MANAGER'S REACTION:THE MADNESS of those slow motion seconds. Seventy one minutes gone in an All-Ireland final and Conor Counihan is running along the sideline in front of the Hogan Stand. Plans mean nothing now. Battalions of stewards stand in front of the team bench.
A huge black cloud is creeping over the roof of the Nally Stand. Cork are a point up and they have a free and all logic and sense decrees that they have it, that they cannot lose it now. But still. The thoughts that go through your head in these seconds. The voices and the doubts. Twenty years is a long time.
A lot of good men – players and sideline men – have poured their hearts into Cork football and come away with nothing. And this is Down. This is the black and red team – even if they are playing in black and mustard today. Down do not lose All-Ireland finals. A sweeping move upfield and a goal, anything could happen.
Daniel Goulding, who kicked nine quality points in this final held the ball. Counihan told him that whatever he did to kick the ball dead. The player nodded and blasted a shot that stayed infield. For a few seconds as the ball fell from the sky, Counihan was a worried man.
“Make sure it goes dead,” he remembers telling his forward with a grin. “Jesus, I will have a word with him in a minute.”
Like his captain Graham Canty, Counihan’s reaction to a momentous day for Cork football is restrained. It has been a long time coming.
“Relief at the end of the day,” he explains. “It is fantastic for the lads, each and every one of them. I spoke to them and we have 30 good guys here but there are a lot of guys down the years who for one reason or another we had to move on from and those guys are part of this.
“And the last 20 years, we were landed with a fantastic group of players. They made it hard for themselves but it makes it all the sweeter that they showed the resolve and got over the line. It is more personal as a player and they have taken the responsibility and full credit to them.”
Few teams of the modern era have drawn such lavish measures of praise and criticism as this Cork football team. They had the players and the athleticism but without an All-Ireland title, that big question mark was hanging over them.
In the first half of this match, it all but formed in the grey skies over Croke Park. But it was answered. And Counihan could have been forgiven if he chose to rip into Cork’s critics but it was plain that he had no interest in doing that. The funny thing is that the teak tough defender from a hard-as-nails epoch in Gaelic football believes in nothing more than a positive attitude. The outside stuff – holding grudges . . . it means nothing to him.
“I said last year when I sat here that it is a results business and the same is true this year. We have an awful amount of positivity from people in the county and beyond it. That has been phenomenal and it certainly helped us a lot.
“I suppose in a sense relief – you just sit back and enjoy the moment. Some fellas have a different way of expressing it – maybe at 12 or two o’clock tonight we will see them expressing it.
“We will try to hold it a bit back for now. Critics will say you should be doing this and that. If we listen to that, we will get nowhere.
“You have to maintain positivity. There are some who are quite legitimate and others because it earns dollars. Some people exploit it in public and in sport. Positivity is the key for us. If you surround yourself with positive people, you will get positive results.”
They got the one result that has eluded them in the past few years. And that has changed everything.
