Jimmy Barry-Murphy rates Brian Corcoran as the best player he worked with

GIVEN that he won five All-Ireland SHC medals in a 12-year inter-county hurling career – including three in a row from 1976-78 – and then managed Cork for 10 years across two spells, Jimmy Barry-Murphy has been involved with countless talented players.

It was interesting, therefore, to hear his answer when a question came from the floor at Valley Rovers’ recent Munster Senior Hurling Championship preview night.

The well-organised event at Innishannon House Hotel featured a strong cast of panellists, with JBM the star among stars. When asked the best player he had worked with, he picked Brian Corcoran, hurler of the year at centre-back as Barry-Murphy led a young Cork side to victory in the 1999 All-Ireland.
“What he did for us in 1999 was outstanding,” he said, “and then to go up full-forward and win two more All-Irelands – I certainly couldn’t imagine myself in the half-back line anyway and I don’t think too many players could do that!

“He was an exceptional talent and a fantastic person, so from my time involved over all the years, he would be the one.”

Former Limerick player Shane Dowling was another on the panel and he asked Barry-Murphy the follow-up question as to how the Erin’s Own legend would fare in the modern game.

“It’s very difficult to compare different eras,” he said, “I watch football now and I see corner-forwards tracking back to their own full-back line – I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes, I never went outside the 14-yard line!

“I think great players would be great in any era, I’m a big believer in that. The training is different, the mentality is different, the sliotar is different – everything is different now, but nobody would convince me that he wouldn’t have been a great player in any era, or any other great player was.”

Those views were echoed by Tommy Dunne, Tipperary’s All-Ireland-winning captain in 2001.

“I can remember in 1989, I was on the North Tipp team that got to the final of a Munster inter-divisional U16 competition,” he said.

“We were playing Imokilly and the final was on the day of the Munster final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. 

We had a strong team, a good few lads on the Tipp U16 team, and we won by a couple of points but I think Brian scored 3-7.

“Three years later, he was playing there in senior inter-county, corner-back on Pat Fox the year after Tipp had won the All-Ireland and I think he held him scoreless from play.”

The event, chaired by John Hurley, proved highly successful, while during the interval Finbarr McCarthy of 96FM and C103 paid tribute to his great friend, the late Paudie Palmer, who was a Valley Rovers clubman. Paudie’s friends and colleagues, Jim Nolan, John Fintan Daly and Pat Spillane, also gave their memories in video messages while a well-supported raffle generated funds for the Dunmanway Day Unit in CUH, where Paudie had been treated for cancer.

Also on the panel were Cork’s 1999 captain Mark Landers as well as Anthony Daly, who led Clare to victory in 1995 and 1997, Limerick’s TJ Ryan and Waterford’s Dan Shanahan.

With regard to the upcoming championship, Dowling was the only man brave or foolish enough to tell a room full of Cork people that Cork won’t advance to the All-Ireland series – he expects Limerick, Clare and Tipp to progress.

The other six all feel Limerick and Cork will emerge, with Barry-Murphy, Ryan and Dunne going for Tipp and Daly, Shanahan and Landers plumping for Clare.

Daly feels that much of Clare’s season will hinge on their opening game against Tipp, but with the side-effect that the championship format has now devalued the league.

“There’s no threat of relegation anymore,” he said.

“Look at Clare this year – they hammered Westmeath and that was relegation out of the way. 

I went to the Galway and Cork matches and it was like going to two challenge matches in Cusack Park.

“It’s all geared towards the Tipp game – if you win, everything was right and if you lose, you didn’t go hard enough in the league.”

MINORITY

However, while Daly has misgivings on the split season, he was firmly in the minority, with TJ Ryan welcoming the clarity and Mark Landers agreeing.

“Unless you protect the club player, you’re never going to have the inter-county player,” he said.

“The club player had been forgotten for the last 20, 25 years and when club matches were played early in the year, they didn’t get a lot of coverage in the papers.

“A club player is putting in as much time and effort as the inter-county players. I think this is a way of giving them due recognition and the papers will carry all the weekend championship matches and fellas love to see their name in the paper.”