Christy O'Connor: Cork football always struggles for support, they must forge their own path

It was always going to be a gamble, especially with the hurlers on the same card – and the miscalculation backfired spectacularly.

In one sense, it’s easy to see why Cork GAA would have risked rolling the dice, even if they knew the outcome long before it predictably played out the way it did.

With the hurlers on such a roll (even if they’d lost their previous game to Tipperary), the mood around Pat Ryan’s side was so positive and hyper that the gamble of putting the footballers on after the hurlers played Kilkenny in round 3 was still worth the risk.

Even if only a proportion of the supporters stayed on – out of interest or loyalty – to watch the footballers take on Roscommon, the hope was that it might ignite something in those drifting or lukewarm fans to extend their passion for Cork GAA beyond just the hurlers. 

Is that not what the Cork brand should really be all about anyway?

Another part of the reasoning for fixing the game after the hurlers was that it might – for those who remained on anyway – have stoked their interest enough to think about getting behind the footballers during the summer.

That had happened in the last two years, albeit in Cork, when big crowds turned out for the footballers’ preliminary All-Ireland quarter-final against Roscommon in 2023, and their round-robin game last year against Donegal.

When Cork won both matches, the huge crowd in Páirc Uí Chaoimh (2023) and Páirc Uí Rinn (last year) was a reminder of the benefits, not just for the footballers, but for the overall Cork GAA brand.

The risk with trying to convince hurling supporters to watch the footballers though, is the negative ramifications of what is likely to happen – which is what actually happened.

If the football match against Roscommon in mid-March had been fixed for 3pm (the hurlers game was on at 5pm because of TV scheduling) and if the ladies game against Roscommon was shifted forward to 1pm (which was on at 3pm), the footballers would have got significant support from the big crowd already in the stadium for the second half of the hurling match.

Instead, by the time the footballers got on the field, the air had been sucked out of the occasion because everyone had already raced towards the exits to beat the traffic.

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For those of hurling inclination that did stay, the drip feed towards the exits increased with each passing minute after half-time. By the end of the match, there was only a handful of thousand in PUC. Less than two hours earlier, there was over 22,000 in the ground.

How damaging was that for the morale of the footballers? Or does it even make a difference anymore for a group that have long realised that this is the way it just is?

Is there even any point any more in continuing this debate about why the footballers don’t at least get more support than they should?

It’s just reality. When Cork played Monaghan in their opening league game in 2011 as All-Ireland champions, less than a thousand people turned up to Páirc Uí Rinn to welcome them. And a decent share of those were Monaghan supporters.

If Cork couldn’t get decent support back then, what chance do they have now when they have remained a middling Division 2 team for the guts of a decade?

The footballers haven’t always done enough to convince more supporters to commit to their cause but the frustration has been even more acute again when the footballers have seen in the last two years how much of a boost the team can get from a strong support base.

“The fans make a massive difference,” said Colm O’Callaghan after the Donegal game last June. “People probably don’t realise but coming down the stretch there in the last 15 minutes when we got a run on Donegal, the crowd, they backed us all the way. 

"You could hear the chants. It was unbelievable and it made a massive difference.” 

 After Cork beat Roscommon the previous year, the atmosphere in PUC was electric as a young generation of Cork supporters had never seen days, or an atmosphere, like what they experienced that afternoon.

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“Cork football has been missing these occasions for a long time,” said John Cleary on RTÉ Radio 1 afterwards. “The was as big a crowd as I've seen at a Cork football match in the last number of years. That can only be good for Cork football. This hopefully is only the start.” 

Of course it wasn’t. If anything, any excess support the footballers will hope to get for this championship may decrease even more now with the hurlers generating such an irresistible momentum, and with so many of those supporters saving their Saturday or Sunday afternoons for what they hope will be a summer full of them.

When the footballers travel to Limerick on Saturday for the opening round of the Munster championship, their support numbers will be as low as they’ve ever been, particularly with so many supporters saving themselves for the league final on Sunday.

It just is what it is. 

The footballers know the only way to change that reality is to start winning games, and to deliver enough consistent performances to give the Cork public a good enough reason to get behind them again.

And, even at that, there are never any guarantees around the sustainability of that emotional attachment.

Just ask the Cork footballers who played before sparse attendances during the 2011 league when they were All-Ireland champions.