Anthony Nash
ROY KEANE MAY have left Cork to pursue his career more than 30 year ago, but the place never left him.
There he was on the TV last week, swinging onto the Lower Glanmire Road with Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher.
Is it mainly football and boxing around here, Gary asks. Roy looks incredulous.
“Ah Gary, anything. Cork is one of the greatest cities in the world for sport. I mean that.”
We don’t do self deprecation or understatement in Cork, definitely not when it comes to sport. Roy was very much talking like the local he is. There are other cities in the world which might raise an eye to this claim, and there are other parts of Ireland where our salesmanship does not land quite so well, but, like Roy, and most of the people down here I think Cork is a sporting heaven. You can play anything you like here, we have it all. If anything we probably have too much.
There’s barely a successful Cork sportsman or woman who wasn’t at some point nearly all in with a pursuit different to the one which gave them fame. This is a great thing, but there are also laments, and in Cork hurling now the main lament is Ben O’Connor.
We’re happy that Ben is happy, delighted to see this brilliant young man get a chance to realise his dream of playing professional sport, with Munster rugby, but from a Rebel point of view it’s inarguably a blow.
He is everything you’d want in a young player. He trains hard and with a smile and has immense talent and physical gifts.
Ben’s upbeat nature and work ethic help make him popular with his teammates. I saw this first hand with the Cork U20s. When he came back from his rugby sojourn with the Ireland U19s this could have caused an issue. It would be only human for a resentment to arise when someone can be absent so long and come straight back into the first-team fold while others are at every session.
Yet there was none of that. He bounced in as normal, got slagged over how his rugby habits could inhibit his technique in the one true beautiful game, and then it was down to work. And he loves the work, absolutely revels in the process of trying to get better every day. I know he’s the very same with rugby. The impression I got was that he’d play both indefinitely if he could.
He’d sometimes show up at a session and you’d ask whether he trained with his school in rugby that day, because you’d have your suspicions and nobody in any of his codes wants him overloaded. He’d say no, train away, then you’d find out he had in fact done two sessions on the one day.
Unfortunately there won’t be a Kevin Moran for the 2020s, but if anybody could have done it then it’s Ben.
Cork, like St Finbarr’s, have been waiting less than patiently for someone to fill Ronan Curran’s shoes. Eventually we get this teenager, 6ft 3in, 95/96KG of muscle, and quick and athletic with it, bags of hurling, and he’s gone. I’ve heard some comments that his touch wasn’t quite where it was last season. If that was the case then it’s understandable, and something that could have been readily fixed if he’d chosen hurling ultimately.
Ben played about five weeks of hurling with us this year, and a handful of games, including our Munster championship match with Limerick, Clare in the provincial final and the final with Offaly. He hurled in a Cork seniors A v B game and beyond that there wouldn’t have been much.
That he could be so competitive and at times dominant shows his vast potential, which unfortunately for GAA fans will be realised in rugby. I say GAA instead of hurling because, naturally, he’s a fine footballer too.
Ben O'Connor playing football for the Barrs.
Talented youngsters are likely to be talented across a range of sports and in “one of the greatest sports cities in the world for sport” many will choose something other than hurling.
Every hurling county has a similar issue, but it’s more pronounced here. There are some who you are almost sure could have been game-changers for Cork over a span of a decade.
Tomás O’Leary was a readymade star for Cork by the time he chose rugby with Munster and eventually Ireland.
Andrew Paton / INPHO Tomás O'Leary lines up with the Cork minor team in 2001. Andrew Paton / INPHO / INPHO
Setanta Ó hAilpín was a god in Cork in 2003 as a 20-year-old. What could he have achieved in the game had he stayed?
His brother Aisake is not spoken of in such terms, probably because he returned to play for Cork having left for Australia from 2005-08.
I’d have him on a par with Setanta, at least. I was on the field as a CIT teammate when he hit 4-10 against UCD in a Freshers’ All-Ireland final. He was frequently putting up outrageous personal scores.
I know he had his moments after coming back – Tipp in 2010 the obvious one – but the years away made it hard for Aisake to regain his touch, despite the work done by himself and others in the alley.
Darren Sweetnam was a beautiful hurler on the Cork team I played on. He left us to join Munster rugby in 2015 and his loss was felt; you rarely get such delicate skills allied to effortless pace and athleticism around centrefield. He was Tom Kenny-like.
Cathal Noonan Darren Sweetnam. Cathal Noonan
In no case did anybody begrudge the lads their shot at professional sports. To wake up and have your day built around training, nutrition, rest, recovery, analysis – without an eight-hour block to earn a wage in there – is quite the feeling. As a teacher I had a taste of it in the summer months.
Then of course there’s the money. I’m the same as most former GAA county players, who are the same as most people in the country. We live pay cheque to pay cheque; what comes in quickly goes out on housing and living expenses.
I know people who have gone to Australia to play AFL and come back with enough to be mortgage free here.
My friend Eoghan O’Connell is at a level above that. He’s carved out a career in professional soccer, he plays for Wrexham now and made more than 100 appearances for Rochdale, where he was signed by one Brian Barry-Murphy, another who chose professional sport over GAA.
A dispassionate observer would struggle to see how it’s even a dilemma for anyone. But the GAA does have its appeal, there are some who have preferred it to a viable career in professional sports. In Cork, Cathal Naughton is a good example. He was well thought of at Nottingham Forest but chose to come home.
I never got the point of having to make a choice but I did get across the water for a trial with Wimbledon FC. My height deemed it unlikely I’d make it as a keeper there, but even if the offer was made my parents were firm that I’d go nowhere until I’d stayed and done my Leaving Cert.
But when families are looking at a concrete offer from a big club it’s different entirely.
Overall, I’m blessed to have had a county hurling career. I love being a teacher, and if I’m honest my choice of career was influenced by a need to have a certain amount of free time to train and play with Cork.
The profile of county teams up and down the land now tells its own story. Take out students and teachers and they’d be light on numbers. I’ve seen people who work in trades arrive at training looking exhausted. Their commitment is huge, showing up to push themselves having been doing a physical job since before 8am.
Increasingly, county GAA is for those who have time to prepare properly – which means being at it for six days a week between matches, training and gym.
The modern working culture does not typically provide such time. Something has to give and it’s often the top level GAA career, after a few manic years of trying to keep an impossible amount of plates spinning.
The debate about professionalism, or meaningful semi-professionalism where players see some of the gate money generated, is a fraught one. There are valid points to be made for and against. An open, constructive discussion on the topic may not be a bad thing.
You could hardly say that elite level Gaelic games are decimated by athletes leaving in their hundreds, but there is an unmistakable trend.
Perhaps we feel it most acutely in Cork, and perhaps it is being felt most acutely now, but there’s something to consider here. When we watch our national games, could they be improved by more of the best players at any given moment being on the field?
