‘ANY day you go out against Kerry and you have a 50/50 chance you are in a good place,’ Micheál O’Sullivan suggests. Experience has taught him that. First, as a player. Then a manager. Even then, the odds often favour the neighbours.
The former Cork footballer doesn’t see this Saturday’s Munster senior football semi-final as quite the 50/50 game given the gulf between the teams, but still maintains the Rebels can rattle the crowd across the county bounds. It’s hope rather than expectation, but this is the reality of life as a Cork football supporter right now – it’s the result of just one win in the last 12 championship games against Kerry.
He’s been a Cork player and a manager, though the Rosscarbery man is a fan, too. He’ll be in Páirc Uí Chaoimh this Saturday evening as Cork take on their greatest rivals in a game, O’Sullivan concedes, meant more in the past.
‘Without a doubt, the Kerry game was always the biggest one of the year; it was the game you wanted to play in,’ O’Sullivan says, in a wistful tone to a former era when Cork v Kerry was the only show in town.
‘There was an edge to the game, your season rested on the result and that led to the fury on the pitch.
‘But the bite that was there back then is not here now. There are more sports on TV, more things to pull people in directions, and people can’t afford to go to every game. The downgrading of the Munster championship hasn’t helped either.’
Micheál O'Sullivan captained Carbery to county senior football glory in 2004.
The bite was certainly there when the counties clashed in the 1999 Munster football final at the old Páirc Uí Chaoimh in front of 42,755 supporters – that was the July Sunday a 21-year-old young buck from Rosscarbery announced his arrival as a Cork footballer. His greatest day for his county? Hard to argue with that.
‘It was different back then, you nearly had to fight your way out through the tunnel to get onto the pitch, and then fight your way back in afterwards because all the crowd was in the tunnel – the supporters couldn’t get any closer to the players!’ he recalls of the journey from the dressing-room to the pitch in the old version of the Páirc.
‘We had won the national league already that season so the Cork support was right behind us. We looked like we could have a right cut off Kerry who had won the All-Ireland only two years before that. In fairness, we were supremely conditioned. No-one was going to outrun us or outfight us. It was a case of would we have the level of football required on the day? As it turned out, we did.’
The Carbery Rangers man, in his first season with the Cork seniors, emerged as man of the match, a central figure in the 2-10 to 2-4 triumph. In midfield alongside Nicholas Murphy, they were up against Darragh Ó Sé and Donal Daly. O’Sullivan dominated. One of his finest hours.
‘The revelation of this final and man of the match for all the experts. Kerry had destroyed Cork at midfield last season and were expected to do likewise … (O’Sullivan) totally blotted out Darragh Ó Sé, football wise and physical wise … a performance every player dreams of but few attain,’ gushed The Southern Star’s player ratings.
How The Southern Star reported Cork's 1999 Munster SFC win against Kerry.
The groundwork for O’Sullivan’s tour-de-force against the rising force in the Kerry midfield started earlier in the year.
‘It wasn’t the first time that year Darragh and myself had come across each other,’ he recalls.
‘There was an opening of a GAA ground in Mayfield and Kerry came down to play Cork – that was the first time I came across Darragh and I learned a lot regarding his strengths. He was extremely powerful under the ball, an outstanding fielder, and a very good footballer if he was left to play.
‘We had a very simple plan to counter his fielding ability. Between Ciarán O’Sullivan and Martin Cronin, our wings backs, they pulled into the 45 or even beyond the 45, and I stood in the middle and all Kevin O’Dwyer did was pop it out over their heads. If you look back on that day, most of the ball I took that day was either into my chest or hopping on the ground. It negated Darragh’s strength which was the floating ball up in the air.’
That was a glorious day when all the pieces of the jigsaw came together. As a kid he spent countless hours kicking a football against a red loft door outside in the yard at home, practicing his straight punt kick and outside-of-the-right pass. Years later advice he got from Ciarán O’Sullivan stuck in his head: to perform a skill under pressure, you have to practice, practice, practice. All separate moments that joined together and made the difference on one of the biggest occasions there was: Munster football final day.
For a 21-year-old junior club footballer to be named man of the match in his first Munster final in his first season at senior level and to beat Kerry (and end their season in pre-backdoor days) in a rocking Páirc Uí Chaoimh, it doesn’t get much better than that. They partied like it was 1999.
‘It was a dream come true to be called into the squad in the first place,’ O’Sullivan recalls, after two years as a Cork U21, while Carbery Rangers won the West Cork junior A football title in 1998. Soon after, Cork manager Larry Tompkins drafted the Ross man into the senior squad.
‘When we were U21 I was lucky I was on a talented team. You have the likes of Anthony Lynch, Micheál Ó Croinín, Nicholas Murphy, Philip Clifford and Brendan Jer O’Sullivan, and we all came out of U21 at the same time. A group of us went in together so that made the transition a little bit more comfortable because we were all very familiar with each other.
‘There were massive characters in that Cork dressing-room. Steven O’Brien. Colin Corkery. Ciarán O’Sullivan. Don Davis. Huge leaders, big talkers. They were the established players, and then you had that younger cohort.’
When O’Sullivan got his chance in the league that started in ’98 and finished in ’99, he grabbed it. His performances earned him an All-Star nomination in ’99 when Cork, league and Munster champions, missed out on All-Ireland glory, beaten by Meath in the final.
‘I had a good run that year, it just rolled from game to game,’ he says, and while he played for Cork until the end of the 2004 season, and won a second Munster senior football title in 2002 (Cork beat Kerry in a semi-final replay that season), it’s 1999 that still jumps out as his best year for the county. Club commitments took over then, as O’Sullivan played his role in Carbery Rangers’ rise from a junior club to senior. He also captained Carbery to a county senior football title in 2004. Each is different, but all incredible memories. Like all Cork fans, he hopes for a magical moment at Páirc Uí Chaoimh this Saturday night, too, and a much-needed boost for the county’s flagging football fortunes.
‘The gap is there and it seems to be growing,’ he warns, and O’Sullivan knows this better than most. He was Cork minor football manager last year when Kerry hammered the young Rebels by 15 points in the Munster final. As a teacher at Clonakilty Community College he is tuned into schools’ football and Kerry’s dominance here as well – Kerry schools have snaffled up the last 12 Corn Uí Mhuiri crowns. There’s a bigger picture here too as Cork GAA doesn’t even have a place to call home.
‘I saw it last year when we travelled around the country on the challenge circuit, some of the developments that the other counties have are outstanding. Five, six full-sized pitches, astro pitches, dressing-rooms, club house, the whole lot, so we are definitely a bit behind here. We are dependent on clubs and colleges to give us pitches for training which isn’t ideal,’ O’Sullivan points out, though he still holds the hope that Cork can cause a shock on Saturday evening.
‘This is a free shot for Cork on Saturday, isn’t it?’ he points out.
‘If Cork get the run on them and score goals, they can rattle Kerry, but since it went to 11v11 attacking and defending, they have taken another step again, they love one on one, are kicking the ball more and fancy themselves more.’
O’Sullivan and Cork caused a shock in 1999. The need for another one is more acute now. The county needs a hero, just like the Rosscarbery man on his greatest day in Rebel red.
