All-Ireland underage success means Cork kids now have new football heroes

None of the young guns in the minor or U20 squads were known to the wider sporting public on Leeside before the summer, apart from perhaps Jack Cahalane, as a younger brother of Damien and Conor, and Mark Cronin, whose siblings Alan and Stephen also pulled on the Blood and Bandages.

Cork is often cast as a hurling county, which it undeniably is, but it’s also the strongest dual county in GAA. The style of play the minors and U20s collected silverware with, a blend of hard running and kick-passing, was highly appealing, and both teams had the self-belief, that confidence bordering on cockiness, that is often described as ‘Corkness’.
