Looking beyond The Pale

The mood was lively and convivial above in Brannigans, that familiar haven just off O’Connell Street, the long-standing sanctuary for Cork supporters making their ritual march to Croke Park. Red and blue mingled, shoulder to shoulder, united in purpose. We watched with half an eye at first, sipping pints and expecting the script to hold. Limerick would stir surely, they’re too good not to. But then Nicky Quaid was beaten twice within sixty seconds. Suddenly that half glance became full attention, eyes wide and locked to the screen as the unthinkable unfolded. We watched, transfixed, until the final whistle confirmed it. Limerick were gone. The final installment of the trilogy would never be written. And in that moment, it was blue we cheered. In Dublin’s fair city…

Sorry, Limerick — it’s nothing personal. Simply business. And the inescapable truth is that the business of winning an All-Ireland has become a lot more achievable in Limerick’s absence. For years now, Cork’s fortunes have been inextricably bound to the arc of their greatness. You couldn’t speak of one without invoking the other. Every towering Limerick performance drew a grimace. Whatever admiration we held was undercut by a quiet surrender, the resignation that we simply couldn’t reach those heights. And when the cracks did appear; a rare defeat, a slight dip in their impossibly high standards, we pounced. Every hint of discord, every injury update, every whisper of unrest or slight possibility of a custodial sentence became a flicker of hope. A sign, perhaps, that the walls were finally beginning to crumble. The truth is, we have been consumed by them. Measured ourselves against them. Obsessed over them.

The greatest trick Cork ever played was convincing the world that a Limerick team in a state of natural decline didn’t exist. Who could have imagined, walking out of the Gaelic Grounds on the 18th of May, that Cork, and not the team that dismantled them with such ruthless precision, would endure longer into the summer? Who would have believed, after that flawless Limerick display, that it would be their last victory of the season? And who could have imagined that Dublin, so long the polite guest at hurling’s high table, would be the ones to deliver the fatal blow?

That’s not meant as a slight on them or anything, merely history. For more than a decade, Dublin have hovered on the fringes. The kind of side that counties with All-Ireland aspirations might stumble across in a qualifier or a quarter final, a side that might have been talked up following a spirited win over Galway or Wexford say, or even a respectable showing against Kilkenny perhaps. The warnings were always the same: don’t underestimate the Dubs. Still, more often than not, teams did — and beat them without too much trouble all the same. This blog has touched on Dublin long before: their tendency to wilt under the weight of the dark horse label, to come up short just when the next step seemed within reach. Never serious contenders.

No county knows this truth more intimately than Cork.  Since 2007, the sides have met seven times, each time Cork the favourites, each time Dublin arrived draped in the promise of an upset. It never came, of course. The pattern is etched in the record: in the modern era at least. Dublin promise more than they deliver while Cork, for their part, rarely dazzle but prevail nonetheless. Right now, we’d gladly take another of those unconvincing victories. Anything to return to the decider. Anything to rewrite the ending we were forced to live with twelve months ago. And if we can do so with expectations slightly dampened, maybe that’s not such a bad thing either.

If Dublin are to stun the hurling world a second time in four weeks, it’s not difficult to picture how they might pull it off. Since Niall Ó Ceallacháin took the reins, he’s built on the fast, hard-running foundations laid by Michael Donoghue and added a sharper, more direct edge. Sound familiar? In many ways, Dublin are beginning to resemble a sort of Cork-lite: pace and power around the middle, with a couple of big target men lurking around the square. That, at least, should give us pause. Because it’s exactly the kind of thing that has been our undoing this season. John Hetherton may lack the craft or guile of a Peter Duggan, but there’s no questioning his presence, or his ability to make chaos from high ball. We’re likely to see Dublin testing us early, launching missiles down onto Eoin Downey to find out whether the lessons of Ennis have taken hold. If they haven’t, we could be in trouble.

But if we can contain that particular threat, then it’s hard to see another upset unfolding. We should win, just as Dublin shouldn’t produce another of those generational, lightning-in-a-bottle displays where everything clicks, everything sticks and everything we thought about the trajectory of this year’s hurling championship blows up in our face. We’ve already been on the receiving end of one of those near-perfect displays this season. Surely be to God, fate won’t deal us another. And unless it does, unless Dublin conjure something extraordinary to bridge the 98-year chasm since their last victory over us, then Cork will find themselves back in the All-Ireland Final come Saturday evening.

Over-confidence? Complacency? Yes, probably. But as a supporter, that’s not only allowed, it’s to be expected and embraced. It’s weeks like these when the great hypocrisy and double-standards of supporting one’s team truly reveals itself. We grant ourselves permission to underestimate Dublin and to expect what we’ve always gotten from them. We’re free to make bold declarations of “Cork by five or six” in crowded pubs or hushed corners, maybe even sneak a glance at train tickets for the 20th of July and bemoan the price of accommodation for the same date while we’re at it. We can do all this and yet, if it all unravels, we probably won’t hesitate in pinpointing the cause of defeat at the team lacking focus, for looking beyond The Pale and falling into the very trap we so gleefully danced around ourselves. That’s just the way of things I suppose.

There’s no doubting it’s been a rocky road to get here. And we can hardly expect a Dublin saunter at this stage either. Still, if Cork can find their rhythm, the tune should carry us into the third week of July. So, Cork by five it is. And it’ll be Kilkenny in the final. Like in the rare aul’ times.