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Hon deccie boiâŚ
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Oh dearâŚ
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Is it just me or is this lad not popular among people in the know?
His style of management is very old school. Works with young lads, not so well with older lads.
Didnt he manage Castlelyons last year? They eventually got over the line.
He was
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Iâm not sure, but he was not popular with players when in senior set up as far as I know.
He runs a tight ship and is regarded as a very good coach.
Very mixed reviews of him but IMO possibly deserves this chance. I would like to see Wall involved in Cork underage at some capacity.
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He deseves his chance alright.
This must be borne in mind amongst those touting Leo OâConnor as a potential future Limerick senior manager.
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Great picture of Collinsâ save from Gillane in this with an acknowledgment from his clubman.
Was he the man Alan Cadogan absolutely obliterated in a recent interview?
Not sure, did not read it.
The below is taken direct from the article in the Examiner a few months back.
â2022 was a frustrating year. During a one-to-one meeting with a member of management around March, which all players would have had for feedback purposes, I got some fairly blunt information. I was told there were a number of forwards ahead of me.
âI was 29 at the time. It was nearly kinda, draw a line through Alan, we are not using him this year. That really rattled my cage by that particular individual.
âIt was hard to hear that information, especially where I was coming from. If you said that to a 20-year-old just after coming in, Iâd say that would finish them. Whereas I was there nine years. I was saying, grand, it is not nice to hear and I donât agree with it, but again, Iâll prove you wrong kind of thing.
âI wasnât in the plans, basically. To be fair to Kieran [Kingston] against Galway, he wanted to make a change, wanted to bring me on, knew what I could do. But unfortunately, certain individuals didnât want to bring me on that day. He probably stuck his neck out and said, âNo, I am the managerâ. And I think what you said there, 0-3 from four possessions, I donât need to mention anything else.
âI remember walking off the field and I looked those two individuals in the eyes, and I didnât have to say anything else. Iâm going, thereâs your answer for that. It did give me satisfaction, I wonât lie to you."
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Mulcahy and Furlong were the two selectors
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TBF, Alan Cadogan was a forward from a different era, no goal threat.
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The GOAT
Jimmy Barry-Murphy: âThe one I really do regret is 2013. I wake up every morning and think about thatâ
Corkâs favourite GAA son experienced incredible highs as a player and later a manager but the Rebelsâ final defeat to Clare left permanent scars
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Jimmy Barry-Murphy: âI regret coming back to manage the team in 2012. I do really. I had been out of the scene . . . If I had my time over I wouldnât have done it again. I was out and I should have stayed out.â Photograph: Donall Farmer/Inpho
Sat Jul 20 2024 - 06:00
Last year Pat Ryan invited Jimmy Barry-Murphy to speak to the Cork panel. None of them were born when he won his last All-Ireland as a player in 1986, and the matches and medals are hidden in the attic of his life now.
The glory that lived on in his name, though, was a different phenomenon. Testimonies were available, if you needed proof, but that process concluded a long time ago and was never exposed to the radiation of second thoughts. The glory and his name were fused and inseparable. He couldnât deny the things he had done.
But he wasnât a museum piece. Dotted around the room were people with whom he had shared vivid experiences. Ryan and two of his selectors, Wayne Sherlock and Brendan Coleman, won an All-Ireland with Cork in 1999 when Barry-Murphy was manager. Patrick Horgan, SĂŠamus Harnedy and Conor Lehane had played on the team Barry-Murphy brought to the 2013 final, when Cork led for 104 of the last 114 seconds and lost in a replay.
In two stints, Barry-Murphy managed Cork for a total of nine years, which is longer than anybody else. On both occasions Cork were in a hole when he took over and the digging continued for a while. The courage he needed to do the job wasnât blind, but it was blinkered. Past triumphs and public devotion offered no indemnity against bad outcomes. The suffering was unavoidable. He wasnât spared.
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Jimmy Barry-Murphy: âThe one I really do regret is 2013. I wake up every morning and think about thatâ
âManaging Cork is a bit of a drug,â he says now. âYou take it on knowing the risks that are involved, but itâs only when youâre in there that you suddenly realise, âThis is hard work. Weâre not as good as I thought we might beâ. I did feel the pressure of it an awful lot. It was very stressful at times, on a personal level, carrying the pressure of the public. It was hugely stressful.
âI regret coming back to manage the team in 2012. I do really. I had been out of the scene. The draw is there when youâre asked, the temptation is there, but I do regret going back. If I had my time over I wouldnât have done it again. I was out and I should have stayed out.â
Barry-Murphyâs feelings about his second stint, though, are strangely at odds with how those seasons panned out. Cork won a Munster title after an eight-year hiatus and reached an All-Ireland final for the first time in seven years, despite long term mismanagement of Corkâs talent pathways.
In the 2013 final Cork had been second best for most of the match but they still forced Clare to equalise with the second last puck. RTĂ grabbed Barry-Murphy for a snap interview while the game was still hot on his cheeks or before he had time to wrestle with his feelings. In his public dealings Barry-Murphy had always been dignified and in front of the cameras he didnât crack.
Jimmy Barry Murphy during the 2013 final against Clare. âI was sick when that [equalising] point went over the bar. I didnât feel weâd win the replay. I knew our chance was gone.â Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
âI donât know how I did it. I just about managed it because I was gutted. I was sick when that point went over the bar. I didnât feel weâd win the replay. I knew our chance was gone. I knew it. We had one chance. We had taken the lead at the right time. Hoggie [Patrick Horgan] got a fantastic point. Nobody else would have got it and it was ripped away from us.
âLook, Iâve had plenty of good days in Croke Park. Youâve got to be magnanimous. You can go ranting and raving and blaming everybody. If you hang around long enough thereâs swings and roundabouts. We got away with a couple as well over the years.
It would have been a sensational All-Ireland for Cork given where weâd come from. It certainly wasnât the most talented Cork team that ever went to Croke Park but, my God, they were the most committed
âBut the one I really do regret is 2013. I wake up every morning and think about that. I do. It would have been a sensational All-Ireland for Cork given where we came from. It certainly wasnât the most talented Cork team that ever went to Croke Park but, my God, they were the most committed.â
When Ryan made six changes for Corkâs second game in this yearâs Munster championship the only precedents in Corkâs modern history were on teams that Barry-Murphy managed. In 1999 Cork picked six debutants for the first round against Waterford; in 2013, the team that reached the All-Ireland had six players who made their first championship start that year.
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In Barry-Murphyâs managerial career it evolved into a pattern; he had never been afraid to trust young players. In 1996, when Limerick slaughtered Cork in PĂĄirc UĂ Chaoimh in Barry-Murphyâs first championship match in charge, Joe Deane and SeĂĄn Ăg Ă hAilpĂn made their debuts as teenagers â though he wonders about that now.
âI shouldnât have done that with Joe Deane and SeĂĄn Ăg. That was a mistake at the time. Putting them in too young I would say was a mistake. I often said I hope they didnât blame me for it because it was a hard education for them.â
For every manager, though, generating renewal is an adversarial business. When Barry-Murphy returned for his second stint, there were players on the panel who had been around a long time. DĂłnal Ăg Cusack, John Gardiner and Ă hAilpĂn were on the Cork panel in 2012 with Barry-Murphy but not in 2013. Those partings were never going to be straightforward.
âIt was hard. I did feel the pressure of all that. It did get to me at the time. I often thought about Brian Cody afterwards, how he was able to do it. To drop players and drop players off a panel who had won All-Irelands for you. I didnât fancy doing that. Itâs just me. I wasnât able. I didnât fancy that.
âI had to deal with that in my own way. Itâs not nice and it was difficult, and I found it difficult. I donât have any sense that I was a hard man or anything like that â I wasnât. I just tried to do what I thought was right. Certain players will feel they could have played on â thatâs human nature.â
The toughness in him was below the surface. Cork hadnât lost at home in the championship since the 1920s when Limerick beat them by 16 points in 1996. In a post-match interview Joe Quaid said that Corkâs tradition had been washed âdown the Leeâ. Poisonous letters were published in the local press, some of them without full names and addresses. He cut out one scathing comment piece and kept it in his drawer at work for years, as if he was keeping the pain on file.
âAfter the match I was in a state of shock,â Barry-Murphy said years later. âLiterally I was shell-shocked at how bad we were and my part in it because I was the coach. Iâm a proud Cork man and here I was having presided over this shambles. Which is all it was. I was a disgrace as a coach and naive in our preparation.â
In many ways it was the greatest challenge of his sporting life. On his watch, Cork had bottomed out. Three years later they won the All-Ireland with the youngest team Cork had ever brought to Croke Park.
Cork manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy celebrates his young sideâs victory over Kilkenny in the 1999 All-Ireland hurling final. Photo: Tom Honan/Inpho
When they returned to the dressingroom the Cork trainer Teddy Owens stood on a bench and held up a photograph of the Cork management taken during the 1996 game against Limerick, devastation and bewilderment grafted on to their faces.
âTake a look at that,â roared Owens, âand take a look at Jimmy now.â
Had he changed? Or had we been missing something all along?
*******
At the end of 1972 Barry-Murphy signed for Cork Celtic. He had been sent off for St Finbarrâs in an under-21 match against Glen Rovers, a rivalry prone to bushfires, and suspended for three months. A week later he scored five goals for Wilton United in the FAI Youth Cup and Paul âGolden Boyâ OâDonovan, the manger of Cork Celtic, called to his house. Barry-Murphy was 18, before he was JBM â the stage name given to him as a matinee idol.
A couple of months earlier he had scored 2-1 for Cork in the All-Ireland minor football final, and 10 months later he would score 2-1 for Cork in the All-Ireland senior football final, but for a short interlude he was a tropical species in a small goldfish tank.
âIt was a different world completely to me. You had to look after yourself. It was physical, it was tough. Youâd get to Dublin and youâd have to make your own way to the hotel for a snack before the match and then walk to Dalymount Park. No bus or anything. In the dressingroom they were ruthless. They didnât take any prisoners. They didnât give a care who you were. It was a fantastic experience. It made a man of me, I think. It toughened me up.â
He scored on his debut, and even as an alien in that micro-world he caused a stir. Jimmy Magee used to preview the League of Ireland games on radio and one weekend he urged his listeners to get across to Dalymount Park to watch âthis young lad from Corkâ.
âI remember thinking after, âI hope they got there earlyâ. I was off at half-time. I got the hook from Paul [OâDonovan]. I didnât fancy it in the end. It was hard going. It wasnât my time of the year. Mucky pitches. It was a nightmare for me, the weather. I hated the wet and cold. I hated everything about sport at that time of the year. Youâd come alive in the summer.â
As I went on â Munster finals, All-Ireland finals â I felt the pressure a lot more. In the 80s it really got to me. I got to me a lot when I was captain [1982-83]
As a hurler and footballer, though, Barry-Murphy had a soccer playerâs imagination. His game was about skill and movement and vision and stealth. In hurling and football in the 1970s those qualities were not mainstream. In his play there were layers of sophistication.
âHe looked modern,â Nicky English said once.
On the pitch he had charisma too, and confidence. When Cork won the football All-Ireland in 1973 it was their first title in 28 years, but if there was a desperate longing in the dressingroom it didnât weigh on him.
âI didnât feel any sense of pressure about having to play well. I just felt I was going to play well. But I did feel pressure it in other years, so Iâm not trying to minimise the pressure of playing for Cork in All-Ireland finals. As I went on â Munster finals, All-Ireland finals â I felt the pressure a lot more. In the 80s it really got to me. I got to me a lot when I was captain [1982-83].â
When he joined the football panel first Billy Morgan used to pick him up and bring him to training. Morgan was captain that year, but one way or another he was the most powerful player in the dressingroom. In their relationship there was an element of the bear and the cub.
Cork captain Jimmy Barry Murphy and the cup are carried by the Cork fans after the Munster final win over Waterfrod in 1982. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho
âHe had a big influence on me. Kept me level-headed. Frank Cogan was another figure on that team that I respected a lot. He had a quiet word with me once or twice when I needed it. I remember once after a league game in Roscommon I was moaning because I hadnât got much ball. Frank very quickly and very quietly put me in my box. He told me I needed to show more [for the ball], look for it more. I never forgot it.â
One of the legends that grew up about Barry-Murphy was that his attitude to training was less than fanatical. Whatever the insinuation, he denies it. In terms of training programmes, though, this was long before the end of the Ice Age. In the mid-70s Kevin Kehily, one of the Cork footballers, insisted that the panel should embrace the gym. Barry-Murphy asserted his citizenâs right to protest.
âI ran out of it. I hated it. I bluffed. Never went in there again. It wasnât for me. I didnât fancy that stuff. I got away with it anyway. I was fit. I minded myself pretty much always.â
It is easy to forget the staggering uniqueness of what he achieved. The sense of everlasting brilliance is easier to remember, and, for convenience, that is what his career was reduced to in popular memory. The detail was blended into a sauce.
Try to remember it this way, at least: in the history of the GAA Barry-Murphy is the only player to have won All-Irelands in hurling and football at minor, under-21 and senior with his county, and All-Irelands in both codes with his club, St Finbarrâs. He will never have to share that distinction. By the age of 24 he had won two All Stars in hurling and two in football. That will never happen again either.
But there were setbacks too and failures and they were corrosive for a while. When Cork lost the All-Ireland finals of 1982 and â83 he was captain both years and failed to score. There was no way to take that lightly.
âThe best hurling I played was in Munster in â82 and â83, no question about that,â he said years ago. âI was on fire. Going into the â83 [All-Ireland] I didnât analyse it deeply why I had played so badly in â82. I was only hoping it would happen, I think, rather than going and making it happen. The pressure got to me way more as I got older. The disappointment of losing in â82 and â83 was shattering.â
Kilkenny captain Liam Fennelly, Cork captain Jimmy Barry-Murphy and referee Neil Duggan at the coin toss in the 1983 All-Ireland final. Successive final defeats proved shattering for JBM. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho
âI was gutted after those finals,â he says now. âI took it badly at the time and I should have handled it better. It was just something I had to deal with myself.â
For the 1986 All-Ireland he shared a room with Johnny Crowley, one of his oldest friends. On the morning of the game he told Crowley that he was retiring, come what may. He was only 32.
âI was burnt out. My appetite completely went in a short space of time, if that makes sense.â
Though Cork had won the 1984 All-Ireland, Barry-Murphy had failed to score in that match too. Against Galway in 1986 he snapped his scoreless streak. His first point was a lightning overhead strike. His second score was the exclamation point on Corkâs scoring, in their final attack.
âCan Jimmy Barry finish with a flourish?â said RTĂâs Ger Canning in commentary. âYes!â
Roy Keane was 15 when Barry-Murphy retired. During his childhood in Cork there were other brilliant sports people but there wasnât a brighter star. Whatever sport you loved, Barry-Murphy crossed all boundaries. When Keane was asked on Sky Sports a couple of years ago to nominate three sporting heroes he listed JBM, Mohammed Ali and Barry McGuigan, in no particular order.
Keane appears on The Overlap podcast and last summer they recorded a roadshow. Croke Park was one of their destinations. TJ Reid and Barry-Murphy were invited to join them. Barry-Murphy had only met Keane once before, briefly and by chance. This time, while he had Barry-Murphyâs ear, Keane wanted to talk about hurling.
âHe said there was nothing like Cork in Croke Park on All-Ireland final day,â says Barry-Murphy. âI said to him, âWhat about FA Cup finals and European finals and playing for Ireland.â He said, âNah, Jimmy, nothing like it.ââ
They agreed.
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