That Ultimate Freedom

“What we seek is freedom,” proclaimed one great Cork man all of one hundred and three years ago, “not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire, but the freedom to achieve it.” Above all else, that’s what we sought too, when once again we came face to face with The Treaty last weekend. What we came for was a performance, to close that yawning sixteen-point gap and to prove that if we crossed paths for a third time, a win might no longer be out of reach. No matter which way the penalties fell, what preceded them gave us that. Not the ultimate freedom, but the freedom to achieve it.

It might have taken the guts of two and a half hours, by which time the bus home had long since departed, when the roar came from the Clare End to indicate that for a second time, Cork had come out the right side of a coin toss. Finally, the game would be settled in front of the away support. In practical terms, it likely didn’t matter. This Limerick team has been around the block enough times not to be shaken by a wall of waving arms. But symbolically, it counted. Just one more of those little victories that had carried Cork to the very brink. It was only then that belief fully took hold. We might actually do this. We might actually get out of here with a win. And we’ll walk home if we have to.

There are games you approach with confidence, others with quiet optimism, and some with nothing more than hope. Rarely, very rarely, do Cork supporters set off expecting defeat. But how could we not, this time? Who could have made a sound argument that a sixteen-point gulf could be closed, and overturned, in just three weeks? To imagine anything other than defeat would’ve been to surrender to emotional fallacy over hard fact; to buy into that well-worn, much-mocked strain of Cork hubris that had the rest of the country laughing their arses off just a few weeks ago; to give in to that maudlin version of Corkness that Pat Ryan took aim at earlier in the week.

That’s not to say Ryan and his men didn’t think it was possible. In fact, I’m sure they believed it to their very core, with the kind of unshakable conviction that separates those in the arena from those that spent the evening’s preamble holed up in Myles Breen’s fine establishment on Shannon Street, comforting ourselves with the idea that sure look, we’ll knock another day out of it anyway. And as we leaned into the fated unlikelihood of the whole thing, they set about chasing it down, making it their business to turn the improbable into the probable and in doing so, making a fool of certain prophets of pessimism. Mea culpa.

To be fair, Cork had to do something no team had managed since 2006; win a Munster Final as the away team. All while carrying a growing injury list. Against a side chasing seven-in-a-row. On a pitch six metres narrower than Páirc Uí Chaoimh — not exactly ideal when trying to evade the human barricade that is Kyle Hayes. So, I’m sure you can understand how the scepticism started to creep in. What we, the non-believers, overlooked however were the tiny margins that can swing a game, the subtle shifts that can turn hurling on its head. Things that can be hard to quantify, those intangible buzzwords like work-rate, hunger and intensity. The kind you think you’ve got in spades, right up until you realise, far too late, that you don’t. Now, I’m sure there are more technical explanations for the turnaround that are above my pay grade but maybe, at its heart, that’s all it came down to. Cork thought they were ready three weeks ago. Last Saturday, they were.

They had to be. The scoreboard malfunctioning felt almost apt, as if the unseen hand had deemed both time and score redundant – modern contrivances that would only cheapen a contest this primal. Don’t bother looking up there lads, there’s nothing to save you now. Just keep going until someone, somewhere decides enough is enough. As for the sanctuary of the whistle? Forget about it. This was the jungle. Where the rules bend, break, or vanish entirely. Where anarchy prevails, and the only justice is the one you’re willing to mete out yourself. Tim O’Mahony spent much of the evening wielding his hurley like a scythe, attempting to cut through anything in his path. Gearóid Hegarty, meanwhile, spent his night trying to escape the clutches of Cormac O’Brien, who seemed to revel in the chaos, where the lawlessness only served as nature’s great equaliser.

If last year’s victories were shootouts at the OK Corral — sharp, clinical, settled with bullets — this was a full-blown saloon brawl. Glasses flying, chairs splintering, bodies crashing through tables. No rules, no rhythm, just pure instinct and grit. For Cork, there were a million ways to die just west of the Shannon. But they survived them all, simply by staying on their feet longer than the other fella. History tells us that we’re not supposed to win this way. Modernity tells us that Limerick aren’t supposed to lose this way. Yet we were all there to witness it. It happened alright. And it won’t be soon forgotten.

History reminds us too that beating Limerick in a classic counts for very little if you can’t follow it up. Cork now have four weeks to clear the wreckage, patch up the wounded, and chart the next step. In the meantime, all we can do is believe. Again. In that ultimate prize. In that ultimate freedom.

Up the Rebels