Happy to oblige pal
I wouldnât blame McGrath for being quieter than usual that day. Clare had suicidal tactics. Iâll never forget watching poor Fergus Kennedy having to compete for high deliveries with Paudie Maher, Brendan Maher, and Seamus Hennessy all around him. And acres of empty space in front of McGrath but no ball hit there.
That was a ridiculously strong Tipp team. Strong physically and a lot of future Tipp stalwarts.
Rumours circulating that Darragh Mooney will make his championship debut in goals Sunday.
McGrath is a fine hurler, probably the Tipp blood in him. He usually goes very well against Tipp but that was an unbelievable u21 team Tipp had. A lot of lads in their third year at that level and were a good five or six points down when they saved a Clare penalty. Bubbles was probably the youngest on the team at 19.
Ouch
Now think of the Cork team of the last few years. Think of all the games youâve seen where Horgan ended up with seven points, all from frees, and you couldnât think of another thing he did in the game.
Can someone throw up the full articleâŚ
Jackie Tyrrell: Cork hurling needs leaders of old
Senior players need to offer better example against Tipperary than last yearâs disaster
A lot of the time, people focus on the wrong thing when theyâre assessing a teamâs chances. Take Cork this Sunday against Tipperary. All the talk around Cork after the league and going into the championship has been about the young guys who are coming on to the scene. Shane Kingston, Mark Coleman, Luke Meade, Dean Brosnan, Colm Spillane, Michael Spillane, Darragh Fitzgibbon. Corkâs future. Now.
Some of these lads will start on Sunday, a few more of them will be very likely to come on. So in all the chat that surrounds the game, thatâs what people think will determine the winning and losing of it. Cork are going with youth and everybody is mad keen to see how it goes for them.
The reality is, though, that no matter how good or bad these lads are on Sunday, theyâre not the key to the outcome. Their youth will bring energy, freshness, boldness, confidence and exuberance to the Cork set-up and it will help shape the panelâs mentality going into the game. But when the ball is in and the heat is on, Cork will rise or fall on the leadership provided by the core of experienced players already there.
Iâm talking about Anthony Nash, Conor Lehane, Mark Ellis, Alan Cadogan, Bill Cooper, SĂŠamus Harnedy, Patrick Horgan. Time and again when you watch Cork, you wonder where the leaders are. Too many of them have a tendency to go missing in games and not touch the ball for ages. That canât happen now, not when they have a crop of young, quality players to show the ropes to.
If you had to pinpoint one big problem with Cork over the past few years, itâs a lack of leaders. The Cork teams I played against in the 2000s were coming down with them. Donal Ăg Cusack would always be there with his âWe are Cork, boiâ arrogance. Diarmuid OâSullivan, Ronan Curran and John Gardiner would knock your head off your shoulders without a second thought.
SeĂĄn Ăg Ă hAilpĂn had that in him too, when it was needed. Ben and Jerry OâConnor would run the legs off you, Timmy and Niall McCarthy never gave you an easy ball. Thatâs every patch of the field covered with lads who wouldnât know how to let a game pass them by.
Nicest
Now think of the Cork team of the last few years. Think of all the games youâve seen where Horgan ended up with seven points, all from frees, and you couldnât think of another thing he did in the game. Or where Cadogan sprinted out to collect the first ball and scored the first point and then wasnât seen for the next 15 minutes. Or where Lehane looked like he might spark into life at any minute and next thing you knew the game was over.
Or think of the Cork defenders. Over the last five years, they have to be the nicest set of backs Iâve ever seen. Excellent on the ball, all of them. But so nice they would nearly pick your hurl off the ground for you if you dropped it.
Very rarely do you see them taking a yellow card when it has to be taken. Whenâs the last time you heard of one of them being up in front of the Central Competitions Control Committee? Iâm not saying they should be going around killing fellas for the sake of it. But part of the game is doing what has to be done, when it has to be done.
So here is Corkâs problem. They have a heap of young guys coming on stream and that creates expectation among the supporters. But you donât learn intercounty hurling just by pulling on the jersey. You learn by watching what the experienced players are doing, what they are saying, how they carry themselves, where they set the bar.
You are never more impressionable than in your first year or two on an intercounty panel. You donât know anything, really. So youâre soaking up everything thatâs going on around you. Youâre bouncing down the street in the team tracksuit, delighted with yourself, knowing that people are talking about you. And when it comes to the hurling side of it, you basically know that whatever you do well is a bonus and if you come up short, itâs not disastrous. Youâre young so nobody is going to blame you.
This is where the culture of a dressingroom is so important. The leeway you get for being young should only last a very short time. In a good dressingroom, the leaders give you a bit of wriggle room to make mistakes but they make it clear that thereâs a standard that has to be maintained. They donât mind it if youâre not there yet as long as youâre working your way there.
That was what was said over and over again in my time in Kilkenny dressing rooms. When I got in there in 2003, you had lads such as Peter Barry, DJ Carey, Andy Comerford. And all they would say to you is make sure you work. Work hard, get the jersey, savour it when you have it and pass it on to the next guy in a better state than you got it. That was the over-arching mentality. That was the leadership you learned from.
What are young guys learning when they walk into the Cork dressingroom? What example are they being set? This is a team that utterly failed its acid test last year, by which I mean the qualifier against Wexford. Not scoring for 21 minutes in a championship game is just not acceptable. When Daniel Kearney got the 61st-minute goal to spring them from two down to one up, that should have been a big momentum changer. But it wasnât. Instead, they went missing. They accepted defeat.
So if thatâs the culture, then thatâs what young guys learn. They settle into a camp where not affecting a game in the last 10 minutes is accepted. They are shown that the biggest names in the team, the lads they looked up to before they ever even met them, can live with not being able to turn a game their way when itâs in the melting pot. Without even knowing it, theyâre forming bad habits that they might never get rid of.
Leaders donât have to make inspiring speeches or be always talking or constantly in the spotlight to show the way. Itâs in how they prepare meticulously for big games. How they go quieter as the week develops, how they exude a razor-sharp focus, a killer instinct, an aggressive body language. Itâs how they have that look in their eye before you go out that dressingroom door at 3.10pm that makes you think: âYeah, weâre ready for whatever this team throws at us.â
Most of all, itâs doing what has to be done, going beyond the norm. In 2007, All-Ireland final against Limerick, Mike Fitzgerald got the ball about 10 minutes before half-time and took Noel Hickey on at the Hill 16 end near the Cusack side. I was less than 10 yards away. The ball hopped up between the two of them and as Noel went for it, he tore his hamstring. You could see straight away his day was over.
Mike Fitz had the ball though and as he turned, it looked as if he was in around Noel and had a straight run in along the endline to goal. Not on Noelâs watch. He decided in a split second that he wasnât getting in on goal, and stretched out and let fly with the hurl and pulled across him. I could hear the crack of the hurl across Mikeâs hand and as Noel hobbled off the pitch, Barry Kelly raised a fully-deserved yellow card. But Noel didnât care â the goal wasnât breached and he did what had to be done. Thatâs a killer instinct.
That moment stayed with me for my whole career. I thought about it several times afterwards. Youâd have to watch it back a few times to even see it, he did it that quickly and instinctively. But it just stuck with me because it brought home what he was willing to do. He was in agony, his All-Ireland final was over. But without even thinking, he was doing anything he could to stop a goal. Mind the house. Nothing else matters. Ruthless. That was our identity.
Inconsistency
Whatâs Corkâs identity? Itâs hard to pin it down, isnât it? Worst of all, most of what youâd come up with is negative. Inconsistency. Lack of physicality. Major lack of leadership. Gameplans for the sake of it, like William Egan playing sweeper last year against Tipperary without them having drilled it and perfected it during the league.
Some of these Cork players have to step up and show real leadership and make a statement
These are all bad habits and theyâve been there for a while. So what can you expect young guys to learn only those same habits? The result is that the bar starts at a low point the following year and any small bit of improvement is only from that low base. Thatâs how teams get stuck in a rut. They accept their lot in life. They forget that it doesnât have to be this way.
Thatâs what makes this Tipperary game such a massive one for this Cork team. Last year was a disaster. They tried something new that they clearly didnât even really believe in, they did it badly, they got a hiding. They canât afford for Sunday to go the same way. If that happens, then thatâs another bad habit formed. Itâs two yearsâ worth of Cork players who get it into their heads that Tipperary are a team to have a mental block about.
That canât happen. I donât expect Cork to win on Sunday but I want to see a level of anger out of them. Whatâs important is that if they lose, they lose fighting. That they lose having a real shot at Tipperary. That they put in a performance that is completely different to last year when they didnât land a glove.
Some of these Cork players have to step up and show real leadership and make a statement that this is a new Cork team, one that has steel, one that does not roll over like against Wexford last year. That they collectively say weâre maybe not at the skill level of Tipp or have the experience they do just yet, but we are going places. We have youth, we have physicality, we have an identity.
That starts with the experienced guys. If they do their bit, they will give the younger lads something to build on. And bit by bit, Cork can start putting something together and get back to where they should be.
KK man giving Cork a team talk for Tipp game 
There is nothing particularly wrong with the article, but Tyrrell seems to put everything down to leadership. Horganâs main problem is he is slow as fuck.
Sure we are saying that for years.
And windy
100% spot on .
His main issue is the adulation he gets within his own club and the fact that he now has had success with them. He has been ruined by all managements he has had and treated differently.
Some of the unnecessary flashy bits and flicks in his game should have been gone tears aho but are not.
He is slow because he is more interested in having pecs and big arms than being a hurler. He could drop 5 kg in a month and be a different player.
Dunno about that, he always shows up for the Glen in big games. Being slower than almost every inter-county corner-back in the country is a pretty huge disadvantage for any inside forward tbf. Nothing better for a corner-back marking a lad that is a few yards slower than him, its the fast lads that worry you.
He appears lazy rather than slowâŚ
Are you telling me losing a few kg would make him as quick/quicker than the likes of Barrett?
Nah he is slow. You can see in a club games but he is surrounded by lads slower in the mind and in the legs so he looks like a God in comparison.
What?
Why are you comparing him to another teams corner back?
Its bizarre.
Human physiology dicates that less upper body weight to carry means faster. Its not rocket science.
He is carrying way too much on top.