Cork hurling and football teams no longer get the breaks Limerick and Kerry enjoy

WITH the respective All-Ireland championships having reached their final stages, the hurling and football performance rankings are effectively now set in stone until 2024, with both Cork senior teams further down the perceived pecking order than they would like.

Right now, your average non-Cork hurling supporter probably does not think a whole lot of the current Cork team.

The mauling in the 2021 All-Ireland final to Limerick will not have helped, and the early exits in the last two campaigns would have driven home any preconceived notions they might have.

Excuses like the injuries to Mark Coleman, Robbie O’Flynn, and Alan Connolly, as well as the closeness of the games against Tipperary, Clare, and Limerick would not hold much currency.

Come next year Pat Ryan’s side are going to have to do their talking on the pitch.

Likewise, the footballers certainly have made significant strides in the past two years, reaching the quarter-finals in both campaigns, but they are still a Division 2 side in the league and would not yet be viewed by your casual football watcher as realistic challengers for the Sam Maguire anytime soon.

To change those notions the hurlers pretty much have to win the All-Ireland, or go extremely close to doing so, while the footballers would have to get back up to Division 1 of the National Football League and possibly reach the last four of the championship too.

The footballers and hurlers are unlikely to lose too much sleep contemplating how they are perceived by these external parties, but ultimately these perceptions can matter, as they tend to have knock-on consequences, as being considered one of the top dogs in either code certainly has its benefits, as the championship has shown us this year.

The top teams in the land would all have a sense of aura about them.

These are always gained on the back of hard-earned successes, and one of the great advantages of possessing such an aura is that, once you have one, decisions tend to go your way in tight matches.

Take All-Ireland hurling champions Limerick as an example.

BREAKS

In their one-point victory over Cork in the Munster Championship they had a number of key decisions go their way, such as the controversial penalty awarded to Aaron Gillane, the gift of a point for a pick-up off the ground from Damian Cahalane that wasn’t, and Kyle Hayes could possibly have seen the line for a wild pull across Darragh Fitzgibbon in the second half.

At throw-in time in that game it looked like only a win would keep Limerick alive, but thanks to Tipperary’s heavy defeat to Waterford a draw would have been enough to see them emerge out of Munster, although the ref would have been unaware of what was happening in that game at the time.

One senses that 10 years ago, before this great Limerick team emerged, that Limerick teams would not have gotten those decisions, or at least not all of them.

And to All-Ireland football champions, Kerry.

They certainly had the rub of the green with the penalty they got against Cork in the All-Ireland group stages — a game they only won by two points in the end, and last Sunday against Derry, in the All-Ireland semi-final, they looked to be on the verge of going out until Stephen O’Brien was awarded a phantom free.

That free swung the momentum completely. From being two up and counter-attacking, suddenly Derry were only one up and hoofing long a kickout they didn’t want to deal with. That one poor decision turned the game.

It was the type of decision that big sides with ‘auras’ get.

It probably helps Kerry that the majority of the country seems to have a version of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to watching their footballers — a Killarney Syndrome if you will — where they are seen as the ‘Brazil’ of the sport.

That reputation certainly doesn’t hurt when it comes to tight calls.

Cork teams would have had this kind of aura historically, but not in recent times.

The famous Tomás Mulcahy goal against Limerick in the 1992 Munster Final instantly springs to mind as an example, but it is a struggle to remember many big decisions going Cork’s way in tight games in the last few years.

Even the great sides need a bit of lucky sometimes, and in that respect Cork are certainly due, and in both codes.