Easter Expectations

Joey: Look, I know you’re hurtin’ now, but in time you’ll realise what you’ve achieved.
Jimmy Rabbitte: I’ve achieved nothing!
Joey: You’re missin’ the point. The success of the band was irrelevant – you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way it’s poetry. – The Commitments

Well, eight months seems an appropriate length of time to dust oneself down and return pen to paper to try to make sense of it all. Before last year’s final, this blog offered up a hostage to fortune, enthusiastically penning that “This just feels different. It’s been that kind of year”, after the Cork hurlers championship odyssey raised our expectations of life, lifted our horizons and made us believe that the possible was finally possible. And writing on the back of the league campaign that’s just been, would it be courting even more heartache to suggest that this time, it really does feel different? Last July, we all hoped and prayed that Horgan and Harnedy would end that crazy year with Celtic Crosses but, as Joey ‘The Lips’ Fagan would put it, “that would have been predictable”. Now though, we’re a nice even two decades on from our last triumph. Maybe this way it’s poetry.

Not that we’re getting ahead of ourselves or anything. No, honestly, we’re not. As I’ve written before, the beauty of the league is often in the eye of the beholder, insofar as it can be whatever you want it to be. Limerick really lifted the veil on the whole charade when they failed to muster more than 1-12 at home to Wexford a month ago, In doing so, put to bed any notions that hurling’s secondary competition is anything more than that; unapologetically secondary. But try telling that to the forty-thousand souls that made their way down the Páirc a couple of week ago, or to those that made the reconnaissance trip to Ennis back in March. Try to tell them that it doesn’t mean anything. After twenty years without a national title, even a hill of beans can seem like Everest.

As is often the way with these things, the conclusive narrative surrounding the merits of the league won’t be written until after the championship. When last year’s champions Clare failed to raise a gallop against Limerick in the Munster Final, the talk around town was that they’d peaked too soon in the spring. That train of thought didn’t age well, as we all know. As things stand, Cork are looking to become the third team in a row to follow up league success with championship glory so no matter what way you look at it, we’re in a better place than any of our Munster brethren at the moment. Bookies’ favourites might be gilding the lily a bit, but maybe that’s no bad thing either. You can keep your long grass as far as I’m concerned, we’ve spent enough time crouched in there over the years to little or no avail.

But if we are to completely disregard the league as a reliable formbook, perhaps history can act as a more dependable indicator of what’s to come. If so, this Cork team are at a fork in the road, with the not-too-distant memories of their predecessors etched across the diverging paths in front of them. In 2003, Cork hurling supporters rode the crest of a red wave over three exhilarating months before it all came crashing down in the All-Ireland Final. Sound familiar? We all know what happened next and it’s what we all hope will happen again. Ten years on from ‘03 however, Cork returned to the decider, felling the behemoths of the time, Kilkenny along the way. They lost again of course, and that great Kilkenny team returned to pilfer the following two titles. And it took an awful long time for Cork to re-emerge as genuine championship contenders.

Who’s betting against a Limerick swansong akin to that of Kilkenny’s ten years ago? Or who’s to say that the champions Clare won’t have a major say in the whole thing yet. So don’t let the bookies and their antics mislead you, we’re long enough in the tooth now to know not to be getting carried away with anything. As always, getting out of Munster relatively unscathed is the first port of call and we’ll take stock after. Last year’s championship provided us with a peculiar rock-paper-scissors themed quirk, whereby Clare beat Cork twice, who in turn beat Limerick twice, who in turn beat Clare twice. In none of those six games could you say that victory wasn’t thoroughly deserved either. In Munster at least, styles really do make fights and Cusack Park on Sunday will determine whether Cork’s style has been adequately fine-tuned to win this particular fight.

As John Coleman kindly reminds us, “Clare has beaten us everywhere and in every way over the past few years. They’ve beaten us when it matters. They’ve beaten us when it matters the most. They’ve beaten us when it didn’t matter at all. They’ve beaten us in Ennis. They’ve beaten us in Thurles. They’ve beaten us in Croke Park. They’ve beaten us in a shootout. They’ve beaten us in an arm-wrestle. At times, they’ve just beaten us up”. The inclusion of Séamus Harnedy in the team for Sunday after only a smattering of league minutes says a lot about what Pat Ryan is expecting. Old dog, hard road and all that. But the idea that Seamie’s inclusion was even up for debate in the first place says a lot about the attacking options now available to the Cork manager too. One more in the form of Pádraig Power would have helped immeasurably, of course.

Before the team was named last night, you could have made a decent stab at predicting at least twelve of the starting fifteen. It’s been quite a while since we could say that coming into championship. Under Pat Ryan, Cork have continued to answer the questions that have lingered like a dark cloud over them for many years. Questions about their work-rate, their physicality, their consistency, their playing style. Incredibly, despite the noticeable lack of major silverware, it’s now over three years since this Cork team has lost a championship match by more than a puck of a ball. The one remaining question is whether they can win an All-Ireland. We won’t find our answer above in Ennis but coming up against the reigning All-Ireland champions on their own turf, coming up against a team who unfathomably are being written off by all and sundry, we’ll find out a hell of a lot too. About them and us.

On Sunday, Clare will be aiming to beat Cork for the fifth consecutive time in the championship. The last time they found themselves in such a position?…1999. We know how that ended.

It is said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Stop Clare from completing the five-in-a-row again and we might just have ourselves that fledgling couplet, that glowing ember that sparks the beautiful poetry we all crave.

Up the Rebels