Pat Ryan’s quest crystal clear as Cork return to first principles via IrishTimesSport
“It showed a lack of leadership on the pitch,” says Stephen McDonnell now. “You needed a couple of leaders to take control of the situation and slow it down, go down with an injury, die the game down.”“The structure of the defence had gone, as such. Nobody had picked up the man running up the field. The point that Clare got, 99 times out of a 100 it drops short, or goes wide, or someone gets a block, or a hook. And here we are, still talking about it.
The critical time that Cork lost when they were in denial about development squads has been thrashed out many times. In 2013 a series of measures designed to transform how Cork managed its player pathways were adopted, and years after their main rivals had left the start line, Cork joined the race. “I kept saying to them, ‘I can’t understand why you’re not sticking your chests out a bit more’. I couldn’t understand why Cork weren’t playing with more of that old swagger. Deep down, I said to them, everyone is afraid of their lives of Cork if they play with that swagger. I was taken aback, to be honest.”
“A lot of the time it was the elephant in the room. And then not having the leaders at times as well to drive on and get stuck into something like that and have the conversations that we needed to have. The further it went in terms of us losing, the harder it was to turn it back around.” “Over the years, though, momentum and consistency was a huge part of it. When things aren’t going well people close in on themselves. I notice even in the work I do with organisations and CEOs with my own company [LiveUnbound], people close in and take care of their own patch. When that happens, it’s very easy for the other team to beat a team of individuals. That happened a lot with Cork over the years when things weren’t going well.
The modern game had its own metrics and certainties. When Cork were hammered in the 2021 All-Ireland final they made just over 20 tackles in the first half; Limerick made nearly 60. Until that changed, nothing could change. That deficiency wasn’t new. Successive Cork managements fought that battle with the players.
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