THE MIDDLE THIRD:Scalding showers and a shoebox dressingroom for the visitors, while Cork lord it in their luxury facilities next door – luckily, the pitch is one of the best to play on
OVER THE past few years, I’ve noticed something odd when it comes to matches between Cork and Kerry in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. It’s amazing the amount of Kerry people I’ve come across who just don’t like going there.
These aren’t fair-weather fans, now – some of them would have been in Thurles to watch the Tipperary game. But all in all, they’d rather head away up to Croke Park to watch Kerry play Cork than go over to Cork for it.
The problem is Páirc Uí Chaoimh itself. Logistically and geographically, it’s an awkward spot to get at. Obviously, I only have an appreciation of this since I stopped playing because for the first 15 years of my time going there, I got on a bus outside one door in Kerry and got off it outside another in Cork.
But as a punter in the crowd now, it’s a terrible pain to get in and out of and I think it puts people off. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people I’ve been talking to since the Tipperary game who just don’t want the hassle.
Funnily enough, I don’t mind it. In fact, it will always stand out for me as the place where I first learned to be a supporter after I finished playing. When Kerry played Cork there in 2010 and Paul Galvin had a great game coming off the bench, it was a blazing hot day and a great game of football.
I ran into Dara Ó Cinnéide afterwards and the pair of us were buzzed up and on a high. I remember walking back into the city that day thinking, “Well, this is okay. You can have good days as a supporter as well.” I had been nearly afraid that it wasn’t possible.
Playing there was always enjoyable – once you got out of the dressingrooms and on to the pitch. The surface is genuinely second to none in the country, a really good sod that guarantees a fast game. I remember we played a training game on it amongst ourselves before the All-Ireland final in 2006 and even then, in late summer, the pitch was immaculate.
But anyone who’s ever played an away game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh will only really ever carry one memory away from the place. Those dressingrooms. They have to be the worst in a major ground anywhere in the country.
I never actually got out the measuring tape, but they can’t have been more than 12 feet wide by 18 feet long. You stick 30 fine big bodies in there trying to tog off with backroom staff and all sorts in the place and, honest to God, it sometimes took two sittings for everybody to get changed.
The worst scenario would be for there to be a minor game or a junior game on as a curtain-raiser.
When that happened, any hope of overflowing a few lads into the dressingroom next door would be gone and it would be every man for himself in this little shoebox of a place.
Anybody who needed a rub would have to go in and lie on a table that had been set up in the showers or in the toilet.
And the showers themselves! Anytime I was in them, those showers had two settings – Off and Boiling Water. No middle ground. You’d often see young lads who haven’t ever had the pleasure getting in, turning on and slapping shampoo in to their hair, only to have to come away back out of it with suds everywhere because they literally couldn’t stand the heat.
You share the showers with the other dressingroom next door, the one the minor team or junior team are playing out of in the first game. So inevitably over the years, I’ve seen situations where you’re standing around in a circle, getting ready to go out and play a big Munster Championship match, usually your first big test since the end of the previous year. You’re there, you’re starting to get pumped up, in the zone and all of a sudden, you can’t see the man three feet away from you because this big cloud of steam has come in from the showers and the young lads are screaming at the scalding they’re getting.
There could be 40,000 people outside thinking there’s all sorts of careful planning going on in the dressingroom; meanwhile, you can’t make out who’s talking to you because it’s like a Turkish bath in there.
Meanwhile, up the corridor, the Cork lads would be getting changed in a fine big room with space to warm up and gym facilities in it. No fools, those Cork men. Over the years, it wouldn’t have cost a lot to knock through a wall and extend those dressingrooms out a bit and modernise them but sure why would they?
They have a torture chamber there that they can put the opposition into and they’d nearly be fools to change it. Even when I was sitting there and suffering, part of me was thinking, “Fair play to ye lads, no point making it easy for us.”
It’s the law of the jungle in that dressingroom. It isn’t like in Croke Park where you would have your own little private booth where you can take care of all your stuff and if you’re thinking of heading away for a pint or two after the game you can get dressed like a civilised person.
Forget about that in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. You look around for that nice shirt you brought with you for heading up the town afterwards and you find it on the ground and some lad using it as a towel to keep dirt off his feet.
It’s a good schooling ground and you learn to mind your patch fairly quickly. Before one Cork v Kerry game, Tomás Ó Sé and I found ourselves sitting beside Tom O’Sullivan a couple of hours before throw-in. Tomás slipped his hand into Tom’s gearbag and took out one of his boots and hid it, just to see how long it would take Tom to crack.
The background to it was that the previous year, Tom had brought multi-stud boots to a league game above in Longford and had slipped badly for one of the Longford goals. He had to borrow boots off Jack O’Connor for the second half and Jack wasn’t a bit impressed by this and got on to him about it a few times afterwards.
The thing with Tom is he’d never let on he was ruffled by anything but this was the build-up to a Cork game and with him being a Rathmore man it meant a lot to him. So we knew he’d be doing his best not to give away that there was anything wrong even though his boot was missing and inside he’d be starting to get a bit anxious.
As the rest of us were starting to tog out, Tom was there looking in the bag and casually having a peek under the benches hoping nobody would notice what was wrong.
We could see him laughing away to himself going, “How could this happen to me again?” To be fair to him, he held his head for long enough and never panicked and we made sure to give him the boot back before Jack got wind of his dilemma.
Cork v Kerry without Tom O’Sullivan on Sunday is going to feel a bit strange.
Once you get out on to the pitch, you forget it all. You’re playing on a good surface against a good team, usually in good weather and the games are nearly always frantic. I don’t expect it to be much different on Sunday.
Cork are a serious proposition again with the return of most of their injured players from last year and you’d have to think Kerry won’t be anything like they were against Tipperary.
One slightly bad habit that both teams have been getting into recently is playing a little bit shorter than they should. Kerry were almost paranoid in possession at times against Tipperary, playing short passes and not letting early ball into the full-forward line.
I think it might be a little bit of a hangover from the All-Ireland final last year where Kerry threw away their four-point lead by not being careful enough in possession. Now I think they’ve gone too far the other way and that won’t work against packed defences.
Early ball is the best way to beat massed defences. It won’t work all the time but if you can get Colm Cooper, Declan O’Sullivan or Kieran Donaghy on to early ball even just two times out of every six, they could have 1-1 scored. But when someone like Bryan Sheehan – as fine a kicker of the ball as there is, and who will be missed by Kerry on Sunday – takes a hop and a solo before delivering the ball, it gives defenders time to prepare and it gives tacklers time to get a hand in.
I watched the Roscommon under-21s play Dublin a few weeks back and you had to say that pure tenacity was what kept Roscommon close in the game.
Their intensity had a huge effect because it’s the one thing that can spread through a team like wildfire. You see your team-mates getting in a good tackle and you’re mad to get one in yourself.
They got in Dublin’s faces and made blocks and tackles like there was no tomorrow. They ran out of steam in the end and the scoreline did them no justice but I watched it and I can tell you they came as close to beating a very good Dublin team as anyone did all year.
How do you deal with a team that’s coming at you like that? You move the ball quickly. You don’t give them time to form the packs to hunt in. You don’t take the hop and solo that gives them an extra second or two to get close to you. When you have the better players, you trust them to be better.
Anyone who saw Dublin beat Louth last Sunday saw how they trusted Bernard Brogan and Diarmuid Connolly to win their own ball and go and get the scores.
I still think that Cork are under-utilising Aidan Walsh. Obviously there has to be more structure to it than just lumping hopeful ball into a converted midfielder – Walsh has to be taught the runs to make and it has to be worked on in training. He has to know that if a good kicker like Fintan Goold gets the ball out the field, there won’t be a hop and a solo but instead there’ll be a fast, sharp diagonal ball coming into him.
Even if Walsh doesn’t collect, Colm O’Neill and Donncha O’Connor will be sweeping in front and behind to gather up the breaking ball. It’s just that understanding that they need to forge and I think that’s much harder to do if they’re dwelling on the ball out the field.
The quicker they move, the harder they are to defend against. It doesn’t have to be perfect ball, it’s just a matter of players being on the same page. I’m not saying it should be random, just that over-caution in possession out the field plays into the hands of blanket defences.
Both Cork and Kerry will have bigger days later in the summer but this is one they’ll both be going all out to win. Even though Cork are favourites, I would still just about take Kerry to do it.
I think they have the quality to move on from the performance against Tipperary and to leave it behind them on Sunday.
Dressingrooms or no dressingrooms.
Upcoming GAA Fixtures
Today
Munster Under-21 Hurling first round – Cork v Tipperary, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, 7.30pm, P Casey (Waterford) – Live TG4
Leinster Under-21 Hurling quarter-finals – Offaly v Wexford, Tullamore, 7.30pm; Laois v Dublin, Portlaoise, 7.30pm.
Leinster JFC semi-final – Longford v Cavan, Longford, 7.30pm.
Saturday
Munster SFC semi-final – Limerick v Clare, Gaelic Grounds, Limerick, 7.30pm, D Fahy (Longford).
Munster JFC semi-final – Waterford v Clare, Gaelic Grounds, Limerick, 5.30pm, S Joy (Kerry).
Connacht SFC semi-final – Galway v Sligo, Pearse Stadium, 6pm, M Deegan (Laois) – RTÉ deferred.
Lory Meagher Cup final – Fermanagh v Tyrone, Croke Park, noon, S Cleere (Kilkenny).
Nicky Rackard Cup final – Armagh v Louth, Croke Park, 2pm, P O’Dwyer (Carlow).
Christy Ring Cup final – Wicklow v London, Croke Park, 4pm, D Hughes (Carlow).
Sunday
Leinster SFC quarter-final – Meath v Carlow, O’Connor Park, Tullamore, 2pm, B Cassidy (Derry).
Leinster SFC quarter-final replay – Longford v Wexford, O’Connor Park, Tullamore, 4pm.
Munster SFC semi-final – Cork v Kerry, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, 2pm, D Coldrick (Meath) – Live RTÉ.
Munster JFC semi-final – Cork v Kerry, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, noon, D O’Mahony (Tipperary).
Ulster SFC quarter-final – Armagh v Tyrone, Morgan Athletic Grounds, 4pm, J McQuillan (Cavan) – Live RTÉ/BBC.
Ulster MFC quarter-final – Armagh v Tyrone, Morgan Athletic Grounds, 2.15pm.
