Timmy Mac's goal in 1997 turned Cork hurling history... can these U21s do the same?

A PICTURE was doing the rounds on social media this week of the last Cork U21 hurling teams to win All-Ireland titles back in 1997 and 1998.

If it was remarkable to think that 20 years had passed and that this drought has been kind of overshadowed by the ongoing talk of minor All-Irelands not won, well it was also startling to see so many of the group that went on to become major influences on Cork’s glory resurgence through the mid-noughties. 

Of the U21 team that beat Galway in the All-Ireland final back in 1998, as many as seven of them became household names on those Donal O’Grady/John Allen teams, another handful won All-Ireland medals in 1999 and most went on to make some contribution to the senior team over the following several years.

By the way, it also brought to mind one of the great hurling 'sliding doors' scores: Timmy McCarthy’s goal in the U21 Munster final in 1997 against Tipp, a last-minute winner (manager Bertie Óg Murphy has described the desperation of the move of Wayne Sherlock to full-forward to occupy the full-back Paul Shelley at the time) that made the 1997 win possible, that gave momentum to the 1998 group, that gave belief to the players that they could take that onto senior level. 

It felt like a huge goal at the time even, it probably went on to become era-changing.

The comparison between then and now only goes so far but there are some standout points of note here. John Fogarty made the point in the Examiner this week about hurling being a young man’s game now with the average age of Limerick’s outfield starters being just 23 and it’s remarkable just how many of this current Cork U21 crop are established senior players with a massive block of inter-county experience behind them or who’ve been at least on the fringes of the senior group.

It’s hard to separate this Limerick senior story from the fact of two of the last three U21 All-Irelands won with the majority of the team coming from those groups. The momentum from an U21 win may now be more relevant in the shorter term than ever before, with the likelihood being that inter-county hurlers may now be peaking in the early-to-mid twenties with fewer and fewer players likely to be in their thirties.

The Cork senior hurling team over the next few summers is likely to become younger and be made up in bulk from the U21 teams of 2018-2020 and so the successes and experiences and the rhythms built up over these years will drift into the wellbeing of the seniors. 

Colleges are a side-note here too. A fair chunk of that Limerick team have been winning Fitzgibbon Cups with Mary I and UL in these last few years and if that may be an offshoot of their talents rather than a reason for their subsequent senior victory, it’s hardly stretching to think playing at that standard with UCC can be a factor in the development of some of this Cork team. Especially for someone like David Griffin or David Lowney who isn't with a senior club.

There’s a point here about development squads and their results, for better and worse. Anthony Daly has credited an awful lot of this Limerick story with the focus on, and work put into these squads in the county from the ages of 14 upwards. It was interesting and slightly unsettling to hear the Galway minor hurling manager make a reference to all the group training sessions they’d done in preparation for winning that All-Ireland (70 pitch sessions plus 40 gym sessions for four championship games, seriously that’s a crazily low game/training ratio) but assuming access to high-quality coaching that’s an awful lot of extra work being put into the elite players in the county that increases the gap to the ordinary player. 

It’s just a fact now that the majority of players who filter into the senior team for Cork will have come through from U14 or U15 at least and the chances of trawling the club scene for senior players in their mid-to-late-twenties who might be able to make a difference on the inter-county scene with any chance of success are getting smaller all the time. There’s a sense of a limitless production line of players right now that are being cannonballed out of the system at 19/20 years of age and that it’s up to Cork at senior level to make the most of what’s coming through.

Winning this U21 competition would be a nice habit to begin though it’s not the only thing. There’s a chemistry there already from years of working the same movements and patterns on the training fields and from hours in each other’s company across the county and country. 

A goal like Robbie O’Flynn’s in the Munster final might be off-the-cuff in large parts but there’s got to be an element of memory in the combinations, in the awareness of Tim O’Mahony and the run of O’Flynn at just the right time that’s come from games together over the years. The thrill of a long-distance Mark Coleman arching point or the excitement of open ground for Darragh Fitzgibbon to gallop into are already becoming part of Cork hurling.

The expectation will be a potential danger — there really is nothing as easily blown up as the balloon of hype that surrounds a coming Cork hurling player – but there ought to be protection with the crowds here. 

Everybody finds potential interesting and it’s almost impossible not to get slightly carried away with this new batch of players. The hope would be this surge doesn’t get lost in distractions or overburdens or incompetence in minding it. It should be fun to watch this play out.