Blaming the fact that finances are being pumped into the Páirc Uí Chaoimh redevelopment is a bit of a cop-out, isn’t it?
Okay, so the Cork County Board of the noughties in particular, as has been well-established, took their eye off the ball as regards talent-regeneration, writes Peter McNamara.
But can we really say that upgrading the stadium via funds that could otherwise have been spent on developing younger players is a primary reason for losing a Munster SFC semi-final to a decimated Tipperary?
Is it a contributory factor? Most definitely. Is it the primary reason? Give over.
The bottom line as to why Cork are losing high-profile hurling and football matches at senior level at present is because the hurlers available simply aren’t adept enough and the footballers are lacking in tactical guidance of substance.
It is never right to definitively judge a new management in their first season in charge as it is only really in the second year that you are working off your own hymn-sheet following the inevitable crossover period which definitely can take a year.
However, Peadar Healy and his selectors have a lot of learning to do between now and their next provincial championship outing in 2017 if they are still in charge of the team by then.
For instance, leave the ‘these players are the future’ lines to one side when speaking of performers such as Peter Kelleher.
These players are for the here and now.
Having one of the top goalscoring full-forwards at U21 and senior level in the game this year sitting on the bench is a fool’s errand.
It was a bizarre call.
Kelleher, despite his relative inexperience at this grade, is borderline unplayable at his best so far in 2016.
Yet, his backside occupied a seat in the stand while the ball was being thrown in at Semple Stadium on Sunday.
It would have been like Martin O’Neill randomly leaving an enthusiastic, energetic and in-form Shane Long on the bench at the Stade de France on Monday evening.
As Dimitri Payet, Luka Modric and Toni Kroos proved in their country’s opening matches at Euro 2016, your in-form operators should be the key cogs in your wheel; not the puncture repair kit when thunder and lightning has struck spinning you off your bike and into the nearest bushes.
There is a train of thought that suggests Cork were, tactically, keeping plenty in reserve until the Killarney roads came into view.
Therefore, team selection can be dictated by this.
Lots of teams do it too.
I always feel this is a kamikaze approach, nowadays especially.
You put your best team on the field. You pulverise lesser opponents. You win the game. And then you withdraw players you feel require minding.
It’s not rocket science. However, there is a fear the game is now getting overly-complicated by managers trying to be too cute by ‘not giving too much away’ in advance of greater tests, perhaps?
Noel Galvin is another player that should have started in Thurles.
God knows Cork are not blessed with particularly impressive man-markers.
Yet, Galvin is as close as it gets to a natural corner-back capable of nullifying a genuine individual threat within an opponent’s arsenal.
Yes, you could argue for and against the inclusion of the Ballincollig clubman.
However, there is absolutely no debate whatsoever on Kelleher.
The management’s decision to leave the Kilmichael attacker out of the equation from the get-go was a woeful call.
And this is not one of these after the horse has bolted arguments because it was supposedly a given, to practically everybody, that Kelleher would start against the Premier County.
Of course, the Leesiders’ wide count of 14 didn’t help and even if 50% of those attempts had been converted the Rebels would have sauntered to a meeting with Kerry.
Still, it would be churlish to fixate on that statistic as being one of the more telling facts of a sorrowful trip to the venue.
Cork were wiped out in terms of aggression for lengthy periods of the game and it was a performance of a group not entirely content in themselves currently.
Is it possible there was more to the rumours of discontent than we have been privy to?
Also, Healy, as the manager, needs to appreciate that having a spokesperson on his management team is one thing, but that avoiding speaking to the media himself the majority of the time is counter-productive.
I could count on one hand the number of journalists here on Leeside that have managed to get a quote or two from him so far this season.
Healy may honestly not like chatting to the media which is fair enough and he did, to his credit, speak afterwards on Sunday.
Yet, that was an exception rather than a rule and he should at least try to accept that being a senior inter-county boss these days isn’t just about managing people inside the camp.
Even Brian Cody is generally accessible to journalists!
Look, Cork will not win the All-Ireland title this year.
The team, with the necessary tweaks, may win a few qualifiers.However, Healy and co need to have one eye on next season at this point.
Allow Kelleher, Luke Connolly, Stephen Cronin et al to start the qualifier and potentially subsequent qualifiers in order to truly prepare them for next season. After all, 2016 is essentially a write-off already.
