Guest columnist Tom Lyons
‘For 21 years is a mighty long time,’ sang Dermot Hegarty in his well-known song about separation, loss and the passage of time. Well, we might be a year short of it but 20 years is a mighty long time to be separated from the Liam McCarthy Cup, especially in a hurling-mad county that used to win All-Ireland finals almost for fun.
When Seán Óg Ó hAilpín, the Fijian Corkman, raised the cup over his head in Croke Park that day in September 2005, and gave a speech completely as Ghaeilge, did anybody in that Cork crowd even imagine that they wouldn’t see it happening again since then?
If you were 20 years old that day, the world at your feet, life just beginning, you are now middle aged, hair thinning, lines on your forehead from the trials and tribulations of finding a job, probably getting married, maybe building your own house if you were lucky, starting a family.
Now you’ll be searching high and low for tickets for your own kids.
If you were forty that day as you cheered the Cork team, now you’re probably a grandparent, looking at retirement, wondering how many more finals you might see with the Rebels involved. And sadly, many are the great Cork GAA people who attended that final and are now gone from us, never to have seen a Cork player lifting the McCarthy Cup again in their lifetime.
A whole new generation of Cork supporters who have never seen the famous cup being paraded down Patrick Street and up the South Mall will be in Croke Park on Sunday to cheer on a new generation of Cork players. Time moves on but it seems now like Cork hurling has been stuck in a rut for 20 years, a revolving annual nightmare as we watched
Liam heading off in every direction except south across the Blackwater.
There will be 20 years of hurt and despair poured into 70 minutes against Tipperary on Sunday, so I hope the Tipperary players have checked out their insurance policies before venturing out on the Croke Park sod for this final. Don’t dare mention losing this one to me,
boy.
It was Christy Ring, God rest him, who will always be the greatest hurler who ever caught a camán to us Cork people, who once famously said that all footballs east of the Viaduct should be punctured so that the big ball game did not interfere with hurling in Cork County. As football-mad West Cork people we forgave him for that because of who he was and what he was, but we can never forgive the people who keep trying to tell us there is no hurling in West Cork.
Oh, ye of short memories. Did ye never hear of Big Jim Hurley of Clonakilty and Blackrock fame, an all-time legend of the caman and sliotar? Or of Dr. Jim Young of Dohenys and Glen Rovers’ fame, a star of the four-in arow of the 1940s? What about the mighty Tim Crowley of Newcestown, the man of steel of the three in-a-row of the seventies, what a warrior! How about Mark Foley of Argideen who blitzed Tipperary in the great year of the double in 1990? West Cork men to the core and many more besides. Today we are proud that Luke Meade carries on a proud West Cork hurling heritage and we look forward to seeing him on the Hogan Stand with the Liam McCarthy Cup on
Sunday.
Have ye never heard of Jim Forbes, lived in Carrigaline but a native of Drimoleague, who was chairman of the county board when Cork won their last two hurling titles in 2004 and 2005? Do ye know anything about the famous, or infamous, Cork player strikes that led to those two All-Ireland titles being won, strikes that were sorted out eventually by chairman, Jim Forbes? We might not even have a Cork hurling team today were it not for Drimoleague man Forbes, rest easy in your grave, Jim.
Do the Cork supporters today need to know about those strikes? Of course, they do if they are to understand what a passionate hurling county Cork is and why 20 years without the Liam McCarthy is totally unacceptable to the many supporters who marched in those strike protests at the time.
Like the rest of the county, the red and white flags are appearing all over West Cork in support of the hurlers. The hunt for tickets has reached crisis point and if you haven’t one by now, you’re in serious trouble. No good chancing your arm and heading for Dublin in the hope of picking one up because even the touts can’t get them these days.
How to share Cork’s total of 29,000 tickets between at least 60,000 supporters will have the county board officials tearing out their hair in frustration. No point in emailing the board either in the hope that fellow-West Cork men Kevin O’Donovan and Noel O’Callaghan might
find one somewhere in the goodness of their hearts. All you’ll get is an automated response saying sorry, no can do, check with your club. God help the poor club secretary, who has probably gone into hiding by now.
You have a ticket and are tempted to sell it on eBay for the colossal sums that will be offered before Sunday? Don’t even think of it because you will miss one of the greatest days in the history of Cork hurling and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
Here’s to Sunday and here’s to a mighty red day from start to finish. Rebels Abú! (and has anybody out there got a spare ticket?)
