Cork can go on a bit. But in fairness, Cork has a point: 19 years is too long a wait.
In the time since Cork have been All-Ireland hurling champions, life has gone on there. Good things have occurred. There have been births, marriages, parties, promotions, success in other sports, an Oscar has been won and the city dump has become a park. But the place is not right. The fish on the top of Shandon steeple sits askew. There are more minor collisions on the Kinsale Road Roundabout than in the pre-2006 era. The potato pies in Dinos are 1% shy of their usual level. None of this will change until a certain thing happens. This is as much a fact as the three subsequent facts that I’ve just made up.
There is a yearning for Liam MacCarthy that is as palpable as the curve in Patrick Street. It is a physical thing, expressed in moments like the closing ones of the All-Ireland semi-final. Limerick looked like they could well repeat the act of 2018. A look to the left and right in Croke Park and people were shaking, ready to levitate with the tension. A lot of those same people made their way onto the pitch after the Munster win against Limerick, ecstatic as something dormant in them awoke. It has been so long since they’ve felt so good that they had almost closed themselves to the possibility. Now they were back.
Their joy in the game, though – that never went away. Hurling is played by the living and the ghosts. You can sense this in loads of places. The Mardyke, though still in heavy use, resonates with games of the past. The same benevolent spirit inhabits a thousand fields and alleys.
The Roco ball alleys, in particular, side-by-side and sedate, seem to belong to another time. To approach the concrete walls down the leafy trail in summer would put you in mind of Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow. Not far away is the zip and bustle of the suburbs but in here is “like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream; where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbour.”
Then as soon as the ball hops off the weathered surface the pace changes and the place echoes with all of the greats and the strivers of the past; their trance-like pursuit of a clean strike and a touch that’s true.
The Transition Year Passion Project module have been re-creating old photos of the school. With a little help from the media class, they have recreated the original Handball Alley photo from 1945. The bottom photo was taken today. #OurHistory #Makethedifference #passionproject pic.twitter.com/5wuQttjaJB
— Rochestown College (@rococork) March 24, 2022
Everywhere has a history, a culture which can inspire and inhibit. The tricky part is to harness the best elements of your tradition but not be bound to yesterday. Modern but connected to glorious heritage is a tricky balance to attain, and it’s something Cork have struggled with over the years. They are not unique in this way.
If there was a moment when it began to turn for them this year it was perhaps the team announcement for the Clare game at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Six changes, which included Eoin Downey at full-back and Brian Hayes in the full-forward line. Was this a manager panicking after a poor loss against Waterford? You could have made that argument, certainly, but there was also a sense that maybe Pat Ryan was having his Jimmy Barry-Murphy pre-Waterford in 1999 moment. They might lose, but Ryan went with an uncompromising selection and trusted every instinct he had.
The day ended in defeat, but improvement. They at least looked like a Cork team. Pacy and conditioned as you have to be now, but also more menacing and direct. The three-man full forward line comprising the traditional big three of the city, Blackrock, St Finbarr’s and Glen Rovers, rhymes with history.
Alan Connolly and Hayes, in particular, carry the kind of threat that Cork forwards of old did: full of guile and bold confidence, not too interested in a point when a goal is there. Amy O’Connor has a similar presence with the camogie team, lethal and always a move ahead.
The mistakenly disallowed semi-final goal by Hayes was a high point for the combination with Connolly. It brought to mind O’Connor’s hat-trick goal in last season’s camogie final, Katriona Mackey running hard at the Waterford defence and flicking the ball across to O’Connor who had the swiftness and skill level to evade hooks and blocks and finish to the net. No messing around with superfluous movements in the poaching area.
Likewise, Connolly drew defenders with his aggressive running before hand-passing to Hayes who doubled to the goal. There’s a panache and substance to scores like these. They feed the myth of Cork hurling. Every sporting institution needs its story and sense of what it’s all about, something that goes beyond mere process and results.
Cork hurling can be a powerful enough old thing. There are times when the team is on the charge in Thurles, chasing down a lead, and the ground is booming from the Town End westwards. It seems like a force of nature, energy being transferred from supporters to players and back again as the roar rises and rolls.
Also, on a simple level, they are red. Big advantage to Cork, that – to be the only hurling county in red. It’s an in-your-face colour and along with their big following, it makes them a formidable sight. No county does a bandwagon quite like Cork, yet it would be unfair to suggest that is what constitutes most of their following.
Some 20,000 of them took it all in as their lacklustre side was swatted by Tipperary in the rain in the 2016 Munster quarter-final. Plenty stayed until the end as a strike-damaged side got blown away in Nowlan Park in 2009. Likewise in 1996 when they were getting hammered by Limerick.
There are more hard days than good for nearly every supporter base, and Cork have had their share of heartbreak since 2005. You’d hope that in the search for tickets, those who kept faith, be it through habit, love or madness, will get sorted. There will be an almighty scramble this week.
Cork people, it has been said, can get carried away with themselves. The mania can cede to hubris – long before they’ve actually won anything. I’ve not encountered any such behaviour this year, but it was a trait which existed – quite some time ago now.
One thing you could not deny is their general graciousness. Cork supporters will stick around and talk after a game. This good humour is likely rooted in the knowledge that they would always be back, and soon. That confidence has been fairly tested over the past 19 years.
Year one of the famine was 2006, a time when Croke Park pitch invasions weren’t entirely phased out. Kilkenny had just denied Cork three-in-a-row and ended their own famine – which stretched back all the way to 2003. A bunch of their young fans were trying to storm the pitch from the corner down by Hill 16 and the Cusack Stand. Ground security were perhaps a little too determined to keep them off, and I can remember a Cork supporter sitting nearby saying, ‘sure, leave them on’. This was their moment and as deep as the Cork-Kilkenny rivalry goes, there is a commonality that abounds. Both know the other’s plight. Hurling means a lot, more than it ought to in the grand scheme. To be without an All-Ireland title for a period of time brings a certain want.
Cork face Clare in a 50-50 game on Sunday. It will be another Munster epic, moved to a bigger stage. Who wins will be half determined by the gods of fortune. Should Cork lose then they’ll take their beating again, but will be a little more broken than ever in All-Ireland final defeat.
No county has a right to win every so often. Some, by virtue of their population, never have a hope. Yet when you experience something time and again and then it goes away it can be hard on a place. Nothing moves the communal pulse like the Cork hurling team, nothing binds the collective so much as the sight of the red jersey taking the green field. And you don’t need to be there to feel the tremor.
Some will get tickets for Sunday, some won’t. Some won’t watch out of due care for their cardiac condition. Some notionally indifferent people will have better things to do. As 5pm approaches, there will be yachts on the harbour, golfers on the green, cars circling Mahon Point. Yet they will know. They will know just like the farmer rattling over a field in a big tractor, too interested in his work and not interested enough in sport to be doing anything else. Should Cork win he won’t need a Google alert to ferry the news – he’ll know by the way the light hits the land and wind shakes the barley. A change in the state of play. The Rebels at peace.
