Corn Uí Mhuirí history offers little comfort to Cork hopefuls

The Corn Uí Mhuirí quarter-finals throw in next week and, with two Cork schools still standing, there is a sense that this is a decisive junction once again.

For St Francis College Rochestown, the next obstacle is Intermediate School Killorglin, conquerors of Hamilton High School Bandon in the final round of group games. Clonakilty Community College, meanwhile, are paired with Tipperary side CBS High School Clonmel.

Of the final eight, Cork are there with two representatives, Tipperary with one, and Kerry with the other five. And that imbalance is no fluke.

Kerry schools have won the last 13 Corn Uí Mhuirí titles on the spin, a sequence of dominance that has stretched beyond suffocating from a Cork perspective. The wait has gone on far too long for the Rebel County.

The last breakthrough came in 2011, when Coláiste Chríost Rí lifted the cup, defeating Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne with a side packed with future club pedigree, the likes of Conor Horgan, Luke Connolly, Kevin Fulignati, Enda Dennehy and John Kerins Jr featuring. Fourteen years on, with one season lost to the COVID interruption of 2021, that remains the most recent Cork success.

Among the Kerry quintet still in the hunt this year, Tralee CBS and St Brendan’s College Killarney loom largest.

Between them, they account for five of the last 13 titles and, historically, they are the competition’s twin pillars, St Brendan’s with a record 24 wins, Tralee CBS with 16 in total.

One of them will be gone by Wednesday, January 14, when they meet in a quarter-final that could have just as easily been the final pairing.

The remaining three Kerry schools share just a single Corn Uí Mhuirí triumph – Killorglin’s 1996 win over Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh – but the county’s grip on this trophy is total.

Cork’s drought is now the worst in its history, and, for the other four Munster counties, the picture isn’t much better.

CBS High School Clonmel are the only Tipp side to have won the competition, doing so once only in 1928. The Premier County hold the largest drought of any of team in Munster.

Limerick’s last victory came in 1960 through Limerick CBS, Waterford’s was in 1965 courtesy of De La Salle, while St Flannan’s last secured a Clare success in 1995. And fittingly, that somewhat parallels their Munster Senior Football Championship success, too.

Neither Limerick or Waterford have won a Munster title in well over a century. Clare have only won two, the last of which came in 1992.

Tipperary are the only real outlier, winning Munster in 2020 when they defeated Cork, but you have to go back to 1935 – seven years after their only Corn Uí Mhuirí win – for their last provincial success.

Cork, meanwhile, have not won a Munster senior football title since 2012, the year after Chríost Rí’s victory.

After Midleton CBS’s Harty Cup exit on Wednesday, it means that Cork will remain with only two Harty titles since their last All-Ireland success in 2005.

And, if you look at the success of Cork schools in the Corn Uí Mhuirí for the 13 seasons prior to Chríost Rí’s 2011 win – from 1998 to 2010 – the pattern is somewhat familiar. Cork have four titles, Kerry nine.

Change the lens to Munster SFC wins, the numbers read Cork five, Kerry eight.