No such thing as a divine right to victory

This month marks an anniversary of sorts for me.

It was in March 1990 that my father took me to Turner’s Cross to see Cork City and Shamrock Rovers play out a 1-1 draw in the FAI Cup.

It’s wrong to say that that was my first-ever match as I had been to games before, such as the 1989 Cork intermediate hurling final. I proudly waved the Kilbrittain flag that my mother had made – black corduroy allied to a yellow blanket – as they lost to Valley Rovers, but that was more of an occasion whereas the 1990 game was attending a game that happened to be on, if that made sense.

The following year, trips to Turner’s Cross became more common as City went close to winning the League of Ireland for the first time.

I felt I had to be someway responsible. After all, my presence at the two All-Ireland finals in September of 1990 had been the sprinkling of magic dust required to push Cork over the line to double glory.

Match trips

At the time, I took all of these trips to matches for granted, certainly not appreciating how much of an influence the burgeoning love of sport would have on my future life.

If I had been told back then that my job would revolve around going to matches, I’d certainly have taken it – after all, it would surely be easy if Cork teams were winning all around them.

I would have struggled to believe it if I had been told that I would have to wait until 2010 to see Cork win the Sam Maguire again. And yet, as long as the gap between 1990 and then was, three-quarters of it has been matched since.

This weekend, Cork face Louth in Division 2 of the Allianz Football League and, though we are at mid-point of March, it’s not over-stating matters to call it season-defining.

Win and the Rebels should finish in the top half of the second tier, likely to be enough to guarantee a place in the All-Ireland championship.

Lose and the Tailteann Cup beckons, barring an appearance in the Munster final – and, with Kerry on the same side of the draw as Cork, few would be banking on such an outcome.

It’s easy to forget now that Cork’s relegation from Division 1 in 2016 came after winning six points from their seven games. Four other counties had the same total and the Rebels finished in seventh place of eight on scoring difference. Donegal, with the same amount, finished fourth and contested the semi-finals.

Cruel irony

Every year since then – apart from 2020 – the refrain on Leeside has been that Cork need to get back to Division 1 in order to compete properly. Of course, 2020 was the odd one out and it wasn’t because of COVID-19; it was because Cork were in Division 3, after suffering another relegation the year before.

The fact that happened in 2019 was a cruel irony, given that was the year that a much-vaunted five-year plan for Cork football was launched, laying out various aims across different levels and how they would be achieved.

The end of the five-year period passed last year with no audit, review or examination of how well the aims had been met. It’s hardly a spoiler to say that such a review would not have been a positive one.

The reasons for Cork’s fall from the upper echelons are many – essentially, there has been an aggregation of a lot of small things, but the bottom line is that none of the years in Division 2 have seen a sustained promotion tilt.

Any hopes of one this year ended with the 2-21 to 0-13 loss at home to Roscommon a fortnight ago.

Given that match was on after the Cork hurlers’ win over Kilkenny – television scheduling being the dictating factor – it brought things into sharp focus.

When the footballers went out to walk the pitch at half-time in the hurling, there were 22,193 people present; by the start of the third match (Cork ladies’ footballers beat Roscommon in the first one), but the crowd had dwindled to about a quarter of that.

Now, they must try to respond against the county that eliminated them from the championship last year.

There’s no such thing as a divine right to victory and, if anything, the power of momentum and morale means Cork could be classed as underdogs. It may be anathema to the traditionalists, but that’s the way the situation lies.

Things are on quite the knife-edge.