Wrong About Everything

Back in September of last year, during the latter stages of a stag in Killarney, I found myself making a bet with a fella that Kilkenny would win the 2026 All-Ireland. He gave me 7/1. (I was convinced I’d talked him into nines, but that’s beside the point.) The logic, at least to my mind, was impeccable. Limerick were on the wane, Cork were scarred, Tipp would do what Tipp tend to do after winning one, and Leinster looked set to be another straightforward procession for Derek Lyng and his boys. The other fella wasn’t buying any of it. He was only too happy to take my money. Later that evening, I was inexplicably refused entry to one of Killarney’s finer establishments. And a few months later, with Kilkenny taking a hiding in Salthill during the league, the same fella couldn’t resist revisiting both incidents. “No wonder they wouldn’t let you in with opinions like that before half nine”, came the text.

The broader point is that, at some stage or another, we all chain ourselves to an opinion that, with the benefit of hindsight, starts to look a little questionable. Everyone has, eventually, ended up looking the fool. That, of course, becomes a far more dangerous game when you commit those opinions to a blog that has never pretended to be anything other than hopelessly biased. You want something to happen and, before long, you’ve convinced yourself not only that it can happen, but that it will. The Cork hurlers, over the past couple of seasons, have stretched the old adage to breaking point. Fool me twice? Serves ya right. Claims made back in April that Cork looked “calmer” and “steadier” now read as painfully premature. Praising their “mental resolve” in May now seems foolishly optimistic. Even floating the idea, only a few weeks ago, that Damo might yet have the last laugh now looks comically ill-judged. Predictions and assertions that, were the aforementioned fine Killarney establishment to request as proof of sound cognitive function, would almost certainly see me turned away again.

But up until about four o’clock on the 4th of July, all of those assertions still held water. Or, at the very least, they couldn’t be definitively dismissed. Then what happened happened. But if you’ve come here looking for a forensic dissection of precisely what unfolded, you’ve come to the wrong place. That would require watching the game back, a level of self-flagellation this blog simply isn’t prepared to endure. I didn’t see what Fitz was sent off for, and I’m perfectly content to keep it that way. Like the deciders of 2024 and 2025, this game will remain suspended in the fog of memory, blurred around the edges, forever hazy, and never to be clarified by a second viewing. The YouTube algorithm can continue serving up clips from the early 2000s and it needn’t concern itself with anything more recent.

Besides, there’s scarcely anything left to say that hasn’t already been said. Cork’s shortcomings have been picked over relentlessly over the past two weeks. Kieran Shannon, writing in the Examiner, hit many of the nails on the head in a piece that made for painful but pertinent reading, exploring the myriad ways in which “the psychological blends with the tactical” when it comes to Cork’s failings. Malachy Clerkin, in The Irish Times, posed perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all; what are they actually good at? “We tend to take it as read that they are littered with brilliant hurlers. But take out Fitzgibbon and is there anyone else who is a reliable lock for being the best in the country in his position?” So there you have it folks, the Cork hurling autopsy in three parts – the psychological, the tactical and, well, the hurling. And no Joe, fucking trains isn’t one of them.

It’s worth exploring, too, how, as Cork’s season unravelled before our eyes, the rest of the country seemed to fall over themselves with laughter. The simple truth is that, generally speaking, nobody likes Cork. And that’s perfectly fine. Why would they? Take any sporting giant, condemn them to an unprecedented barren spell, then throw in perceived delusions of grandeur. To everyone beyond the county boundaries, it’s irresistible viewing. Each new season promises redemption, each new season somehow contrives to end in fresh calamity. When Mayo were losing All-Irelands, they became the country’s darlings, objects of sympathy, the God-Help-Us’s of Gaelic games. We have never occupied that space, nor would we want to. Watching England’s defeat to Argentina last week offered the same spectacle from the other side. There was no shortage of delight as another self-assured protagonist imploded at the penultimate hurdle, undone by a second-half collapse, both manager and players seemingly incapable of responding to what was unfolding in front of them.

But while it’s only natural that the rest of the country would prefer to see Cork stay down, transposing that sentiment onto the supporters, holding them up as one of the reasons for the team’s shortcomings, is a leap too far. This blog has written before about the so-called “Hype Train”, as though that natural, deeply human response to promise and possibility is somehow a character flaw. One of the more tiresome narratives surrounding Cork hurling is the notion that its supporters are uniquely insufferable. We’re not really. Here’s the thing, you see; every fanbase of every sport comes with its fair share of gobshites. And so it stands to reason that the bigger the fanbase, the bigger the share of gobshites. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority  of Cork supporters don’t go into each new season thinking that they are going to win everything in sight, even if some of us can’t resist falling into the trap of believing that, maybe, just maybe, the glory days really are just around the corner. And some of them even get carried away enough to enshrine those thoughts to print.

Eamon Dunphy once considered Wrong About Everything as the title for his second autobiography, a self-deprecating nod to his willingness to put his firm opinions on the record, only for many of them to age spectacularly badly. One man’s “Ronaldo is a cod” is another man’s “Cork are different this year.” We keep believing, even when all evidence tells us not to. No doubt next year we’ll be at it again. Mistaking promise for proof, reading too much into the smallest signs, and convincing ourselves that the cycle can finally be broken. That Limerick can finally be broken. And again, we’ll probably be wrong about everything.

But even a stopped clock is right twice. We’ll take being right just once.

Up the Rebels