PAT Sullivan has his eyes wide open as he begins life as manager of the Cork ladies senior football team.

It’s a job, he feels, that has come at the right time for him, given his previous experience with his native Waterford and, most recently, Kildare.

But the Dungarvan native is fully aware of the scale of this role. It will be his biggest challenge.

It’s now ten years since Cork won an All-Ireland senior title. This giant is sleeping. Well, kind of. Previous manager Joe Carroll poked this giant back into life when Cork won the Division 1 league title earlier this year – the county’s first major national silverware since 2019.

But considering the tradition and history of ladies football in the county, the standards in Cork are higher than most.

‘There is an opportunity here,’ Sullivan tells The Southern Star.

‘The talent is here, but talent doesn’t win it for you. Because if you look back over the last couple of years, it’s now heading on to three years since Cork contested a Munster final, that’s a bit of a worrying stat. Next year Kerry will be going for four in a row.

‘As a county, how can Cork get to where the likes of Galway, Dublin and Kerry have been the last couple of years?’

This won’t be an overnight fix. Perhaps that’s why the Cork LGFA hierarchy handed Sullivan a three-year term, with a review after two years. While he is adamant the talent is in the county, his challenge is to harness it and return Cork to the summit.

‘There’s a bit of patience needed here,’ he says.

‘And the first part of my plan over the next couple of weeks – I’m very strong on this – is I’m going to listen and engage. Listen to see what’s going on, what’s required in the county, do a really good deep analysis of that, engage with every single player that has been on the panel last year to tell them the process they’re going to go through, and then look across every single game from junior to senior to see what potential opportunity and players have the ability to play for Cork.

‘It’s very clear now as we stand here today, there is no 2027 panel picked. There is no team for 2027. Everybody that’s eligible, playing in Cork clubs at the moment from junior to senior, have an opportunity to put on that Cork jersey next year at senior football level.

‘That’s what we’ll give, and we’ll make sure every single player out there gets that opportunity if they feel they’re comfortable and have that chance to go in and go through that trial period to get to the other side with an opportunity to be playing for Cork next year.’

Patience is important, the new Cork manager repeats. He points to the journeys that counties like Dublin, Kerry and Galway were on before they won All-Irelands. Dublin lost three All-Ireland finals in a row (2014-16) before then winning four on the bounce. Kerry were beaten in the 2022 and ’23 finals before triumphing in 2024. This was the third year for the Galway management team as they built towards winning an All-Ireland – and they did this year.

‘That trend is there that it doesn’t happen overnight, but what’s been very evident in those winning teams is the consistency within the executive, county board, to the actual management team, players, the trust, the belief with each other that we’ll get over this line and we’ll do it,’ Sullivan explains.

‘And if you look back over the Kerrys and the Dublins and the Galways, if they changed and weren’t aligned for the bigger picture, they probably wouldn’t have been successful as they have been.

‘So, that’s what the three years is really about. It’s not about we’re going to wait three years. We’re always going to be knocking on the door. Every day we go out, every day you put on a Cork jersey, and if you’re playing with Pat Sullivan as a management team, you’ll always know we want to work really, really hard. We want to represent the county with pride.

‘But more importantly, you need to be looked after and have a high-performance team around you that gives you the best chance to develop to be the best Cork player you can.’

Sullivan plans to contact every player that was involved in the Cork senior panel this year, to outline his vision and the process ahead. He wants to engage and listen to players. It’s a fresh start.

‘As I said, it’s a very clear message: there is no 2027 panel there. Everybody is going into the same funnel, and whoever comes out the other side will be the players that represent Cork next year.

‘Everybody will be treated the exact same way, because that’s what’s needed to get an aligned group, and more importantly, the best players in ability-wise that we can work with to bring Cork to the next level.’

The new manager is encouraged by the potential in the current senior set-up and the talent coming through. This season, Cork won Division 1, fell flat in the Munster championship, but recovered in the All-Ireland series to push then-champions Dublin all the way in an All-Ireland quarter-final – a game the Rebels really should have won, leading by five with minutes left.

This is a team with seasoned campaigners like Melissa Duggan, Máire O’Callaghan, Katie Quirke, Shauna Kelly, Emma Cleary and Áine Terry O’Sullivan. New players have come on board in the past few seasons, like Rachel Leahy, Siobhan Callanan, Sadbh McGoldrick, Aimee Corcoran, Abigail Ring, Leah Hallihan and Kate Redmond, who were all involved in Cork’s 2022 All-Ireland minor-winning team.

‘For Joe Carroll to get the team out of Division 2 in the first year, and win Division 1 this year was a massive achievement,’ Sullivan says.

‘With the last two minor A titles, they just don’t give them out. It’s really hard to do back-to-back. That’s credit to Kieran O’Shea and his management team, and to Brian Leamy with the senior Bs and Denis Mulvihill with the Cork U20s, because Cork are the only team in the country that actually have senior A, senior B and U20 teams.

‘There’s a lot of really good work going on behind the scenes in getting players through, and a lot of really good players have come through over the last four, five or six years. I’ve worked with some of the Cork players when I was involved with the interpro teams so I know the calibre of players they are.

‘There’s a very good mix there. The biggest challenge now will be to bring that through, and also, more importantly, align all the teams and all the clubs together to make sure we get the best available players to go forward for 2027.’

At underage level, Cork have won the last two All-Ireland U18A titles, further proof of the talent in the county.

This is a huge challenge. Sullivan knows this. But he’s excited and ready. He knows what it’s like to work in a different county to his own – the Waterford man was in charge of Kildare for the 2025 and ’26 seasons. Yes, Cork is on a different scale, but he’s aware of what lies ahead.

‘I learned so much in my role in Kildare because you’re going into a county that you don’t know any players, management you don’t know, clubs you don’t know, media you don’t know, and you’re trying to build a county and bring them to the level,’ he explains.

‘The success that we had there in those 20 months, not even two years, is phenomenal. There were a bunch of players that just wanted to work and wanted to get to the level. They had that raw ability, but were really willing to put their shoulder to the wheel, and they aligned with what the outcome was, and they achieved success – in two All-Ireland quarter-finals back-to-back, a first Leinster final since 2009.’

It’s time to get to work.