A GOOD performance against Dublin, so all is right in the football world in Cork. Or is it?
Did that encouraging performance prove that Cork football is on the right track to return to a position of being truly competitive in the hunt for the Sam Maguire Cup? Or did it merely paper over the many cracks we know exist in Cork football?
Bottom line, all is not right with Cork football. Far from it, but all the fault cannot be laid at the feet of the present senior team. The underage teams are a big problem because not only are they nowhere near winning titles. The gap between Cork and Kerry at minor and U20 levels has grown alarmingly in recent seasons. Expect this topic to be raised at the next county committee meeting on Tuesday, July 1st, when the conversation will centre around Cork football.
Let’s start right at the bottom of the ladder: the underage system in Cork. The old Bórd na nÓg system that produced numerous All-Ireland minor titles was first changed when a new minor board was set up to cater solely for the minor grade in the early 1990s. The idea was to stop the drop-out of players from the association in that vulnerable age group. The premier minor grade for the best clubs came into being. The result? The All-Ireland titles began to run dry. Twenty years later the new Rebel Óg system was set up, changing the old divisional boundaries that still exist at adult level. Clubs could cross borders, play teams from anywhere in the county in championships and league. Variety they called it. Result? A total loss of the old traditional rivalry between clubs that had sustained Cork’s underage standards for many years.
The new Rebel Óg may have led to an upsurge in playing numbers but it has knocked the competitive edge out of the championships and that has proved disastrous at inter-county minor level. Maybe somebody at the meeting on July 1st will explain why Cork city, which contains most of the premier 1 clubs, didn’t have a single player on the Cork minor panel this season? Rebel Óg must be reformed and restructured to bring back the great rivalry that once existed between clubs, a rivalry that definitely raised standards all round.
The biggest issue facing the delegates at the meeting on Tuesday will be the controversial development squads which were set up to identify and develop the best young footballers in the county from U14 upwards. There is now general agreement that the squads are a failure, not producing winning teams, yet no effort is being made to change that flawed system.
Young players are not allowed to play with their clubs, as squad training takes priority. How can young players develop properly if they are not playing games with their clubs? The amount of travelling involved for parents and their sons under the squad system is daunting and the amount of time involved in training is unacceptable for young players.
So, if the squads are to be done away with, what would replace them? The answer is simple: concentrate on the second level schools, especially developing a handful of those schools as hubs for potential county minor and U20 players. That is the system that has been so successful in Kerry and we need only look at Cork schools’ abysmal record in the Corn Uí Mhuirí competition to realise that it is in the schools that the real gap is opening up between Cork and Kerry.
Let’s hope the powers-that-be allow a frank and open discussion on Cork football at the meeting on July 1st, but the very fact that none of our present Cork football managers will be present at the meeting doesn’t exactly send out a positive vibe. Let’s hope, for the sake of Cork football, that we’re wrong.
