The last time Cork lost two All-Ireland hurling finals in a row, in 1982 and 1983, Jimmy Barry-Murphy was the Cork captain in both years. Adding to his sense of personal torment, he failed to score in both games.
“I flopped on two big days,” he said in an interview for Voices from Croke Park, a book published by the GPA in 2010. “I’m not ashamed to say it. I bombed out on the two days I wanted most to win.”
By that stage of his career, Barry-Murphy was one of the most successful hurlers and footballers in the history of the GAA and one of the most adored sportspeople there had ever been in Cork.
Stretching back to his first senior final with the footballers in 1973 as a suedehead teenager, Barry-Murphy was a player who delivered on the biggest day. In that All-Ireland final, he scored 2-1. With the hurlers in 1976, he blew the game apart with four points in the final quarter. Two years later he scored the goal that upended Kilkenny.
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I’d be the first to admit that I would have scoffed at all this stuff years ago
— Jimmy Barry-Murphy
The point was that JBM knew what it took to perform in the biggest games and yet in 1982 and 1983, he couldn’t access that knowledge, or he couldn’t execute the stuff he knew. Why not? He didn’t work that out in time for 1983. By his own account, he didn’t confront the question.
“I’m convinced now that I wanted it so badly – captaining Cork to an All-Ireland – that I waited for other people to do it for me,” he said in 2010. “Going into ’83, I didn’t analyse it deeply why I had played so badly in ’82. The disappointment of losing in ’82 and ’83 was shattering.
“I suppose if I was playing now, there’d be a sports psychologist involved with the team to help out. I’d be the first to admit that I would have scoffed at all this stuff years ago. I wouldn’t now. I needed to unscramble certain things in my head going into that game [in 1983] and I didn’t do it.”
When something extraordinary happens, there is a natural instinct to look for context, something that might add to our understanding and subtract from our bewilderment.
When people wondered if any team had ever scored only two points in the second half of an All-Ireland hurling final, as Cork did eight days ago, the answer emerged quickly: Kilkenny in 2004, against Cork. Had you forgotten too? That was a low-scoring game, but nine points was Kilkenny’s lowest score in an All-Ireland final since 1936 and for them it must have felt like the sky had fallen in.
There must have been Cork players last weekend whose experience carried echoes of JBM in 1982 and 1983: so desperate for something to happen that they wrapped themselves up in a knot. And just like JBM, maybe there was underlying stuff from the final the year before that had been unresolved.
The black box will be recovered, but the investigation will take months.
In these situations, first responses are always fascinating. The urge to “catastrophise” is common in sport and, like water, it follows the path of least resistance. As soon as the final whistle blew in Croke Park, blame exploded like a bomb. It was everywhere.
In real life, when something terrible befalls someone in our affections, the first response is compassion and a desire to help. In sport, that is rarely the case, regardless of the feelings you professed while the team was winning. Every team has a hard core of unwavering loyalists, but, in general, support is conditional on performance. It is not the kind of unconditional love that you will receive from the family dog. It is far more shallow than that.
So, the Tipperary supporters who had run away from their team in tens of thousands last year embraced their players in triumph. As they did, the tens of thousands of Cork supporters who had delighted in their team through a winning season were suddenly disaffected and angry and wallowing in self-pity and a sense of betrayal. How dare they fail.
Part of the problem in Cork was that there had been two weeks of blinkered giddiness in the build-up. It was like that scene in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci’s character thinks he’s going to become a “made man” and ends up with a bullet in the back of the head. He hit the deck wearing his best suit. Cork were whacked in a mafia hit. The GAA has no rules about that.
There were mixed feelings when Cork cancelled their homecoming reception on Monday. The loyalists felt cheated of their opportunity to express their continuing affection for these players and offer some succour. Most people, though, believed it was the sensible thing to do. The players were mortified enough without having to face a rump of their public.
After the Cork footballers lost badly to Kerry in the 2007 All-Ireland final, Billy Morgan felt the players’ efforts throughout the year should be dignified by a homecoming. In the event, a few hundred people turned up. Deserting the footballers never cost Cork people a second thought.
It is easy to forget how much that group of Cork footballers suffered before they finally won an All-Ireland in 2010. Losing to Kerry in Munster had been an inherited experience for generations of Cork players, but that group lost four times to Kerry in Croke Park – two All-Ireland semi-finals and two finals – all of which magnified the pain.
Stubbornly, heroically, they kept going.
It is astonishing sometimes how the wheel turns. In 1965, Cork lost to Tipperary by 18 points in the Munster hurling final. It was the greatest annihilation that either team had visited upon the other in their long history up to that point. Tipp were the reigning All-Ireland champions, but according to newspaper reports, their supporters were outnumbered “four to one” by Cork followers that day in Limerick.
Cork mustered just five lonely points, and yet, by some voodoo, Cork were All-Ireland champions just 14 months later.
Does that sound familiar? In May of last year Tipp lost to Cork by 18 points, equalling the greatest beating that either team had visited upon the other. Fourteen months later they were All-Ireland champions too.
The people that mattered in Tipp rose above the din of condemnation and their voices ultimately prevailed. In Cork, that must happen too.
